Many petrol station owners feel police will not do anything about fuel thefts, says the MTA. Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
There is a lack of faith between many service station owners and the police, the Motor Trade Association (MTA) says.
RNZ last week reported on two service stations in Northland and Hamilton who had fallen victim to thieves targeting their underground fuel storage tanks.
Both owners raised concerns over how police had handled their case.
MTA head of communications Simon Bradwell told RNZ many owners felt police would not do anything and would not report thefts as a result.
"For a number of years, members have told us that it's really hard to get police interested, let alone investigating fuel theft from their premises," he said.
"There's just a very strong feeling out there in service station land that police just don't want to know."
Bradwell said they had not heard so much of thieves targeting underground fuel tanks.
"The level of know-how to do it, the level of outright cheek to do it is pretty limited to be honest," Bradwell said.
"That's a fairly major operation, and you've got to have pretty big balls to do something like that, especially when the owner of the business is on site."
There needed to be a change to police's mindset when investigating fuel theft, he said.
"There's a real mindset amongst police that it's the service station's problem,"
Bradwell said they wanted police to accept they had a major role to play in keeping service stations safe, and to work more closely with the MTA and with stations to make them feel better about reporting crime.
He said night-time patrols to reassure service stations would mean a lot.
"Just that visible presence would put off a lot of offenders from trying their luck at committing theft or more violent crime at that particular site," Bradwell said.
"We think that's one easy measure the police could start doing, which is not going to be a drain on resources, and it would mean a lot to service stations just to have that reassurance of police presence on their site."
He also wanted to see more attention from the government on the causes of crime.
"There's a lot of work going into things like three strikes and sentencing, but hey, where's all the attention that's going on stopping crime at the outset," said Bradwell.
"We're just not seeing enough of that, and surely that's got to be a better focus for the government than just more police cars at the bottom of the cliff."
Police were contacted for a response but failed to respond by deadline.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
