Had a chat with Mark Mitchell on Magic Talk radio last Friday about Strike Force Raptor. I welcomed National having a position on this because Labour are useless. Initially I thought Strike Force Raptor was stupid and blatant dog whistling, but after talking with Mark, I now think the idea is incredibly dangerous and will in fact be terribly expensive and counter productive.
National’s argument is that a policy of constant harassment coupled with ‘offramps’ that help family and associates leave the Gang is the perfect combination of carrot and stick.
Wrong.
Here are 3 reasons why Strike Force Raptor won’t work:
1 – Constant harassment only generates radicalisation, not a desire to leave: A policy of constant harassment through every possible government agency from alcohol licensing to building permits to noise control won’t do anything other than create a sense of righteous grievance amongst those associates and family. Giving poor people on the fringes of society a righteous grievance against the state is not an ‘offramp’ for helping people leave gangs, it’s a motorway towards radicalisation. You really want to radicalise Gangs? Really?
2 – Strike Force Raptor is corrupt in Australia: As Newsroom painfully points out, the Australian example of Strike Force Raptor has come under sustained criticism that it is corrupt, abuses civil rights and has overstepped its authority time and time and time again. I’m not sure adopting a corrupt Australian model of Policing from one of the most corrupt Police Forces in the developed world is a solution to the soaring gang tensions here. As someone who has had to fight the NZ Police when they abused my civil rights, I am fully cognitive of the utter lack of checks and balances to Police power in this country, and see a vast ratcheting up of Police powers as an exacerbating problem, not a solution.
3 – It doesn’t focus on the actual problem – the 501s: The point I was making in the interview with Mark stands, the generator of this recruitment drive by the domestics is the sudden importation of 1200 501s from Australia who are prepared to use a level of criminal violence and sophistication well in excess of what the domestic gang landscape will cause. There’s no point in harassing the Mongrel Mob or Black Power or even the Headhunters if the 501s are the reason they are bulking up to protect their turf. A myopic focus on the 501s is what is required here, not some broad stroke get tough on crime rhetoric that lacks nuance because it’s aimed at triggering voters using lazy stereotypes.
Imagine the following scenario.
There are lots of unregistered dogs in a gang suburb. Strike Force Raptor as part of their constant harassment campaign move in on a Saturday morning with the armed ninja cops to round up all the dogs and take them away to the pound. Very quickly neighbours see the huge army of Strike Force Raptor members required to pull something like this off successfully descending upon their neighbourhood. People come out to the streets and start yelling and screaming at the Police as they attempt to remove dogs. A bottle gets thrown, do the ninja cops fire back? Livestream social media is now recording the event, more people are turning up, the crowds are getting angrier. One of the dogs turns on a Strike Force Raptor Officer, the police shoot the dog, the crowd goes into rage and bottles start to fly. In one house an 11 year old boy has his pet rottweiler ‘Adolf’ torn from him and while he sobs on the garden lawn, the Strike Force Raptor Officer hands him a ‘You can be Gang Free if you want to’ pamphlet as part of their program to provide ‘offramps’. The 11 year old boy looks at the Strike Force Raptor Officer with naked hatred in his eyes and promises they’ll get theirs one day.
The above scenario is exactly the kind of harassment policy National are promising and it’s hard to envisage a more counter productive cock up of a social policy but for the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind, they don’t care.
We live in the Age of Political Resentment and subjective offence where all we want is suffering and harm for those we hate, if the Social Policy is counterproductive, the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind don’t care.
This isn’t political leadership by National, this is political opportunism by playing to our worst angels.
National are promising a vast erosion of civil liberties for Prisoners, Gang Members and Beneficiaries. It’s hilarious that the second flawed social policy implodes, National’s go to is to erode civil liberties.
The petty spite drilled deep into the heart of low horizon imagination National voters must be appeased no matter what God it slaughters and Simon will gleefully oblige no matter the social carnage.
Welcome to the land of the wrong white crowd. This is who we are. This is what we is.
Stop the fake businesses for a start that link local gangs with international contacts!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/117863584/guarded-prisoner-uditha-punchihewa-escaped-from-hospital-toilet
stop giving residency to international criminals!
Sroubek ‘double’ Antolik likely to have visited New Zealand
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/384041/sroubek-double-antolik-likely-to-have-visited-new-zealand
If the government both Natz and labour reduce the criminal migrant demand then the justice system can concentrate on the local gangs and criminals instead of having the local criminal gangs evolving with international criminal links and gangs, at an alarming rate!
I think Australia is brilliant for sending these 501s back here .. totally ingenious, if not a bit of an obvious solution. Unfortunately any continued crime is now our problem.
