Signs of hope for embattled Wellington street

Shopkeepers have seen it all, from threats to defecation in the streets. But there is a glimmer of hope in Wellington’s Cuba Mall, writes Tom Hunt.

It’s a mall at the crossroads of the cultural capital, where the downand-outs rub shoulders with families and fashion. You could call it cosmopolitan but probably won’t.

To the south is Cuba St and the cool it entails. To the east is Courtenay Place, the place to party. There are theatres, parks and many shoe shops nearby.

Those who work here day-in and day-out know all that. And the other reality. They talk of a woman defecating on the street and teenage girls chasing each other with poles. They talk of children as young as 10 threatening grown adults, of drug deals, thefts and gangs.

‘‘It is pretty bad out there,’’ a shop manager in this upper section of Cuba Mall said in August, when Dominion Post reporters spent eight hours there to see just how many police officers walked by. The answer? None.

Fast-forward to late this month. It is not yet midday and at least six police officers have walked by. The Wellington City Council Local Hosts – now called Hāpai Ake – roam the stretch, spending long times talking to and laughing with the street’s regulars.

The most egregious crimes now are architectural. The section of Cuba Mall, between Dixon and Manners streets, is no more than 50 metres long. It is bookended at the southern end by a jaunty rainbow crossing and a lessthan-jaunty bus lane at the north.

Three months has seen a lot of change in New Zealand. There has been a nationwide lockdown, the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, and this little patch of Wellington is safer – mostly.

Visit one: August, 2020

Not a single police officer walks by the trouble spot and four police cars drive by without stopping during eight hours of round one.

Pigeons walk by, as do parking wardens and drunks. A group of evangelists – ‘‘we’re not religious, we’re evangelists’’ – shout to a disinterested crowd.

A man hoiks on the ground between sips from his can of beer as he sits near an alcohol ban sign. One man makes a flax weaving out of plants growing in the garden.

Shortly before 4pm a group of teenage girls get into a shouting and pushing brawl that makes its way towards Te Aro Park. One shouts she is 13 years old.

Again, no police to be seen. ‘‘For me, and a lot of the staff over the last three years, it has gone from being able to leave safely to not feeling safe at all,’’ a shopkeeper says.

He points out a teenager, maybe 17, who has been frequenting the mall. Through his shop window he has seen that teenager increasingly associate with gangs.

Gangs are increasingly here – Black Power and Nomads mostly. Then there are the younger ones he has dubbed the ‘‘Cuba Crips’’.

There was also recently the scooter gang of boys aged 10 to 14. One of them walked into the shop and told the woman working: ‘‘Come out and I’ll smash you.’’

A fight among schoolgirls involved one chasing another up the street with a ‘‘massive pole’’.

There was the woman who would pull down her pants and defecate on the street. She’s not around anymore.

He reckons the police are doing a good job and respond fast when called.

‘‘They are getting better but, at the same time, the problem is getting worse,’’ he said.

Visit two: November, 2021

Ronald Sterry, the street identity who also goes by ‘‘Dingo, the Harmonica Man of Wellington’’, is the punctuation mark at the end of this section of Cuba Mall, blowing out the tunes as the shops open for the morning.

Another identity, Candy Date, saunters by singing along to a cover of Prince’s When Doves Cry. ‘‘Maybe you’re just like my mother; she’s never satisfied.’’

It is before midday. Nobody is drunk and nobody is drinking alcohol. In most others parts of the city this wouldn’t be notable but here it is.

Instead, it is sunny, friendly, prosaic. Even the pigeons look bored.

And Warwick McKee is a happy man. As detective senior sergeant he used to be in charge of investigating some of Wellington’s grisliest homicides. He is now Wellington area crime prevention manager.

There have been two programmes that he thanks for the drop in antisocial behaviour. There is the Pō neke Promise, an initiative launched this year that means council, police, hospitality, retail and others work together to tackle safety issues in the city. For police, this partly means more officers walking the beat.

There is also the fact that, even if police are not there in person, they are watching. The whole area is covered by CCTV. Staff at the police station keep an eye on things, and another team at the council watches the feed, with a direct line to police if needed.

Prior to Operation Mahi Ngatahi – another police initiative to put more staff in the central city – council staff were downloading 20 images a week for evidential purposes. Now they are downloading just three or four.

‘‘There are a number of staff deployed into areas, including Cuba Mall, to monitor and enforce the liquor ban

and to prevent volume crime, violence and disorder,’’ McKee says. ‘‘The community, retailers, residents and police all have noticed reduced harm and alcohol related harm.’’

Council community services manager Jenny Rains attributes the change to the Pō neke Promise. The council has had a big role in the promise – not least the almost $1 million in grants it announced in June, with more expected.

To those on the streets, the most visible examples of it are the Hāpai Ake (Local Hosts), whose numbers have gone from five to nine in the past few months. These hosts have no policing powers but are there as eyes and ears on the street. They have the freedom – as was seen on Thursday – to spend half an hour talking and joking with a street identity.

First Retail Group managing director Chris Wilkinson is one of those involved in the Pō neke Promise and a man who has seen the rise, fall and now – fingers crossed – rise again of central Wellington.

There were many reasons the city centre started to empty out: earthquake-prone buildings, Covid-19, and a new work-from-home culture being the big ones. Mobile phone and public transport data showed there were times – out of lockdown – in the past year that the numbers of people in the central city were five to 15 per cent down on 2019 figures.

But people are coming back to town – though not quite up to 2019 levels. And this results in less crime: More people means more eyes on the city, making it less desirable to – say – get drunk and rowdy in Cuba Mall.

A history spots. A report to the council in 2000 found some areas, notably Manners Mall, were considered to be dangerous after dark and ‘‘very likely to engender fear of crime’’.

By the early 2000s the council was making changes, with better lighting and surveillance along Manners Mall.

By 2004, then-mayor Kerry Prendergast said Glover Park had effectively been ‘‘privatised’’ by a group of people whose anti-social behaviour stopped others enjoying it.

The park got a $1.2m makeover and the council put in a bylaw on camping or sleeping in public places. They didn’t have the desired effect and one homeless man in 2004 could read the future: ‘‘They have nowhere else to go except the [Central Business District],’’ he said. ‘‘And the people there are not going to put up with that for long.’’

Fast forward to 2021. What was Manners Mall is now a bus lane and Glover Park could be mistaken for an extension of the upmarket craft beer bar that lives there. These days, Cuba Mall and nearby Te Aro Park have taken their place.

Scene of the crimes

‘‘A guy pulled his pants down and showed us his wang,’’ a woman said in one shop in August, before listing off the weird and worrying of the past months. ‘‘One guy came in with one arm, threw cat food around the store and tried to poke his eye out with an umbrella.’’

She goes on: ‘‘A dude threatened to stab us.’’

There were, of course, thefts, solvent huffing, drinking, drugs. She, too, remembers the woman relieving herself outside.

Fast-forward to this month, there are more police around, Hāpai Ake checking in, and things are getting better. ‘‘Not perfect,’’ she says, ‘‘far from it.’’ But in Cuba Mall, that counts as progress.