Police teamed with security personnel, crimewatch patrols and the Greenmount East Tamaki Business Association (GETBA) in a crack down on crime during Labour Weekend.
Gang members, groups of youths and boy racers were among those apprehended during the siege.
Howick police sergeant John Milne says police used unmarked cars and had a makeshift operation headquarters in an East Tamaki building.
“Long weekends are not going to cover for these guys anymore. We’ve got plain cars and we’re stopping people and talking to them.”
The operation, which ran Thursday to Monday night, also involved petrol station employees, crimewatch patrols and security staff calling through any suspicious activity.
“It meant that we could respond to everything straight away,” Mr Milne says.
Through GETBA, police coordinated an operation briefing for security guard managers.
Every night the group would meet to discuss the previous night’s activities and the plan for that evening.
“We would pass them about 100 or so registration details of suspicious persons, and keep them up to date on arrests and apprehensions. It was really a team effort.
“We just kept them informed all the way through and they rang us about incidents and we could go and help them out.”
Mr Milne says the coordination between various agencies was key to the operation’s success.
“These operations do not take many staff but are really efficient because they’re targeting people and areas.
“Security guards were excellent in that they could give us all that local knowledge, and we could keep each other up to date.”
He says staff also dealt with car pursuits, drunk drivers and boy racer activity including two bystanders being taken to hospital after a car crash.
“We thwarted boy racers a couple of times, crimewatch spooked a couple and we found diesel half spilled over the road.
“They’re breaking in, cutting through fences and going into where people have diesel.”
Three youths were also arrested after using a rock to smash a car on Meadowlands Drive.
Police also stopped known gang members as they were in the process of “getting ready to commit burglaries in the area”, Mr Milne says.
Staff based at the Howick station kept information on all vehicles and people stopped by police.
“They also took a log of everything we rang in, so it gave us a good complexion of what was happening in the area.
“That’s going to be really helpful, because we gained a lot of information about which criminals are there, loitering around,” Mr Milne says.
The operation is likely to run again and Mr Milne encourages reports of non-urgent criminal behavious to 0508 CATCHEM number (0508 228 243), to report non-urgent criminal.
