The latest ram raid in Melbourne's west happened in the early hours of Wednesday 28 October, at a shopping centre in Tarneit. It's a useful case to look at, because the vehicle didn't just hit one door. It went through two.
What was reported
According to Victoria Police and Wyndham TV, at about 2.45am police were told a stolen Toyota RAV4 had been driven through the entrance of a shopping centre on Wickford Road, Tarneit, and then rammed the doors of a jewellery store inside.
Nobody was inside the centre at the time. When the reports were published, investigators were still working out what had been taken. The offenders were unknown, and police asked anyone with information, dashcam or CCTV footage to contact Crime Stoppers.
The law changed this year. The method didn't.
Since 16 March 2026, ram raiding in Victoria has also been charged as aggravated burglary, with a maximum penalty of 25 years. The state government described ram raiding as using a vehicle to smash into a building to steal, damage or assault, and said the charge applies regardless of the offender's age under its Adult Time for Violent Crime laws.
Whatever effect that has on offending over time, it applies after the fact. Tougher penalties are one part of the response. The physical design of a building decides what a vehicle can do in the minutes before anyone arrives.
Two lines of defence
In Tarneit, police say the vehicle went through the centre's entrance first and then into the store. That points to something many retailers in shopping centres don't think about: there are two separate frontages between a car park and the stock, and they're usually the responsibility of different people.
- The centre entrance. Glazed doors, often wide, often facing straight onto a car park or drop-off lane. These are generally controlled by the centre's owner or manager.
- The tenancy frontage. The store's own doors or shutters inside the mall. These are generally the tenant's responsibility, within the centre's design rules.
If a vehicle can get through the first, the second becomes the only barrier, and shop shutters inside a mall are rarely built with a car in mind.
Why centre entrances are exposed
Many suburban centres are designed around convenience. Entrances face the car park so shoppers can walk straight in. Drop-off lanes and disabled parking sit right outside. After hours, the car park is empty and wide open, which gives a vehicle a long, clear run-up to the doors.
You'll see bollards at many centre entrances, though not all. Where they're installed well, they're set in front of the glazing with gaps wide enough for people, prams, wheelchairs and trolleys, but too narrow for a car.
What retailers inside centres can do
We haven't seen the Tarneit centre, and we're not suggesting what it has or doesn't have in place. For tenants in any centre, a few questions are worth putting to centre management:
- Are the centre's main entrances protected against a vehicle, or only against people on foot?
- Is there a clear vehicle run-up from the car park to any entrance?
- Has the centre had a vehicle-related incident before, and what changed afterwards?
- Can tenants with high-value stock, such as jewellers, phone retailers, pharmacies and tobacconists, raise specific concerns about entrances near their stores?
For tenants whose stores face a car park directly, as many in smaller centres and strips do, the frontage is their own. That's where bollards outside the store's doors make the most direct difference.
Daylight risk is different
It's worth separating this kind of attack from the daytime armed robberies jewellers also face. We looked at one example in February's raids in Berwick and Altona North. A bollard does nothing about someone walking in through an open door during trading hours. It's designed for exactly what police say happened in Tarneit: a vehicle used as a battering ram while the building is closed and empty.