Dunedin is a small city. Everyone seems to know someone who knew Enere McLaren-Taana, or the teenager in custody over his death. Most people also know about the perpetual intimidation and violence at the bus hub — particularly young people, who have spoken up about it for years but not been heard.
The bus hub is not a warm, well-lit bus station in a dedicated space. It is two lines of bus stops on two pavements on either side of a back street. One pavement backs on to the Countdown supermarket and the police station. The other pavement backs on to the rear entrance of Farmers department store and a noisy building site. A pedestrian crossing place is marked half way along the bus hub, but traffic doesn’t seem to stop.
Before Enere’s death, police were rarely seen on the beat here, despite the location of their station. By 2021, the regional council belatedly installed security cameras. By 2022, it hired security guards due to "anti-social behaviour of youths".
The council says four guards from Allied Security are now patrolling the hub from 8am to 10pm, and travelling on buses from 3pm to 9pm. Young people say they don’t understand what powers the security staff hold, and young females have complained about their behaviour.
One teenage girl said two guards had approached her when she was waiting for her bus, alone, at 9.30pm. "It was scary and intimidating."
The girl didn’t report it.
"I didn’t know who to tell. I thought they were part of the police, and you don’t complain about the police."
The ODT visited the bus hub this week at school finishing time. We talked to a waif-like 14-year-old boy, sitting on a bench next to the section of pavement strewn with flowers in memory of Enere. The boy wasn’t in school uniform, and said he had been kicked out of Otago Boys’ High School for "being naughty and vaping and that".
He didn’t spend much time at home, and the bus hub was the only place young people could go to meet up. It was where "everyone came to fight".
A man in joggers sat nearby, swigging down handfuls of tablets that he said were anti-psychotics. He got up suddenly and crossed the road, narrowly escaping being hit by two buses. Then he came back again. It seemed random.
There were groups of teenagers around the police station steps.
"We need somewhere indoors and safe to meet up," one girl said.
She told the ODT what she had witnessed when Enere was killed. It sounded important, but the police hadn’t spoken to her. Another girl told her to shut up.
Mother-of-six Natasha Williams was with her triplets, one a wheelchair user, waiting for the Mosgiel bus to take them home from school. They couldn’t afford a car. It was the first time since the death that they had ventured to bus hub, due to fear.
"I don’t feel this is the best place to have a bus hub and to my mind this is not a bus hub. A bus hub should be just for buses."
There were two security guards wandering around, plus four police officers. The police officers included two youth aid officers, who normally work with young people on probation. They described the mood as sombre and their role as "public reassurance".
When the bus hub opened in March 2019, the Otago Regional Council (ORC) trumpeted that it would "deliver a connected and efficient service".
The government’s transport agency said it would help raise bus use to the "next level".
Instead, it became a billboard for the city’s social woes, with incidents of assault, theft, alleged drug dealing and intimidation — and now fatal knife crime.
A press release pushed out this week by the authorities — the ORC, the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and the police — said a group had been set up to improve the hub’s "culture". There would be community involvement and a focus on "changing behaviour".
Youth crime prevention is not about telling youngsters to behave or just policing. Complex social challenges must be tackled, including deprivation and family harm. There are many levers, including social housing and social services. There is a dire shortage of social homes in Dunedin and youth social services are under threat of cutbacks. Another lever is safer design of public spaces.
In 2005, the Ministry of Justice produced guidelines on design of public spaces to prevent crime, explaining how it can lead to "attractive and vibrant public physical environments".
The bus hub, in Great King St, replaced bus stops in the Octagon, a green space surrounded by bars, a cinema and the art gallery and at the head of the city’s main shopping street.
Although the Octagon is also not crime free, Bus Users Group spokesman Alex King says his group wasn’t happy about the shift.
"There was a sense it was to move unsightly buses from the Octagon. [The] bus hub has been put out of sight in the back streets, and not been as well maintained as it could be."
Mr King wants 10 times as many people on the bus. It’s important to get people out of cars to tackle climate change, but there wouldn’t be space for them on the bus hub’s dreary pavements.
There are also complaints about lack of shelter, particularly in winter, and the toilets not being maintained enough, Mr King says. It can feel scary at night.
One Dunedin bus driver, Peter Dowden, suggests that the bus hub needs a "fat controller". It’s a reference to the station master in the children’s story Thomas the Tank Engine, but there is no station to manage, nor a single accountable agency in charge. The bus hub is the shared responsibility of ORC and DCC.
ORC chief executive Richard Saunders acknowledges that "the bus hub comes with its own challenges as also a public road and footpath, and there are multiple lines of responsibilities because it is a public space involving multiple agencies".
