Auckland CBD Crime?
 

I was planning on visiting Auckland for a few days when I came across these disconcerting articles:

Counting Crime: Hot spots - New Zealand's highest crime neighbourhoods - NZ Herald
Explore New Zealand?s most dangerous spots
NZ's most violent city spots revealed | Newshub

Do I need to be worried about being assaulted or robbed when walking around the CBD in the daytime?

No.
At night be as careful as you are in your home town.

No. Auckland is not a dangerous city on a worldwide comparison at all. In fact it regularly features in the top 10 most livable cities, one of the metrics included in this ranking is crime rate.

Global Liveability Ranking 2016 (You have to register but you can download the entire report for free if you like)

Auckland is a big city and has big city crime issues, but nothing unusual. Articles about crime in Auckland might be more prevalent because it is an outlier compared to NZ as a whole.

Most major cities in Europe would have a much higher crime rate than Auckland.

Of course, my advice is to never be worried about crime, but always be prepared for it. Use common sense and you'd be extremely unlucky to find yourself a victim.

Auckland does have a drug problem and certain neighbourhoods adjacent to the CBD are not safe. Just like NYC :) Someone I know who is ultra street smart had his drink spiked in a pub in NZ and was robbed upon leaving the pub and beaten up when he resisted, some broken bones. Bottom line is the big cities in NZ are same as big cities world-wide (sadly -- they used to be safer) but rest of NZ is order of magnitude safer. I'm much more careful in AKL now than 10 years ago but at least the bad guys don't have guns generally, so it isn't like US yet.

Don't worry. Most of the reporting is media being sensationalist.

The worst places in NZ are still very safe.

Thanks everyone for the input!

Ive just attended a big musical festival in Auckland , and have spent a few late evenings wandering the CBD trying to find interesting beer ! I live in Birmingham , uk , hardly dangerous in international terms. I must say that I find it hard to imagine a less threatening million plus city than Auckland ! Even Auckland drunks are polite..