If we are banning gang patches why not ban the Media from using them for clickbait?
The Gang Ban Patch will be a joke.
It is setting up a situation where the Government will want some stupid over the top stunt to remove a gang patch from a gang Tangi.
Findings of the Royal Commission on Abuse in state care suggest that 80-90 percent of gang members were victims of abuse.
Let that fact sink in.
If you want to stop gang members, stop abusing children in state care FFS, but if we are talking about banning gang patches, why not ban them from the media as well?
The Government’s planned new laws to crack down on gangs “will do nothing” to reduce the growing number of members, a research group says.
Instead, they raise a variety of other suggestions, including banning New Zealand media from publishing and broadcasting gang regalia and insignia – a proposal that has been rejected by a group of New Zealand’s most senior editors.
The Gang Legislation Amendment Bill is passing through Parliament and is set to be in force from November.
Among the law changes: it will be a criminal offence to display gang insignia in public places; police will have new powers to disperse gang members from gathering in public; and gang membership will be an aggravating factor at a court sentencing. There will also be “non-consorting orders”, to stop specific gang members from associating and communicating with each other for three years.
The changes come as membership of gangs continues to rise, with an estimated 9000-plus prospects and patched gang members now in New Zealand.
One research group – H2R Research and Consulting Ltd – believes the new laws will do nothing to stem the rising number of gang members, and believes the Government needs to adopt more of a “carrot-and-stick” approach, as the country saw under the leadership of former Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
He worked closely with the gangs, with work schemes and using sport to help keep gang members focused socially.
The research group backs that philosophy, believing that the new laws will simply drive gangs underground. Its critique of the new laws has been authored by Harry Tam, a former public servant and honorary life member of the Mongrel Mob, and public health researcher Angie Wilkinson.
They wrote: “If the Government is serious about preventing gang intimidation of the public, then it needs to identify ways to prevent the news media from sensationalising gang incidents.”
It would like to see the new laws prevent media from publishing or broadcasting gang insignia and regalia. “The news media is a major contributor to displaying gang regalia, more so than the gang members themselves.”
But that suggestion has been rejected by the Media Freedom Committee, a group of senior editors representing New Zealand’s biggest newsrooms.
“The Media Freedom Committee would hold grave concerns should the government put in place any new restrictions on how we cover gang activity in this country. We think sunlight is always the best disinfectant,” said MFC chair Phil O’Sullivan, who is also head of news and current affairs at TVNZ.
…oh surprise, surprise, the NZ Corporate Media who make so much money from the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ style of crime porn click bait don’t want to be banned from juicy gang crime ratings!
We will ban gang patches to set up confrontation between Police and gang members, but we won’t ban them from the corporate media that feeds the get tough on crime narrative.
Look, how do I say this is a nice way.
Kiwis are pretty simple and very easily led. You play to their petty bigotries and fears and you can get any crazy draconian laws passed.
We have angry Māori and Pacifica kids causing trouble in cheap retail booze shops that are staffed by exploited migrant Indian and Chinese workers while the white middle classes in the suburbs clutch their pearls screaming, ‘Something must be done”.
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.
Why not censor gang patches in the media to stop the media hyperventilating over crime and actual social policies implemented instead?
That won’t happen because this Government has no intention of finding solutions, they only want to inspire police violence and the sense of a crack down.
This is what we is now, this is what we have become.
Im expecting the local cop to turn up and raid my house under the new law that has been inserted into the legislation where he will be able to raid my house because he thinks I might have a gang patch on my property .NATZI police tactics have arrived in NZ thanks to the need for this government to create diversions to cover up the real shit they are doing to NZ society .Hell we are now going to build super cheap cardboard class rooms for kids to go along with their stale sandwiches .
It will be interesting to see the legal definition of a gang. Will that stop, rotary pins, or yacht club badges being worn. Who will decide?
One of our most successful gangs, masonic lodge, has operated very profitably without insignia. But, then white collar crime and nepotism are heralded as success in the modern world.