‘.. but they grew up in Australia, have family in Australia ..’ – guess they should have applied for Australian citizenship then, LMFAO.
Bunch on numpty, muddle Nu Zilinders complaining abut another countries laws. I fully support Australia in sending these NZ citizens back. As for Strike Force Raptor, good luck, sound pretty out-of-touch to me .. but yeah, their are many violent Kiwis out their.
I DO NOT support harassment of the public though, that’s just mental like Simon himself. And yes, gangs and 501s are members of the public too! Not all 501s were created equal either. Let us keep that in mind before vilifying an entire group .. many of whom probably just found themselves mired in bad circumstances.
Raptor is not counter-productive if it produces exactly the blowback it is designed to create. The Nats need a criminal class to shift the blame for the looming collapse of capitalism and our climate onto some ready made scapegoat. Oh yeah. Maori and other worker victims of the system. Then the Natzis will be able to point to a threatening criminal class and go full monty with cop shootings. This is Trumpism plus NRA plus settler racism morphing into fascism.
note it is not the Nats arming the police and trying to get the guns of innocent hunters while the gangs run rings around the
authorities.
I guess with fascism on the horizon, you’d support the NRA in their defence of citizens to bear arms?
Another reminder why this is a bad idea
“police are able to enter a building declared a restricted premises without a warrant to search for drugs, alcohol and weapons, and seize anything”
incompetence >
raptor police “abused powers”
at least they got the right address and was no mention of them taking on the side.
constable Andrew murphy is a scapegoat for this facade – he’s out lived his usefulness and has bn moved on.
this is not law and order and now it’s being preached here in nz for the purposes of politicking.
All I can say is,”Dawn Raids!” Profiling only works on brown fullas and the full weight of the law is applied.
Whereas, White folks and Foreign White folks and Wealthy White folks all seem to go undetected when they commit the same or worse crime(s).
I wonder what that could be? The setting at the SiS or GCSB and the Police Crime Busting units are on the Blink (When the Whities Walk by?).
And that same machinery goes batshit when a person, non-white is within 100k’s??
Hurry up Revolution, Get Here! FFS!
It is all BS. National pulled the same stunt in 2008 with their election promises of getting tough on criminals and theif activities. They claimed they would increase police, they did sort of, but the numbers didn’t anywhere coincide with immigration figures.
Colins rabbited on about clamping down on the “Boy Racers”. I’m coming for you and gonna crush your cars you pesky bastards. What a load of shit that turned out to be.
Then His Slipperinous declared war on drugs and gangs. Like many other declarations and promises it was all BS.
This is just another V2 of National’s lying tactics. Nothjng will ever eventuate of Ghost Raptor
Will Strike Force Raptor, if it ever came into existence, focus primarily on the local NZ gangs rather than the more established overseas gangs like the Triads(from China and Asia) or the MAFIA?
Will Bridges claim the reason for NOT focusing on the Triad gangs who probably now have a established foothold here in New Zilland especially between the period of since election time 2008 through to late 2017 is because ‘those overseas gangs are too big and too well organised for a – lets face it cringe-worthy – NZ National Party government to deal with?
Right now it does appear that the NZ National Party Opposition intends to resort to its usual behaviour of racism and beneficiary bashing. National will never ever attack say the overseas gangs eg the Triads of which perhaps some of its supporters and affiliates have donated heavily to the NZ National Party over the past so many years i.e 2008 through to now 2019.
Nope. National will forever attack those on lower incomes even if they are gang members of local NZ gangs or associated with the gangs.
Can someone please ask the pathetic leader of the opposition that is Simon Bridges as to why he will focus on low income NZers yet again in his vendetta and NOT ON overseas gangs like the Triads?
I am so over Simon Bridges and co. They, National, preen themselves as being oh so perfect but they lacked a voice of concern whilst in government when it came to the enormous donations they received from those with Triad links.
I think Strike Force Raptor will fail because most Kiwis are like the fruit: Soft and squishy and unable to address a serious problem that is right in their face.
> Do-gooder judges who live behind high walls in Remuera will not sentence appropriately, just like they didn’t with 3 strikes.
> By the time it gets traction there will be a new government in place or National will be forced into coalition with a pack of idiots that don’t like it.
it’s not it’s “…most Kiwis are like the fruit: Soft and squishy…”
if it was a good idea it would be here already
Strike Force Raptor isn’t a good idea and shouldn’t happen. I agree with Mr. Bradbury and believe that it only causes more larger problems such as the corruption of law enforcement and how that leads to citizens getting abused.
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