Armed police have set up a cordon at a Cedar Heights Ave property in Massey, after reports the suspect may have a gun, according to Inspector Shawn Rutene, of Tāmaki Makaurau Police.
Police said a suspect stole two handbags at a Mobil petrol station in Henderson about 7.48am and was tracked to the nearby address.
The Police Eagle helicopter was circling the property.
The response has included an ambulance, a Fire and Emergency NZ vehicle and about 24 officers, including about 16 members of the Armed Offenders Squad, according to a witness nearby.
A neighbour, who asked not to be named told The New Zealand Herald she could hear police yelling repeatedly to a house next door for a person in an upstairs room to "please put the firearm on the roof".
About five people have left the surrounded house. But before she was evacuated with her two small children the standoff was continuing, she said.
"I heard these neighbours outside this morning have a bit of a scuffle in the communal driveway," she said, explaining that about six officers later arrived wearing gloves and masks.
"And then they started coming in with guns."
At first, the woman said she put her children in a bedroom with a very loud DVD with the hope they wouldn't hear anything outside. Police later told the family to leave the house with the door open - shuffling them out the door so quickly they weren't able to get car seats for the children.
But she's lucky, she said, she has family in her lockdown bubble nearby - outside the cordoned area.
"Most of the other neighbours are just standing in the street with their kids," she said.