He acknowledges that some people did not feel safe before Enere’s death. He says his first priority is to enable people to feel safe.
It is not yet clear how. Mr Saunders says he knows that security guards are "not the mechanism" that will solve the problem of safety for everyone. The security guards’ role is to "act as a visual deterrent and to observe and report", he said.
They cannot physically intervene or arrest.
Concerns about the guards should be reported and would be taken seriously, he said. Their use by the council was on a trial basis, but a permanent contract would be procured by August.
Mr Saunders stresses the council did consider the government’s crime prevention design guidelines when planning the bus hub. Among other things, the street is straight, so people can be seen. There is lighting. Crimes cannot be committed in dark corners, known as "entrapment" spots.
Enere’s death was therefore in plain sight, with people all around, particularly children and young people.
The regional council says its efforts at the bus hub include cleaning up graffiti. For now, the heartfelt messages, scrawled by a bereft community on the wall behind the pavement where Enere died, are staying put.
One demands "make this a safe place for our kids". Another reads "f ... the security and bus hub".
Youth charity Rock Solid’s programme manager Martin Hannah says some of the security guards have tried to help young people, but there have been concerns about some relationships without appropriate boundaries. The guards are not trauma-informed youth workers.
The ODT asked Allied Security for a response to the complaints against it. It had no comment.
There are also adults at the bus hub who purposely prey on youth, Mr Hannah says. It can start when a young person asks an adult for cigarettes, vapes and alcohol. Things can, however, then take a darker turn.
Last year, the ODT reported on a homeless teenage boy, Harry, exited into homelessness from an Oranga Tamariki-funded home for the disabled. While hanging out at bus hub he was picked up by a much older woman and taken to her house. The ODT tracked her down to a dimly-lit, shared flat in South Dunedin, where she told the paper about her alcoholism. There were drugs and alcohol in circulation while Harry lived there.
Mr Hannah says there have been consistent, long-standing calls for youth centres where young people can congregate safely. Agencies should work together to find solutions that meet the needs.
"It is easy to look at a young person and see behaviours, but it is really important we are providing help that addresses the underlying history they are carrying with them".
Dunedin Secondary Principals’ Association chairman and principal of Bayfield High School Mark Jones has advised students to avoid the bus hub. It’s not an easy ask. Many ORC bus routes start here or require a change here. School bus services that run directly between schools and suburbs reduced in 2021 when a private bus firm stopped operating. Its owner blamed the ending of Ministry of Education (MoE) contracts and "commercial unsustainability".
The ODT asked the ministry for information about the reduction in direct school bus services. It refused to provide it. School transport manager James Meffan said the ministry "categorically rejects the suggestion that the way the ministry operates its services has in any way contributed to this awful tragedy".
It seems defensive at a time when all possible solutions need to be on the table to protect the vulnerable. Many people of all ages, waiting for buses at the bus hub, are not choosing to be here. They say they have no access to a car, their destination is too far to walk, they have disabilities or don’t feel able to cycle due to fear of traffic or other factors.
There is a known correlation between crime and mass transit hubs people must use. Sweden’s Malmo University found the highest correlating crimes were assault and robbery. There is "target availability" for offenders, and a lack of social guardians to uphold safety.
The bus hub becomes particularly crowded with "targets" between 3pm and 4pm when children and youth arrive to catch buses home or stick around. This is the time Enere died.
The bus hub is also a destination for young people seeking a sense of belonging. Some hang out in groups rather than go home. Their slang name is "bus hub bundies". Some are neither in education nor work. They are often on the fringes of bundy groups, sitting on their own or talking to adults.
Adults with complex life challenges spend time here. One homeless woman sometimes takes off her clothes and has been seen urinating in the road.
The regional council says it has met this week with Dunedin Youth Council, which represents school children, to hear "concerns and suggestions", including improved security and an anonymous reporting system for complaints.
Mr Saunders said he expected to discuss school bus services with school principals and consider "opportunities and the costs" within a work stream of the newly-convened bus hub working group.
He acknowledges the risks that come with a service that "puts a whole lot of people into a public space. There are big societal problems and ORC will take an active role in the working group, and ensure that the public transport solution opportunities are part of the conversation".
Methodist Mission Southern’s director Laura Black calls for clear leadership.
"Dunedin routinely faces the problem where ORC and DCC are responsible for different parts, and the gluing together is haphazard. We see that in the perpetual conversation about the buses, when the town doesn’t feel the regional council is delivering what it needs."
Youth representatives should be the commissioning agents for change, and crime reduction design experts should be centrally involved, Ms Black says.
She then asks the big question: "How on Earth do we learn not to build something that is so casually dangerous again?"
