Labour send in big bad Sheriff Nash to bash the filthy gangs
You know when Labour are close to power, because they start stealing all of National’s get tuff on crime dog whistles.
They’ve added more cops (they don’t say anything about more resources to oversee abuses of police power) alongside their Affordable homes and education/health empty words as their 3 promise pledge for the Election.
Migrant community shop keepers who are being beaten up for cigarette’s don’t care about academic inequality debates, they want fully armed tactical responses. Labour’s happy to oblige.
The middle classes who are increasingly becoming nervous about crime even though they are rarely impacted by it want ‘something’ to be done. Labour’s happy to oblige.
The ACC who are 30% shareholders in the private prison at Wiri defiantly want more prisoners for their profit margin. And Labour’s happy to oblige.
Look at this full foamed barking from dear old Sheriff Nash who manages to not only declare war on the gangs, but he manages some good old fashioned bennie bashing while he’s at it…
The Government has done enough talking about the ill-effect of gangs on our community, so now it’s time for real action required to smash gangs once and for all, says Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash.
“In 2014 the Government approved a ‘Whole-of-Government Action Plan to Reduce the Harms Caused by New Zealand Adult Gangs and Transnational Crime Groups’.
“The report highlighted the damning statistics around gangs, crime and the cost to society.
“In March 2016 the Ministry of Social Development released a report on gangs that revealed 9 out of every 10 gang members had received the main benefit on average for 8.9 years between 1993 and 2014.
“Gang members had been paid over $500m in benefits in that period alone. This has to stop.
“We know so much about gangs and yet they continue to thrive while spreading social disease and destruction through drugs, crime and neglect. This is totally unacceptable.
“Nearly three quarters or 2,624 of the identified 3,627 gang members have been arrested and charged between January 2014 and Oct 2016 so a tougher strategy is urgently needed.
“First, we need more resources. There are less than 200 police, or 2 per cent of the total force, primarily involved in investigating organised crime which is a total nonsense. The fact that this Government has not forecast an increase in police numbers until 2020 is just ridiculous.
“This Minister knows the impact of gangs on our communities. It’s time she stepped up or stepped aside and let someone who is committed to the eradication of gangs take control.
“If we smash the gangs we will go a long way to disrupting the drug supply chains and distribution rings that spread evil throughout the country.
“Under Labour, we will focus our 1,000 new police on fighting organised crime and strengthening community policing. Both will have a mandate to smash the gangs,” says Stuart Nash.share on twitter
…let’s go through this bullshit paragraph by paragraph shall we?
The Government has done enough talking about the ill-effect of gangs on our community, so now it’s time for real action required to smash gangs once and for all, says Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash.
First of all, the Government have actually spent an enormous amount of time and money putting in place a mass surveillance domestic spying program using the newest laws and huge increase in Police powers ostensibly to spy on gangs. The powers of course allow them to spy on anyone as the definition of a ‘gang’ is 3 people who know each other while planning something. The Government moved the evidential threshold for the proceeds of crime from beyond reasonable doubt to balance of probabilities and this massive change in the economic models for gangs has unintentionally led to a decline in cannabis production but a huge leap in meth production.
In short, our war on drugs has made the situation far worse, far more dangerous and we’ve given the Police big brother spy powers which they’re probably using on activists instead.
Secondly – anyone, and I mean ANYONE who tries to claim that they can “smash gangs once and for all” is full of bullshit. We are always going to have gangs, there are deep socio-political-anthropological reasons Gangs exist in society, and no one, not one person, has ever managed to smash them “once and for all”. Is the Labour Party of NZ honestly suggesting that PHD in Sociology, Dr Sheriff Nash has managed to find the magical solution that is going to solve organised crime and close down cultural gangs once and for all?
Oh pray tell great and wise one, what is your solution oh mighty Dr Sheriff Nash…
“In 2014 the Government approved a ‘Whole-of-Government Action Plan to Reduce the Harms Caused by New Zealand Adult Gangs and Transnational Crime Groups’.
“The report highlighted the damning statistics around gangs, crime and the cost to society.
…ummmm, hold on a moment there Sheriff, you do know that you are quoting a highly contested National Party spin line on Crime? I mean these were bullshit lies spun by the Government to scare NZers into giving Police more powers, their findings were torn to shreds by Sociologist Jarrod Gilbert in this well known, well read criticism of the Whole-of-Government Action Plan to Reduce the Harms Caused by New Zealand Adult Gangs and Transnational Crime Groups’…
The Minister of Police and Corrections, Anne Tolley, has launched a ‘whole government plan on tackling gangs’.
