So David Farrar and the Government were wrong on gangs after all?

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FearMongering

Oh the predictability of this…

Ministers acted on inaccurate gang data
Cabinet signed off tough new measures to tackle gangs on the basis of inaccurate information which over-estimated the scale of the crime problem.

The briefing paper told ministers 4000 gang members alone were responsible for a huge number of drug and violence crimes, including murders.

The release of the document through the Official Information Act followed the earlier discovery the wrong information had been used in a press release to justify the policy.

Cabinet ministers were also given the wrong information.

The information, which appeared to have been provided by police to the minister’s office, went before Cabinet in June before the August announcement.

The new measures passed by Cabinet were targeted at gang members who were said to be responsible for huge levels of criminal activity. They also show the Government contemplating greater powers for police to tackle gang activity.

remember David Farrar denigrating Dr Jarrod Gilbert for his criticism of the Government’s latest manipulation of gang numbers to justify harder new laws?

So David and the Government told us these new harsher laws were needed because 4000 gang members were responsible for 1517 serious drug and violence crimes from January to April – how many were there actually? 26 out of 649 serious drug charges were laid against gang members and only 61 out of 848 violence charges were laid against gang members.

NZers are so easy to lead and manipulate. Just say ‘gang’ or ‘Muslim radical’, or ‘Maori radical’ and we will roll over and throw away civil rights and legal protections without even questioning it.

 

12 COMMENTS

  1. Whatever you do, don’t mention the Gangs of Maori radicals who are Muslims. ROTFIF!
    (Rolling on the Floor in FEAR)

  2. As much as this misrepresentation of facts to suit the National party political agenda disgusts me, it does not surprise me. As the adage goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The numbers presented originally were patently unlikely. Each gang member would have had to have been responsible for an enormous amount of the crimes reported. What I find of most interest though is the size of the disparity between the reported stats and the real figures. They’re not even close!

    That David Farrar is a right-wing mouthpiece is now common knowledge after he received a personal election night shout-out from John Key. This is proof enough for me that he cannot be trusted to say anything unbiased. He is actually a good indicator of what isn’t true. If he says one thing, believe the opposite.

  3. This may be off-topic but interesting none the less . The irony , that activists and journalists are seeking refuge in Berlin isn’t lost on this writer .

    http://boingboing.net/2014/11/10/expat-activists-and-journalist.html

    I fell out of a tree once showing a girl a birds nest . I was drunk and 48 at the time . No I wasn’t . I was about 8 and I didn’t look that good when found wandering about in the garden apparently .

    I wonder if I ever recovered ? Perhaps I broke my neck and I’m dead and this is hell ? A kind of weird Hell where things are only ironic , maddeningly stupid , serendipitous , fluke-ish , where complete arseholes rule and no one really knows why , much less how . Where anything plastic and sparkly is sold for thousands but is only worth a few cents a few months later , where banal gibberish is lapped up by millions on the TV yet few read books , where there is this phenomenon called The Internet where everybody can contact everybody else and yet everything that everybody is doing is proving as boring as bat shit and even bats would agree that their shit is less than stellar . Where people who don’t actually know one an other will commit terrible acts of violence against each other for reasons they’d find hard to explain if they met at a dog park . Honestly ? The more sober I am , the more fucked up things seem . No wonder people drive drunk . It’s the only way to get anywhere while in denial . We started out ok , us Humans , but the harder we try to live out lies and pretend that we don’t have actual arseholes that need constant attention , the worse things become . I’m off to climb a tree . You climbed a tree lately ? Up there , where it’s vaguely dangerous yet the views are great and there’s that smell of pine oil ? You might take off a bit of skin but you feel great ?
    Down there however . There are those images of people shredded by bombs and bullets . Little kids and animals too are dismembered by the violence that haunts Bank foyers . Banks who sell that Hell for profit . You don’t need a lot of profit to climb a fucking tree .
    So what is it then , that’s delivering us into this Hell ? From our tree climbing and dog walking ? To concurring with a stranger on the light of the evening as it rests across the lake ? To this hell ?

    It’s not enjoying our good fortune and rejoicing in our camaraderie that’s for sure . It’s vying for the sacrosanct profit margin . It’s the obsession for having more than is needed when we’ve already won over nature and God . ( TBA )

    The Banks . It’s the Banks that open the vaults of hell .

    ( Sigh . )

    I wonder what’s on the tele ?

    Ooo look ! ? A cantilevered sun umbrella ! And only a million $’s !

  4. Dweeb is an Americanism that perfectly describes the likes of Farrar.
    He is yet another ignorant right wing moron who gets undeserved airtime along with the likes of Hooton and Hyde and Boag , to name but a few.
    Who the hell thought it was a good idea to get this bunch of narrow minded, one- eyed, one dimensional bores on ‘The Media’ commentator gravy train , spouting their vile air headed rantings , as if they were ‘The Oracle’?
    Why does poor old New Zealand have to be continually subjected to their vacuity ?
    Their narrow insulated opinions are just a mirror of their own narrow insulated lives. They have nothing to offer that’s worth listening to. Nothing!

    • Now seriously – would the left-oriented radio-tv-newspapers be any different from those on the right, apart from slant?

      Every time this idea is offered I wonder – why would I bother to listen, view, read?

      I avoid party political broadcasts. I know where the OFF switch is. The media are not my first choice for becoming educated and informed about issues. Not now.

      Would it have my sort of music? Is the news content up to date and actually nationally-internationally oriented? Can the presenters really interview and then make sense of what we all just heard? What makes it worth tuning to against the habits of years?

      Would it offer choice? Or nagging indoctrination?

      Could these media pay their way? Or will they need ‘subsidies’?

      Or are there other ways…?

  5. we are not easily lead we are just sick and tired of the same old same old and cant be bothered looking into what is put in front of us in any detail. we are sick of the perpetual motion machine that is the wider justice system in NZ, the early release of prisoners to keep the parole board topped up with the 1000 dollar a day meeting and perks, who then turn them over to parole workers who because of motivation or wage lack fire up the insurance industry as the joe public try to protect themselves from the crims who then get caught once again via a police force that is in itself under remunerated to then be handed over to the Law boffins whose remuneration is on a par with power CEOs to then be adjudicated on by the Judges most of whom love their retirement perks and then onto the underpaid and staffed prison staff, who for a bit of respite hand them onto the do gooders while in their care most of whom get paid at a rate many times that of the warders and face none of the daily hassles such and being beaten to a pulp, then once again its time for a parole hearing and the machine continues to turn without even a penny spent on a driving force just greed.

  6. They’ve used inaccurate data on beneficiaries (particularly the need for drug testing), women, child poverty, housing, tax evasion (but to favour the rich), terrorism – Lawd only knows what else – to pass laws to make discrimination, against one sector of society, legal!

    Without functioning investigative journalists, without a concerned public, police and military get unprecedented powers! It’s not by coincidence Steven Joyce is trying to hamstring academics – at universities – and remove funding to courses where people actually learn to think rather than learn to speak like parrots!

    Will there be consequences? That’s the big question. The Chief of Police should step down – or be sacked – for such an outrageous lie. If he doesn’t – who’s next to have laws passed against them – based on incorrect data?

    David Farrar is just a muppet … It’s the engineering of a fascist state that scares the b-jesus out of me!

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