An Official Information Act response from police to the Otago Daily Times reveals only two shops in the Southern police district have received support from the $6 million retail crime prevention programme.
It comes after two Gore dairies were broken into early on Wednesday.
One owner — the father of an 18-month-old daughter — was left contemplating selling his business before things got worse.
The district has the second-lowest number of businesses which received assistance of any police district, following Tasman where no businesses were given support.
A request for a breakdown of the costs associated with the Southern district were refused as "the information could not be made available without substantial collation or research".
The districts with the highest numbers of businesses supported were Auckland City (57), Waikato (47) and Counties/Manukau (47).
The programme was started last June and is paid for from the Proceeds of Crime Fund.
It is intended to deliver protective equipment and provide additional prevention advice to retailers, and to reduce the risk of harm from aggravated robberies and ram-raids.
Eligible small business retailers are identified by police through analysing data about past victimisations.
Once a potentially eligible store has been identified, police worked with them to complete an assessment.
If the retailer wished to proceed, they would be assigned a contractor who would install security options such as alarms and fog cannons, and physical barriers such as bollards, solid planter boxes and roller doors.
As of January this year, a total of 279 retailers had been supported by the programme and 875 security measures had been installed.
The programme was preceded by an initiative to provide retailers with fog cannons which ran from 2017-22.
As a result of that scheme, 33 retailers in the Southern police district received a fog cannon.
Acting Southern District commander Inspector Paula Enoka said Southern officers were committed to providing support to the retail community.
Past support initiatives included Operation Vis which ran during December last year and involved Southern officers targeting retail crime in the lead-up to Christmas.
In June last year, a meeting between Southern businesses and Invercargill police discussed ways they could better work together.
This year the Southern District Command Centre had been focused on preventive work in both rural and metro retail areas, including in Dunedin where police were working with the city council to increase "City Safe" patrols.
"Our role as police is also to help prevent crime from happening in the first place," Insp Enoka said.