Great, we need one and much of what is being proposed is good. She should be congratulated. What we don’t need is to over-inflate the problem. Unfortunately, in an election year (of course), this is what has occurred.
The Minister says there are 4000 known gang members in New Zealand. She says that so far this year they are responsible* for 34 per cent of class A & B drug offences; 36 percent of kidnapping and adduction offences; 25 per cent of aggravated robbery/robbery offences; 26 per cent of grievous assault offences; and consequently 28 per cent of the prison population is gang members. Sounds bad, right? If we believe what we are told, gang members make up just 0.1 per cent of the population yet they are responsible for between a quarter and more than a third of these serious crimes.
Unfortunately, I suspect it’s bollocks. More than that I’ll bet on it.
I will eat a suitcase full of carrots in front of the fine Sociology Department at the University of Canterbury if this data are correct. I’ll ask the Minister to do the same if I’m right.
Let’s look at what we can prove, because inconveniently she has used specific offences that don’t match with published data. Nevertheless, we are told that 28 per cent of the prison population are gang members. If we take the current prison population as 8500 that means 2380 of known gang members are currently behind bars. Whoa, that means 1620 free gang members are creating all of the carnage that the Minister has cited today.
Not only are the numbers wrong, they are widely inaccurate. Crazy inaccurate. If they’re not I’ll eat carrots.
…cough-cough, so these are the numbers Sheriff Nash is using to build his thunderous declaration of war, let’s continue…
“In March 2016 the Ministry of Social Development released a report on gangs that revealed 9 out of every 10 gang members had received the main benefit on average for 8.9 years between 1993 and 2014.
“Gang members had been paid over $500m in benefits in that period alone. This has to stop.
“We know so much about gangs and yet they continue to thrive while spreading social disease and destruction through drugs, crime and neglect. This is totally unacceptable.
“Nearly three quarters or 2,624 of the identified 3,627 gang members have been arrested and charged between January 2014 and Oct 2016 so a tougher strategy is urgently needed.
…well again, there are also big questions and criticisms over the way the MoD politicised those numbers too…
Now they are saying 44 percent of those 4,000 gang members have firearms related charges. Just instinctively this seems off the mark and given their history of wildly inaccurate data, I think we have a right to test if they are correct or not.
…okay, so far what we have from big bad Sheriff Nash is a regurgitation of fluffed up stats used by the Right and the vague promise that what, we are going to throw every Patched member of a gang into prison?
Is that what Labour are suggesting as the great magical solution? Make being a member of a gang a criminal offence that would arrest anyone wearing a patch? Is that what Labour are suggesting? Do we all appreciate the totalitarian regime necessary to do that? And who would decide which gangs are legal and which ones aren’t? Would Greenpeace be a gang?
I don’t think Sheriff Nash has even begun to think about where that leads us.
That Gang members were on welfare isn’t a surprise, and what is he suggesting as the solution to that? Cutting all people who are gang associates and members off welfare, what do you think they’ll do then?
So Sheriff Nash is suggesting a pre-emptive strike against the Gangs which will lead to a massive jump in crime which will be met with a Paramilitary styled Police flying squad who are tasked with ‘smashing the gangs’. Is that a legal reference? What constitutes ‘smashing’. Armed Police with a shoot first plant evidence later kind of Police Force?
Is Sheriff Nash wishing for a little bit of LAPD in NZ?
Let’s get back to his fascinating and poorly thought out war on Gangs…
“First, we need more resources. There are less than 200 police, or 2 per cent of the total force, primarily involved in investigating organised crime which is a total nonsense. The fact that this Government has not forecast an increase in police numbers until 2020 is just ridiculous.
“This Minister knows the impact of gangs on our communities. It’s time she stepped up or stepped aside and let someone who is committed to the eradication of gangs take control.
“If we smash the gangs we will go a long way to disrupting the drug supply chains and distribution rings that spread evil throughout the country.
“Under Labour, we will focus our 1,000 new police on fighting organised crime and strengthening community policing. Both will have a mandate to smash the gangs,” says Stuart Nash.share on twitter
…right, so he does want a better funded Paramilitary Police Squad to smash the gangs?
Charming.
If Sheriff Nash wanted to disrupt the bloody drug supply chains, then he’d legalise a fully taxed cannabis market, instead he wants to start a new pointless bullshit war on drugs using false stats and National Party scare mongering.
For educated people who know about how damaged our prison system and how racist our judiciary really are, this war on gangs crap will sound like we have gone backwards 25 years, and it’s true, we have.
But the middle will lap this up and love it.
