One of the country’s major supermarket chains is investing $45 million in security measures after a jump of more than 300 percent in physical assaults and thefts over the past six years.<\/p>\n
Woolworths New Zealand, formerly Countdown, says it’s seen a significant increase in aggressive, threatening and brazen behaviour by offenders with a rise in shop lifting and retail crime.<\/p>\n
In the same period, security incidents have increased more than 800 percent.<\/p>\n
Woolworths NZ head of health and safety\u00a0Denva Wren\u00a0told\u00a0Checkpoint<\/em>\u00a0knives were a common weapon to be pulled on staff, and even hand guns – whether real or not – were used as a threat.<\/p>\n “It’s amazing what people pull out of their pocket or their bags,” Wren said.<\/p>\n “Our team at the frontline are really experiencing a mix of aggressive behaviour – whether that is verbal, physical conflict, concealed weapons being presented and some more even serious threats occurring across our stores.”<\/p>\n Wren said people were struggling with cost of living pressures and many felt like they had the right – or no other choice – but to steal.<\/p>\n RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the country’s major supermarket chains is investing $45 million in security measures after a jump of more than 300 percent in physical assaults and thefts over the past six years. Woolworths New Zealand, formerly Countdown, says it’s seen a significant increase in aggressive, threatening and brazen behaviour by offenders with a rise in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7367,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions\/7367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}