Kavinda Herath/Stuff
Main St, Waikaka: There’s a pub, a garage and a primary school, and the town’s crime rate has risen nearly 35% in three months.
The crime rate in Waikaka has risen nearly 35% in the past three months.
However, the tiny eastern Southland town is hardly a hotbed of lawlessness and disorder, and the local councillor says people should not be alarmed.
One theft from a farmer’s yard led to a spike in the statistics, he says.
Waikaka, about a 10-minute drive from Gore, has a historic pub, a garage and a primary school.
It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else – the area, which includes the settlements of Chatton and Mandeville, had an estimated population of 1640 as of June 2022, with a population density of 2.8 people per square kilometre.
A Community Compass quarterly report, produced by Dot Loves Data and tabled at a Gore District Council community and wellbeing committee meeting last week, shows Waikaka was the community in the district with the greatest change in its crime rate – a 34.85% change from March 2023.
So what’s going on in this tiny town that has led to a spike in crime?
Waikaka ward councillor John Gardyne said he was aware of only one incident in the area.
Kavinda Herath/Stuff
A theft from a farmyard has led to a 35% spike in the crime rate at Waikaka.
“The problem is that before that there was very little, if any, crime here. So when one crime gets reported, it looks like a big spike,’’ he said.
He said the one incident was a theft from a farmyard.
“Around here people tend to look after things like that themselves – so that kind of stuff doesn’t really happen,’’ he said.
Inspector Melanie Robertson, the Southland police acting area commander, said that while police were unable to provide data at an area level, the volume of crime in smaller rural townships, including Waikaka, remained low.
LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff
Michael Burge says small towns are increasingly attractive to investors because they can still buy rentals that are cashflow positive.
“Any large percentage increases are likely [to be] a result of a low volume increase.’’
Police were continuing to monitor offences affecting demand, and further analysis would be required to understand any identified problems, she said.
Police urged people to keep reporting incidents, she said.