Welcome to your new Government – Labour+NZ First (with Greens in supply & demand).
I am looking for someone to vote for if labour want Maori votes then they need to do something about the disgustingly high Maori incarceration rates in my view this is a breach of the TOW to have this many indigenous people in our prisons. We should be ashamed. Also I don’t want to hear that bullshit if you do the crime you do the time what if you didn’t do the crime and also I know how racist, discriminative and unfair our justice system can be being Maori and growing up in this country. If you don’t have money for a good lawyer you are f….d now is this right I don’t think so
great, now Labour are pushing the law and order barrow. How about the appalling practice of holding kids in cells for days on end? You know, young criminals that need to be looked after before they become adult criminals, and certainly not locked up within spitting distance of gang members.
Jacinda made a statement about this practice being ‘unacceptable’, but its election year, how about a big, angry, passionate, declaration about exactly what Labour would actually do BEFORE kids fall off this particular cliff. I’ve looked at the Labour Party policy page, and for youth I can see a ‘Young Entrepreneurs Policy’ but nothing to help these kids.
And as for Nash..
“Let’s be clear about one thing: politics is about winning. There is no such thing as a ‘glorious defeat’, leaders who lose are not, as some may believe, ‘martyrs to the cause’, and ‘coming second but maintaining our principles’ is a ludicrous proposition.” TDB
…anyone who votes for Stuart Nash gets the evil eye from me. Though Labour candidates in the Hawkes Bay..Nash and Lorke..oh my giddy aunt…
What does Nash think will happen if they take benefits off people who are part of a gang? Does he think that’s going to reduce crime? Can’t he see that it will increase crime?
This is typical of Labour. Just when their chances of becoming the government begin to look a little bit better, they go out of their way to something stupid that stuffs it all up.
Bashing the Maori Party when they should be courting them as a potential coalition partner, now this deliberate assault on groups that are predominantly Maori? I was hoping that perhaps finally Labour may be beginning to see the light. But alack and alas – the good ol’ fools who’re still there just can’t help themselves. Labour’s quickly earning themselves another term on the opposition benches. And they bloody well deserve it. Stupid, stupid people.
“Migrant community shop keepers who are being beaten up for cigarette’s don’t care about academic inequality debates, they want fully armed tactical responses. Labour’s happy to oblige”. Is the problem that they are migrant community shop keepers?
Is it that they are low margin profit makers?
Or is it that they don’t have the time between violent robberies and picking up the pieces to consider and plan for the ramifications of this governments whole of society adhoc policy of cut backs to everything, from welfare, to employment opportunities to housing assistance to police?
Or is it that they have been robbed by the same people often young persons who the justice system doesn’t have an answer to because it has virtually no teeth and whatever else society has to offer such warped humans is non existent? Judge Becroft was recently assuring such retailers dismayed with the uselessness of youth justice that the system works, when the reality is, for some at the more extreme end, it does not.
I have seen summary justice by people who feel there is no law to protect them and what they can do to those who they feel have broken the law. It is not pretty or reasoned. They have not the time or the privilege to be singing kumbaya whilst hand holding in a circle going on with inscents burning in the background in leafy Grey Lynn in op shop cardy’s understanding, rather only time for quick and damaging retribution and getting on with paying their bills.
And having seen the hideous effects of synthetic drugs and cannabis on young minds, you say you care about suicide rates and yet these drugs most definitely contribute to their deaths, but then think legalising this shit is good?
And the biggest promoters of meth, a drug so damaging, are gangs.
I agree that a holistic approach to the ills of society when it comes to law and order is badly needed, any intelligent non poll driven government would, but in some areas of NZ things have become quite unhinged simply through cost cutting and stupid ideology and Labour are right to raise these issues.
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/crime/burglaries-robberies-and-assaults-behind-increase-in-crime-rate/ About 15000 burglaries/assaults/robberies where committed last year not including anything else. If 1600 duds commit 20-30% of that, not including anything. They’ll have to commit 1-2 crimes an hour. They would literally blow up from all the heat generated getting from one point in New Zealand to another.
Tolley and Sherifs pet theory clashes with the 2nd law of thermodynamics, there is nothing for it but to decend into the deepest pits of humiliation., don’t let these morons take our reputation with them.
Start giving TOP some cred Martyn.
Some questions:
…while law and order is all very fine…are most gangs that Nash is referring to, defined as Maori ?
( what about neolib bankster gangs?)
…was there a Maori gang problem before Labour’s neolib Roger Douglas rogered Maori employment?
… does this mean Labour won’t be going for the Maori vote?
