Celebrating Auror’s New Zealand retail outcomes of 2025

At Auror Connect Aotearoa/New Zealand 2025, we celebrated the incredible work of retailers and police in reducing retail crime and building safer communities. Their hard work, consistent reporting, and partnership are crucial to our collective mission of reducing violent retail crime by 50% in five years. 

These are some of this year's most outstanding New Zealand retail outcomes of 2025, exemplifying the power of consistent and quality event reporting, collaboration, and connecting the dots on the people causing the most harm.

Vehicle recognition technology leads to arrests in $72K retail crime spree

Vehicle Recognition technology helped with the location and arrest of a pair responsible for $72K in total event value across the North Island. 

The duo were known to walk into stores and steal items without trying to conceal them and they would always have a driver waiting in the carpark to help them get away.

New Zealand Police used Auror’s Find a Vehicle feature to determine which locations the vehicle was frequenting. This helped police conduct patrols in the right areas, ultimately helping them locate the people through a Vehicle of Interest alert.

Police were able to execute a search warrant in relation to their offending, which included thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen power tools, vacuum cleaners, and other small appliances.

They are now facing charges for 30 shoplifting offences.

This outcome shows the power of Vehicle Recognition technology in providing a more complete picture of offending. Vehicle intel is one of the most important pieces of information a retailer can have in identifying and preventing their highest-harm people of interest. 

Read more about this case here.

Quick-thinking retail team keeps people safe from offender with weapon

Customers of a major New Zealand retailer were evacuated to safety thanks to quick-thinking store team members and a Vehicle Recognition alert. 

The team of the impacted store received a Vehicle Recognition alert and a person associated with the car entered a few minutes later. After shopping around, the person's card declined at the check-out and they left. 

They entered a second time and consumed some items without paying for them, becoming aggressive after being asked to pay by a loss prevention officer. They attempted to pull a knife out and police were called, after which the person left.

Customers were evacuated upon police advice and trading resumed once police could ensure the person and their vehicle were no longer present.

This outcome shows the importance of recognition technology in giving frontline store teams notice when a known vehicle has entered their car park, alerting them to a potentially dangerous person of interest. This crucial time between receiving the alert and the person entering the store helps teams decide how to respond based on the person’s history.

Vehicle information leads to arrest of cross-org repeat offender

A repeat offender impacting several retailers was arrested and sentenced thanks to a number plate and a single event report made on Auror.

Police in Tauranga received a report that the offender had tried to steal more than $1000 worth of goods from a hardware store. After looking up the person’s vehicle license plate number on police databases, they noticed there had been an “abnormal amount of alerts” for that car at several retail sites in the area.

With this information, police were able to obtain CCTV footage from the impacted stores, which showed the offender filling up shopping bags full of items they never intended to pay for. This revealed thousands of dollars worth of stolen goods that the retailers were unaware of.

Between September 2024 and February 2025, almost $6800 worth of items were stolen from various retailers. The offender had used a detagging device to remove security devices from high-value items. 

The offender was arrested and charged with 35 counts of theft.

Again, this case proves the role vehicle information plays in providing a complete picture of offending and the impact that positive collaboration between police and retailers can have. 

Read more about this case here.

Abusive offender responsible for $100K loss and 139 events arrested and charged

An aggressive and threatening offender responsible for 139 events worth $100,900 was arrested and charged following consistent high-quality event reporting by retail teams. Over $10K of the total loss occurred in one retailer’s stores alone.

Working together on Auror’s platform, impacted retailers helped build evidence against the person one event at a time. This evidence was then used by police to arrest the person, ultimately charging them with 18 offences. 

This outcome exemplifies why it’s important to have consistent reporting with quality evidence, work in partnership with other retailers, and report regularly to police in order to put a stop to high-harm offenders.

Continuing progress on the path to safer stores

Creating safer stores and communities doesn’t happen overnight. 

These retail outcomes are just a tiny handful of stories that exemplify how strong strong partnerships, first-class event reporting, and strategic use of technology help contribute to better safety outcomes.

Maintaining this momentum and achieving our 50 in 5 mission will require continued collaboration, innovation, and putting people’s safety first.

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