Gang patch ban a white knuckle drag

TVNZ’s ‘Sunday’ current affairs programme last night (25/02/2024) featured the gang situation in Opotiki and contemplation of the Nat-Act-NZ First government’s promised gang patch ban. The editor of The Daily Blog had phoned that morning to tell me I was on the show’s promo piece airing repeatedly in the ad breaks on TV1. I had provided, briefly, my view on the patch ban a couple of months ago when their camera crew were shooting outside the Opotiki police station.

The whole thing was quite random (I just stumbled into them and they asked for a stand-up interview there and then) so I know I look like shit and may have said some shit too – I can’t remember exactly, but can guess roughly. I’m mentioning this because I haven’t seen it; only heard what the editor has told me.

One of the questions put was something like: ‘do the gangs run the town?,’ and my immediate reaction was to laugh; and of course I’ve been thinking they might take that as a contempt for them rather than as a reaction to a loaded question. Do the police run the town (?) may have been another way to pose that issue. I couldn’t care less what I said about the NZ Police and whether they were insulted, but a gang on the other hand, you have to take that with caution and that is a better indication of who is the force to be reckoned with. But, essentially no one runs the town, it’s a matter of consent, balance and discretion between all the players, armed and unarmed. Think of it this way: after the constables have left the scene, their car drives off down the road, who is running that manor? Police are there artificially, the gangs are organic.

There’s a line from one of those British political dramas whose name eludes me, but the quip is: ‘TV is for being on, not watching’. So I find myself too busy and intransigent to sign up to TVNZ On-Demand to watch it before writing this column. So this is without the benefit of hearing from anyone else involved. I did however catch a glance of an image on twitter from the TVNZ account promoting the programme and I see two local mob guys I know very well are in the montage. I scrolled through the comments. Out of about 30 only two were critical of the patch ban policy and the rest were various shades of reactionary, moronic, knuckle-dragger grade spittle, the audience the new government is feeding the raw meat out to – and they were gorging on it. So much thickness on display. Such simpletons and so vengeful.

Not sure what I’m repeating here from the programme, but there are three main points:

1. In rural and provincial towns (like Opotiki) the gangs are a normal facet of community life in a way completely different from cities and suburbia. The reactions therefore are different. In Opotiki the gang members are numerous, they are our work colleagues, our neighbours, our cousins – they are us, and so there is no intimidation factor because everyone knows everyone on a personal level. There is a high level of social acceptance and a reduced level of stigma. This situation encourages good behaviour and social conformity – that is the expectation everyone has. There are gang members in their leather vests doing any number of everday things on the streets – carrying shopping, pushing prams, walking the dog, mowing the berm – are they going to be arrested by the police sartorial division after the government’s Bill goes through?

2. Enforcement of any patch ban will be problematic in extremis in communities like Opotiki. The basis for successful policing is consent (and trust) of the community combined with operational discretion. Both of these elements will be jeopardised if the type of crack-down rhetoric we hear from Police minister Mitchell is translated into legislation. The result will be institutional resistance within NZ Police. This is on a practical basis that they will not be able to function satisfactorily if they are promoting ill-will and promoting retaliation by carrying out the ban to the letter. The gang members will resist attempts to take their patches from them, and if there are more gangsters than cops in any incident then gaining compliance will be impossible. It puts both police and gangsters into conflict… and all for what?

3. The consequences. Persecution of gangs by cops will lead to what? Undermining of the cops by a stupid law will lead to what? No one wins here. No one will be safer. And as for any notion that removal of patches will at least reduce the intimidation of the public – which is the rationale of the idea – that seems highly unlikely: the gangsters will adopt coloured clothing like bandanas and other gear to signify their affiliation, their behaviour or conduct won’t change.

As for this argument Ministers use that gang regalia bans in Australia have worked, the fact is the small professional bikie outfits in Australia are tiny compared to the mass membership street gangs of the Mongrel Mob and the Black Power. It’s not just comparing apples and oranges it’s a bag of apples versus a whole bin of oranges.

A law to satiate the white thugs of the conservative right and to empower the pearl-clutching, curtain-twitching Karens to call 111 everytime they see a Maori guy with a logo they don’t like is a fool’s errand. Mitchell himself, every inch a monosyllabic neanderthal, kept referring to a Maori couple who were remonstrating with him at a protest on the parliamentary forecourt (just last year I believe it was) as gang members – this was despite them not wearing patches and after they told him they were not! If the dopey cloth-eared minister misidentifies gang members based on race then what does this demonstrate of his comprehension?

Patches really are not the problem. The attitudes of sterile cacooned suburbanites and grumpy rednecks are the problem.