An innocent man was the victim of an unprovoked attack he didn't see coming. Nine months on, police still hadn't assigned an officer to the case, writes Tom Dillane. 

The awful luck piled up in quick succession after Aaron left the casino. 

Farewelling his mates at 4am after drinks, he innocently wandered around the block from SkyCity to a kerb where the cabs weren't so readily snapped up by departing and despondent punters. 

The spot he stopped at happened to be in front of one of Auckland's largest brothels, not that you could tell. A nondescript steel and brick facade blended Femme Fatale on Wellesley St West into the surrounding grey office blocks and apartments. 

The street CCTV was out of order too that night due to council road works. 

Aaron would come to realise all of this, but first came the punches. 

There was no time to guard against them as they arrived from behind. 

Aaron claims a man with a woman on his arm had just exited Femme Fatale. It's a venue that specialises in automobile themed erotic "adventures" with escort services in car-shaped beds. 

Two swings connected. The first split open Aaron's eye, knocking his glasses off and stripping him of whatever orientation he may have mustered to recover and defend himself. 

"The second one was square on my face which split my lip, nearly knocked out my tooth," says Aaron, who has requested an alias for this article for fear of reprisal. 

"I had a deep cut right the way through my lip. 

"Then the staff who had witnessed this from the nightclub came out. The couple then just walked off. I went inside, I was covered in blood, they gave me some towels." 

Aaron, 40, still has no idea who exactly hit him or why he did it. 

"It was pretty vicious and if the staff hadn't come out I hate to think what would have happened. You know, it could have been way more serious. I could have lost my life. 

"This was a completely unprovoked assault." 

Aaron was seriously assaulted in Auckland CBD on April 11, 2021. Police took nine months to assign an investigator and the leads on the case have now run cold. Photo / Dean Purcell 

A taxi driver who had witnessed the whole scene then drove Aaron to North Shore Hospital, where they cleaned his wounds and applied bandages. 

They were too busy to stitch him up so after a four-hour wait he went to Shore Care private hospital. But, after another four-hour wait, he was told he would need to go to Middlemore Hospital for a plastic surgeon to stitch his face. 

"This is about 24 hours not having slept or anything after the assault. I finally got to Middlemore Hospital, waited hours more and finally got my lip seen to and they stitched it all up for me." 

It was a night of hectic, brutal and totally unpredictable events inflicted on an innocent bystander. Swift in its absurd chaos. 

But what has been equally absurd, Aaron says, is the prolonged lack of action from Auckland police. 

Aaron initially reported the incident at 11am on April 11 - the same morning he was assaulted - and police visited him at his Auckland apartment in between hospital visits to take a statement. 

Police photographers came over a couple of days later to take snaps of his wounds. 

Aaron alleges that after the assault, Femme Fatale security staff who assisted him told him the man was a gang member and sometimes carried a firearm, which immediately frightened him. But he nevertheless gave a full account of what happened. 

"I thought, 'Oh God, this is a thug, probably assaulting lots of people at night and he's gang affiliated'. Initially, when I heard that, I was actually quite concerned for my safety, particularly making a police report and all that. You know, if he found out where I lived he could potentially harm me or those close to me. But I still went ahead and I gave the statement and I provided as much evidence as I possibly could." 

But an unnamed manager for the brothel told the Herald on Sunday it did not allow in patched gang members or firearms. 

"This appears to be a random incident that happened outside of our premises. 

"Our security staff do not let in patched gang members and we are the only gentlemen's club using metal detectors scanning all customers on entry for the safety of all staff and customers. 

"Security staff and management don't know [the] identity of [the] random man." 

Aaron says "it all got a bit messy" and he didn't hear from police for months. 

Until a couple of weeks ago his case had not been assigned a police investigator - nine months after it happened. 

This lack of action was not for want of follow up from Aaron. 

By that point, he had written around a dozen emails and made several calls to a police sergeant and an Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) case manager. 

He first complained to the IPCA in August. 

He also contacted Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and local MP Chloe Swarbrick. Goff's office said to get back in touch with them if any further assistance was needed. But Aaron hasn't yet taken them up on this. 

In a September 29 email, IPCA principal operations adviser Warren Young apologised for the "unacceptable delay". 

However, this was only after Aaron had personally contacted Young separately from the IPCA complaint. 

"I reiterate my apology for the way in which we handled your complaint. We should have provided a much fuller explanation of the issues," Young wrote. 

"We should also have indicated that, while we do not think there is any individual police misconduct or neglect of duty, we share your view that it is unacceptable that complaints such as yours are not being assigned for investigation because of inadequate resource." 

Aaron's stitched up eye a few weeks after the assault. Photo / Supplied 

A plastic surgeon was was needed to stitch up the deep gash in Aaron's lip from the assault. Photo / Supplied 

Young also mentioned that Aaron's assault had been inaccurately initially coded by police as an aggravated assault, but it should have been coded as the more serious "injures with intent" charge. 

However, in an earlier email from an IPCA case manager, it was judged this coding "mistake would not have made a difference to how the matter was responded to by police". 

