Look, when even Damien Grant can see Gang Patch Bans won’t work…
‘The state should not tell anyone what to wear,’ writes Damien Grant
My position is more fundamental; the state should not be telling some of the worst members of our society what to wear because the state should not tell anyone what to wear.
..the Right have lost their moral compass on this.
Allowing the State to tell you what you can wear and what you can’t wear while destroying the right of association is the sort of thing Authoritarian regimes do, not liberal progressive democracies!
One of the tragedies of our political system is that dumbfuck ideas get mooted and there seem to be no adults left to denounce the dumbfuck ideas before we ram them through Parliament.
The Gang Patch Ban is a nonsense idea that will not lower the violent crime it claims it will impact.
The reason gang crime has exploded is because we’ve had this unique unseen before situation where a professional criminal class have been forcibly removed by Australia to a country they have no connections with.
The ‘501s’ as they are known bring with them a level of uber violence and sophistication well beyond the domestic gangs.
They also bring with them South American Cartel links that provide them with a. cheaper more pure meth.
The spike in gang violence is being generated by the 501 syndicates who are standing over domestic gangs and stealing Meth market share with cheaper, purer South American Cartel Meth.
NONE of that dynamic will be impacted buy this stupid fucking gang patch ban and dispersal rules.
Australian Biker Gangs are completely different from the domestic legacy gangs here in NZ who are deeply entrenched in communities. Dispersal notices and none association rulings will be immediately challenged in Court and get thrown out because they will be physically incapable of enforcement when you are talking family members.
Holding up draconian Australian laws (which are currently being challenged) and pretend they will work here is infantile.
We need a focus on the 501s who are generating the turf war, not some unenforceable gang patch ban that will automatically start conflict.
The gang members can’t voluntarily hand their patch over ever, so will need to be beaten into unconsciousness by the Police before the Patch can be taken.
As for the farcical situation of going into a Gang funeral to seize gang patches, the idiocy required to think that situation is a smart policing is book burning level in its ignorance.
As for the $5000 fine – Gang members don’t pay fines now, so how will this end?
As the ‘freedom’ party, ACT should be ashamed of themselves for allowing State over reach like the Wardrobe Police!
National will use this new dispersion law against environmentalists who glue themselves to roads.
NZ First want to designate the gangs as domestic terror groups so that paramilitary force can be used against the civilian population.
These laws will not do a thing to stop organised crime and yet we all have to pretend they will.
The most likely outcome is that this level of State harassment will generate radicalism in the communities you are trying to police and you will end up radicalising a whole group of criminals into becoming domestic terrorists.
You are a fool if you think this bullshit nonsense is going to make you safer.
We only ever seem to focus on the crime we can stereotype and see on the news, I wrote about this for Waatea last year…
Ram Raids and Gang turf wars generate enormous headlines and clickbait sensationalism but if we look at the stats we see a very different reality of crime for the vast majority of Kiwis.
There were 886 ram-raids in 2022.
There were 57 murders in 2022.
Those are terrible crimes, of that there is no doubt, but in 2022 there were 175,573 domestic violence investigations with almost 50% of Māori women experiencing domestic violence in their lifetime.
Again, ram raids and murders are terrible crimes, but their numbers pale into insignificance when you look at domestic violence in New Zealand.
Our attention is captured by Gang violence and Ram Raids, but utterly missing when it comes to domestic violence.
…an interesting addition to this reality was posted last week on The Spinoff which looked at the ‘managed withdrawal’ from family harm callouts and asked if we had just decriminalised domestic violence.
The truth when you compare the attention paid to 886 ram raids vs 175,573 domestic violence investigations in 2022 tells you we’ve turned a blind eye to domestic violence for a very long time.
Our focus is on what revenge redneck NZ wants, not justice, not law and certainly not order.
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Martyn – Perhaps build another prison for our 501s…?
If a group started flaunting nazi swastika on the local streets, will you still support their right to wear it, or the sympathy vote is just with mongrel mobs and co??
That would have to depend on the intention behind it. You need to learn the difference between supporting something & letting things happen that you don’t agree with because we all deserve the right to choose how we live provided we do not harm people.
The Rotorua and Maketu Mongrel mob have swastika behind their bulldogs these groups have existed for ova 30 years apparently there reasoning for such symbols is fuck the establishment with there patches depicting a british bulldog with german paraphernalia like the british bulldog wearing a german nazi helmet with swastika.
Saying a patch ban won’t work is not the same as saying you support the right to wear it.
Martyn – Perhaps build another prison for our 501s…?
Domestic Violence has alway been significant for well ova 50 years but became criminalized more seriously in the 90s. DV is responsible to most murders or serious injury against woman disportionately affecting maori woman.
Last year school principals said cell phone bans would not work now they are praising it . It is not a good look that these people can flout the law .The public are behind any police action so it could work
Trevor, I believe last yearprincipals said (in a number of cases) they were already doing it.
We should not forget that the cost of imprisoning an individual ranges from $90K – $150K per year depending on who you are talking to (Corrections/Wiki – NZ Herald March 2022). Would it not be better to ensure universal income from birth to prevent some of the structural causes of offending – at the same time we would be able to do away with W & I because everyone is “entitled” to the UBI.
I know – this is crazy – we need to punish the criminals! But punishment does not change behaviour except to increase the sneakiness of said behaviour to avoid being caught in future. NZ prisons (and all prisons really) are very expensive to built and run – and do not rehabilitate to any great degree. Upskilling people are are required to “attend” prison would be a great option for them – just leaving them to their own devices results in their boredom (as they tend not to engage with authority) and “criminologically upskilling” as they share their stories with like-minded folk inside – when they are released they have fallen further behind with no chance of participating in the community due to skill, knowledge and social deficits that are currently broadened by our system.
Wow, I agree 200% Damian Grants view expressed above governments have no right to tell people what they can and cannot wear.
They tried banning patches in Whanganui under Michael Laws and it didn’t work and the policy died in a whimper. Not enough has been made of this in the media.
I think Mitchell wants to create an environment whereby private security contractors can be employed in the regions where they don’t have enough police, because they are “more efficient”…after of course some real shit goes down first.
Dont hear about Hells Angels do we .Thats because they are white so they must be ok .I worked with a member a few years ago and he said they were white supremists in his day and had no regard for women who were sexualy abused gang style .Because 8k of other gangs are brown they must be bad .