…what is Labour doing about extreme Maori youth unemployment and Maori suicide?
….what is Labour’s policy on Hone Harawira and the Mana Party?
…what is Labour’s policy on medicinal cannabis?
….on balance are Labour’s policies racist and punitive?
…and …who is Stuart Nash ? :
(adopted into the Nash family of a former Prime Minister)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Nash
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11337024
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11339838
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/201779410/dirty-politics-players-back-in-the-frame
“The Government has done enough talking about the ill-effect of gangs on our community, so now it’s time for real action required to smash gangs once and for all, says Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash.
“Gang members had been paid over $500m in benefits in that period alone. This has to stop.
“We know so much about gangs and yet they continue to thrive while spreading social disease and destruction through drugs, crime and neglect. This is totally unacceptable.”
Wow!! That sounds so unlike a Labour Party/government that I doubt the middle classes will believe it for one moment.
That kind of BS sounds plausible from the Tories who want to defend their ill-gotten gains – but the Left??? No way.
Labour will be treated with scorn if they keep pushing that line.
If Nash was a tory and saying the same things, then we’d all call him a right-wing idiot.
He is right-wing idiot
Who ya gonna call?
Not fuckin’ Labour, thass f’ sure…
PS Bomberino, you still expecting us to support a Labour government? It’s just that you keep putting them down all the time as well as supporting them. It could confuse a simple person (such as me)…
This really quite a refined form of trolling, the picture of what era machine is that, the simple man coarse languaged rich boys attempt at the everyman lefty. What were you before, Gosman, Fisiani? Ive lost count.
The important constant here is never vote for anyone that may get rid of National and ACT!
Crucifixion aint no fiction.
Having read a story in the local newspaper about two weeks ago, and hearing a few accounts from acquaintances in the last year; it is interesting to note the number of burglaries where food and blankets are among the items stolen. Such items would suggest a level of desperation. Usually in the past, items of considerable value would solely be reported stolen.
Such basic items stolen would suggest the perpetrators and likely their families could have at best a highly precarious income, or possibly none. Such reports also suggest the strain on the victims from the loss of these basic items.
Hardly surprising, employment terms pathetic, living costs high, welfare enthusiastically denied.
These abysmally ignorant sentiments from an MP of the largest opposition party as well as their underwhelming policies announced and history; reveal how hopeless the predicament will be for those struggling the most, regardless whichever of the two main parties form the next government. Such sentiments from National would be understandable and expected, but from their opponents—prove the worthlessness of their existence. Demonstrates how disconnected they are from a significant portion of the populace, and the affinity with their counterparts. Either way Nat-Lab will be the next government, an apt name for the practitioners of the same obscene experiment which has yielded this dog-eat-dog result while they prosper in their gated community, despising.
Probably the only strategy is to vote for a third party with a sincere approach towards achieving social justice, starve the current beast of votes. Or is it all worthwhile?
Big bad Sheriff Nash’s mindset here is akin to trying to cut water with a knife. A lot of citizens were harassed last time Labour ruled. Perhaps NZ would be better off if Labour disbanded so better parties could fill the vacuum.
You are correct, a lot of citizens were harassed last time by Labour, but now, sadly, they have been completely destroyed by National. Time to disband National and let the better parties fill the void.
So, peeps, what do we do about gangs? They are an issue and front and centre with the meth/P trade.
A few suggestions would have been helpful.
Me, I’d start with legalizing cannabis, as I reckon that making it available would go a long way to ridding the country of meth. I think that should take top priority.
Trouble is, dealing in drugs is very lucrative because of their illegality, I’d like to decriminalize the lot as some countries have, but the thought that meth could be legal leaves me shuddering.
I feel sorry for the shop owners being held up. But my view is that only getting the kids when they are young, giving them a decent upbringing, a decent education and social mobility will be the best way forward. Going to a Finnish system where there is very low imprisonment and a strong social system.
If a person has their dole cut, what are they doing to do? Commit crimes to survive!
Again a UBI could be the answer.
Also the gangs might not be who people think they are any more with Asian gangs joining forces with local gangs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11604108
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10552343
Labour appear to be afflicted with Tories, which makes them look like Obama, so called left wing Democrats. Greg O’Connor for Ohariu, please no. Ripe for the same electoral result. What is required is an unbiased media and strong policies from Labour. Police/ prisons doesn’t work for me. Unbiased MSM, don’t count on it.
Here’s another headline…
“National send in big bad Sheriff Audrey Young to bash Labour”
.. and another reason Labour and the left have no chance as Audrey uses “alternative facts”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11790320