In mid-January, Aaron finally got a call from the sergeant finally assigned to his case. It was not comforting news. 

"I get a call to say the trail's gone cold, the nightclub isn't co-operating, the staff members have probably moved on. There's no CCTV [in Femme Fatale]. Well of course, after this amount of time there wouldn't be. And they haven't managed to track the taxi driver down. So pretty disappointing. Very, very poorly handled by the police. I would have expected them to follow up straight away while the leads were warm and the evidence was warm. 

"They didn't give me any updates. I was chasing them." 

When questioned by the Herald on Sunday on the lack of action to Aaron's case, Auckland Central acting area commander Inspector Vaughn Graham admitted they were "disappointed" they had not been able to hold an offender accountable for the assault "which would have been upsetting for the victim". 
 
"We have previously acknowledged there have been challenges for police around higher demands on investigative resource in the city last year," Graham said. 
 
"At the time of this incident, and in subsequent months, police were investigating a number of serious assaults and other serious offending in the Auckland City District. In these situations, we must make an assessment on the demands and where to allocate resource. A number of staff in the area were also redeployed to checkpoints, MIQ facilities and other pandemic-related duties." 

The crime stats on assaults in Auckland central since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 support the strain placed on police dealing with dramatically more incidents. 

The number of assaults recorded for the first five months of 2021 was up 63 per cent when compared with the same period in 2019. 

That increase represents 1026 assault victimisations during Jan-May 2021, which is up from 628 during the same period in 2019. 

Aaron's assault in April 2021 was right at the peak of this general spike in CBD assaults. 
Since then, Auckland CBD has not really improved. 

Unsurprisingly, there was a dramatic decline in CBD assaults with last year's Delta lockdown. 

In July, there were 227 assaults registered in Auckland Central. For the month of August that had dropped to 141. For September 2021, it had dropped to the lowest number in a year at 115 assaults. 

However, since the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions in the final months of 2021, Auckland Central assault stats have swiftly returned to an alarming level. 

In December, 181 assaults were registered in Auckland Central. 

Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick said she is well aware of the spike in assaults in the city and has been working with social services such as Lifewise and Auckland City Mission to see what can be done to support people who congregate on the street and potentially add to the disorder. 

"You'd be daft if you weren't concerned," Swarbrick said. "It then becomes how do we properly thoroughly understand this problem and we resolve it. Speaking to police, there's been a number of change over of police personnel in the College Hill [police] station in the last few months. 

"But this is the pointy end where police turn up to where there has been an assault, or another crime has been committed, but we have a far far more important role in actually preventing that stuff happening in the first place." 

Despite this wave of cases to deal with, Auckland police accept that Aaron's case was not adequately dealt with. 

"We acknowledge that the length of time to investigate this matter was not good enough and it is regrettable an investigator was not able to be assigned sooner," Inspector Graham said. 

"Our inquiry staff have since looked into all lines of enquiry that are available. Unfortunately, there is no CCTV footage of the incident occurring, as police were aware at the time the assault took place cameras around that area were not working. Police were also unable to carry out some inquiry work late last year due to Covid-19 restrictions in place and with some inquiry staff redeployed." 
 
Femme Fatale was also finally contacted by police, and they have "attempted to identify" the taxi company which took Aaron off to the hospital the morning of April 11, 2021. 
 
Regarding both lines of enquiry, Inspector Graham said: "At this time there are no further lines of enquiry in the matter and as yet police are unable to identify the offender involved." 
 
Aaron is utterly bemused by this response. He claims he was told by the constable assigned to his case in January that Femme Fatale management were being unco-operative. 
 
"I'd be really surprised if they didn't [at the time] have some CCTV either in Femme Fatale or like outside. Or if they couldn't track down the card transaction. This guy's gone in, bought drinks ... Why aren't the police pushing hard to get his identity?" 

Femme Fatale has been described as the largest brothel in Auckland. In 2016 two people were rushed to hospital from there after ingesting the drug GHB. 

And in 2012, a fire in the multi-storey building's laundry saw dozens of patrons and sex workers stream into Wellesley St in the early hours of the morning. 

Aaron has received an apology from the Independent Police Conduct Authority over the handling of his serious assault case, which was not assigned an investigator after 10 months. Photo / Dean Purcell 

Having grown up in the UK and spent time in Australia, Aaron is shocked by the lack of response to a serious crime by police compared to his experience with overseas officers. 
 
"I've always felt quite safe in New Zealand. I haven't sort of been to see anyone about the trauma or anything like that. The physical injuries have healed. There's just a lot of frustration and anger and probably a little bit now cautious when I'm out in the city at night. It's just got me thinking twice. 

"I'm just worried. It's pretty shocking. It seems to be a recurring thing in Auckland. How can the community feel safe when the police aren't investigating and doing their jobs? It's all very well being pleasant around the community and stopping people occasionally for speeding but when the real stuff happens you want to feel like they're doing something about it. 

"The person who has done this to me has probably done it to others. He knows he can get away with it."