It's not long before midnight on Saturday and a highly respected local businessman and father hears his dogs barking. He races out the front door as a teenager runs away after smashing his windscreen.
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The victim chases the teenager across the Rygate Park and eventually corners the boy who tells him his name. But then he runs away again. Police arrive but there's little they can do, another call out to chase an errant youth.
Social media is awash with frustrated local people whose cars have been smashed. At least four cars were damaged by young people at the long weekend, police say. This continuing "reign of terror" is upsetting local people. Teenagers and some even younger causing damage to schools, businesses and vehicles parked outside homes.
Wellington is not the only small town with youth crime, the figures in some other places are much higher. But the damage they are causing is now becoming a major problem for tax payers.
A police spokesperson urged locals to report damage done immediately by young offenders.
"Nothing can be done if crimes aren't reported to us." he said.
The chairman of the local Crime Prevention committee Cr David Grant says he agrees with police.
"There is a failure of government and non-government agencies and we will be undertaking a program together with the early learning committee and then to schools to investigate what can be done to reduce the problem," he said.
"A meeting on Tuesday night will discuss where we go with this and how we develop a program, we do have a plan."
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics Director Don Weatherburn examined economic stress, child neglect and abuse (Wellington has one of the highest rates of vulnerable children in the state) and juvenile participation in crime.
"Postcode areas with high levels of poverty tended to have significantly higher levels of parenting deficients such as child neglect," he said.
"There is a strong relationship between the level of child neglect/abuse in a postcode area and the level of juvenile participation in crime in that area."