No no, the Rotarians will be fine. Unions and protest groups, now those will be gangs.
Gang insignia is definitely intimidating and a recruiting uniform but they will become secret societies and harder to see mafia.
The two biggest criminal gangs are the White right wing political parties and the White media.
I gave up on TV “news”, reading newspapers and radio news in 1974 because I realised
they were all simply reinforcing White ignorance prejudice and power.
They were also obviously sexist, homophobic and anti non White immigrants.
Basically White, Male ,Hetro, British Monarchist, Christian.
White people are always portrayed as good ,right and successful.
Maori are always portrayed as bad, wrong and failures.
The only good Maori are either dead Maori or White arse lickres like Winston Peters.
So White people are always innocent till proven other wise.
While we the tangata Whenua are always assumed to be guilty until proven otherwise.
The criminal White media and right wing politics should be reporting and cracking down on themselves
but instead use their influence and power to dominate Government since 1945.
The insidious right wing media and Politics are the two worst gangs.
I was on the land march in 1975 so I go back a bit.
Nothing has changed in the media since then
Well, if the definition of “gang” is along the lines of “a group of people who intimidate others, who engage in violent activities, etc, etc and so on”, then maybe a certain group of people who go round in blue or black coveralls, with patches on their shoulders, and carry firearms, tasers and extendable batons, use quasi-legitimate surveillance tactics, and intimidatory measures, might also be banned.
Yep, NZ s biggest gang might get caught by this stupid legislation.
Comancheros had MILLIONS of $ of drugs…there goes the ‘just misunderstood rangatahi’ defense.
Did gangs get arrested like this under Labour.The police are happy to be able to show they can control these groups.For 6 years they were given a free reign.
Labour lost the election because of their law and order policy nothing to do with covid control which was one of their hits .
Bullshit, they lost because in the end they were pathetic and gutless.
Ardern
I became a member of the Labour party because of child poverty.
I became the PM
I became the minister of child poverty
I said as the M of child poverty that we would halve child poverty in ten years…. OMG it is clear to me any everyone that her child will never ever be in poverty.
They had a stunning mandate that they could have used and failed to. Unless they get rid of Hipkins they haven’t got a shit show of getting in next time. He is even more spineless.
Increase benefits to a ‘living’ standard that ensures kids have food in their tummies, shoes to wear and shelter that is not ridiculously priced so you have to turn the heater off if you want to eat tomorrow.
Show us all the jobs, come on show me where they are, how many hours to make a decent living. I listened today to a report about the PI seasonal workers. Ridiculous hours for piss poor money frankly, having to travel from very early in the morning.
The government is the only one who can build the industrial scale number of State houses, but no no no, we can’t have that they are all breeding too much, smoking dope, they can’t get out of bed, sitting on their arses…
Te Pati Maori and the Greens are the only viable future if we want one that is where the playing field is leveled because right now it is so skewed to the haves, that oddly enough the middle class are even squealing.
At some point, we will learn when this Australasian operation got underway. Before or after last November’s election?
Trevor Labour lost for a myriad of reasons, including secret agendas like te Puapua, and claiming to be “the single source of truth”, and saying “ unless you hear it from us it is not the truth”, and blocking a briefing from the police on the Parliamentary protest saying it would all be covered by the IPCA investigation, which was not so, and advocating global censorship of free speech to the UNO. All sorts of things. Prioritising DJ’s as essential workers when sorely needed doctors and nurses were denied entry to New Zealand is inexplicable.
Trevor Labour lost the election because they ruthlessly kneecapped the Commissioner for Vulnerable Children. Who’d vote for politicians like that? Not me.
The equivalent ‘patch’ for the white collar criminals is the suit and tie.
Under Sir Robert Piglet Muldoon he deemed gangs as good foe New Zealand, he was regularly photographed with the Black Power Gang and they even concreted his driveway for him. Muldoon also allowed the Hells Angels to set up a branch here in NZ one of the few countries in the world to sanction the establishment of the Hells Angels Gang on sovereign soil ?