Photo: RNZ
National's police spokesperson says there is "no reason" why New Zealand shouldn't be the safest country in the world, but "we are completely heading in the wrong direction".
Mark Michell's comments came as the government announced a further $11 million will be spent on its fog cannon scheme to protect retail businesses.
Police data shows ram raids are up 55 percent nationwide over the past three months, with 68 in April alone.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins admitted there had been a "big spike" in retail crime in recent years, and accepted more needed to be done to prevent it.
Mitchell told Morning Report ram raids were still happening and fog cannons were simply a band-aid.
"There is no reason why we shouldn't be the safest country in the world" - National's Mark Mitchell
"The real issue is [the government] have to address the drivers of crime and the actual crime that is happening."
Mitchell said business owners wanted fog cannons, and a National government would continue the rollout.
"Sadly, it does at least give them a bit more sense of security having things like fog cannons and bollards and other counter methods in place. But we would be far more focused in putting all our energies into actually stopping the crime that was happening."
Photo: Supplied / screengrab
Mitchell said National would refocus police, get them back to basics, have them highly visible in retail areas and gathering intelligence in their patch.
He said police numbers were increasing too slowly, police now "completely overwhelmed" by demand.
"Often members of the public are putting their hand up for help and they just quite simply don't have the bandwidth or the resources to be able to respond."
Mitchell told Morning Report that National would commit to a certain ratio of officers to New Zealanders, but could not give a ballpark figure of what that might be.
"What we do know is that it's very obvious that the ram raids, the aggravated robberies, and this youth and juvenile offending is not only continuing, it's continuing to increase.
"There is no reason why we shouldn't be the safest country in the world. At the moment, we are completely heading in the wrong direction."
A ram raid of an Auckland business. Photo: Stuff/ Ryan Anderson
Mitchell reconfirmed National would introduce an "intensive programme" for offenders ages 15-17 by sending them to military academies for up to a year to "get them away from the gangs and get them making good decisions in their lives as well".
"Businesses that had [fog cannons] were less prone to revictimisation than the businesses that didn't" - PM Chris Hipkins
Hipkins told Morning Report there had been an escalation of violent crime in the post-Covid period, and New Zealand was "not unique" in that regard.
"I think we do have to accept that we do need to do more in that area, we need to tackle it at both ends."
Hipkins said supporting businesses to have preventative measures such as fog cannons and bollards helped give owners a "greater sense of safety" but accepted the government needed to look at how the level of offending could be reduced.
"We did see, in the first rollout of fog cannons, that those businesses that had them were less prone to revictimisation than the businesses that didn't.
"So it just helps to reduce the level of victimisation for those businesses to have the fog cannons. No, it's not an ultimate solution. Reducing the level of offending is what we have to focus on."
As well as increasing police numbers, Hipkins said there were programmes in place to help young people turn their lives around and get them out of the cycle of violence and crime they had found themselves in.