Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government's
Speaker 2: promised the free ride for gangs is officially over. From today,
Speaker 2: gang patches will no longer be allowed to be worn
Speaker 2: in public, Courts will be able to issue non consulting orders,
Speaker 2: and police will be able to stop members from communicating
Speaker 2: with each other. Greater weight will also be given to
Speaker 2: gang membership as sentencing, and repeat offenders continually convicted of
Speaker 2: displaying their patches in public will.
Speaker 1: Be subject to a new court order.
Speaker 2: Prohibiting them from possessing any gang insignia in public or
Speaker 2: private for five years. But will any of this be
Speaker 2: any kind of deterrent to the reported more than nine.
Speaker 1: Thousand gang members in New us Zealand.
Speaker 2: Today on the front page, lifetime Black Power member and
Speaker 2: community advocate Dennis O'Reilly is with us to discuss his
Speaker 2: perspective on these new laws. Dennis, just for starters, can
Speaker 2: you introduce yourself to our listeners? What's your background and
Speaker 2: why are you perhaps a good person to be able
Speaker 2: to talk to us about gangs.
Speaker 3: I joined the Black Pair in nineteen seventy two. I
Speaker 3: became the chief executive of the Group Employment Liaison Service,
Speaker 3: which was a government agency set up after the Committee
Speaker 3: on Gangs in nineteen eighty one. I've studied gangs internationally
Speaker 3: and in twenty eleven I put my patch down and
Speaker 3: became a Comato or parkeke for the funu of the
Speaker 3: first to the Black Pair.
Speaker 2: So police has this document called the National Gang List,
Speaker 2: which attempts to record patched and prospect members of gangs
Speaker 2: in New Zealand. Now, its primary purpose isn't to count
Speaker 2: the membership numbers, but it gives us a pretty good
Speaker 2: indication on how many numbers there are and how it's
Speaker 2: tracking overall.
Speaker 3: I don't think it does.
Speaker 2: You don't reckon So at the moment it has members
Speaker 2: at nine thousand, four hundred and forty seven.
Speaker 1: Does that not sound right?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. Prior to you know, all through
Speaker 3: the seventies and eighties and until the Fourth Labor Government,
Speaker 3: gang membership stated about two and a half thousand, and
Speaker 3: was actually declining because of the presence of work schemes
Speaker 3: and those sorts of things. I'm no longer on the
Speaker 3: gang list, but it took some doing to get into
Speaker 3: that state. And so when people die, or when there's
Speaker 3: a rough calculation of who you might be, or you know,
Speaker 3: if you've come to Jesus and changed your mind or whatever,
Speaker 3: so you don't necessarily fall off. So I don't know
Speaker 3: how valid that information.
Speaker 1: Is, right, So it could be a lot less you reckon.
Speaker 3: It could be a lot more.
Speaker 1: I know you've.
Speaker 2: Probably been asked this a thousand times, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to go ahead and ask you once more.
Speaker 1: Why do people join gangs?
Speaker 3: Oh, for a variety of reasons. It's interesting that we've
Speaker 3: just come through the apology by the government on the
Speaker 3: Royal Commission of Abuse and State Care, and the two
Speaker 3: largest indigenous gangs basically came out of the boys' homes,
Speaker 3: the Black Power and the Mongrel Bob, and that's been
Speaker 3: clearly indicated in the evidence. And they were alienated and
Speaker 3: marginalized by the state, and so the gang became an
Speaker 3: act of resistance. It became a family that they could
Speaker 3: feel safe. And after the Labor Government of the Fourth
Speaker 3: Labor Government stopped all the work schemes, the gangs tended
Speaker 3: to become criminalized. There's a different thing, I think between
Speaker 3: what you might call organized crime and more sociological phenomenon
Speaker 3: of the indigenous New Zealand gang, and so the next
Speaker 3: generation we're born into that life. That's what you've got.
Speaker 3: You've got into generational transfer. For some people, that's labeling.
Speaker 3: If you come from a certain town or a certain suburb,
Speaker 3: you're automatically assumed to be a member of this or
Speaker 3: that group. So there are a variety of reasons why
Speaker 3: you end up being called a gang member.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the government's crackdown on gangs.
Speaker 3: Well, it's consistent with their desire to double the prison population,
Speaker 3: to increase the creator super prison and lock up more
Speaker 3: young Malti people. It's a turn to the right. It
Speaker 3: is a discontinuity and the only thing that we can
Speaker 3: be sure about where there are discontinuities is that you
Speaker 3: can't be sure.
Speaker 4: Gangs pedal misery and intimidation throughout our communities, and this
Speaker 4: go determined to give police and the courts the powers
Speaker 4: they need to deal with them. Just one in every
Speaker 4: four hundred New Zealanders are identified as gang members, yet
Speaker 4: they're linked to nearly one in five serious violent crime offenses.
Speaker 2: So people join gangs for all different kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2: And you've mentioned that intergenerational reason as well. It's not
Speaker 2: just about a bunch of people gravitating towards a life
Speaker 2: of crime or anything, is it. I mean, has it
Speaker 2: a guess how many gang members actually participate in crime?
Speaker 3: I would say a small percentage. I think in the
Speaker 3: main most are tax paying New Zealand citizens and try
Speaker 3: and struggling to be good parents. In the same way
Speaker 3: as cricketers and whatever might use cocaine or other people
Speaker 3: indulge in different sort of recreational substances, so do gang members.
Speaker 3: But in the main, if we can get people into
Speaker 3: employment and keep them employment, you know, that's what they'll be,
Speaker 3: tax paying citizens. Where we marginalize and demonize, that's when
Speaker 3: you start to set up that sort of last resort
Speaker 3: criminal activity thing. And we have to be cautious about this.
Speaker 3: The previous commissioner, I think was pretty smart where there
Speaker 3: was a high degree of liaison and a readiness to
Speaker 3: have a big stick if you wanted to move into
Speaker 3: organized crime or disruptive behavior. The big shift that I
Speaker 3: have noticed is a move much more towards Faro and
Speaker 3: Wahini leadership, and I think it's no mistake. You know,
Speaker 3: for instance, that the Malti Queen is a young malty woman,
Speaker 3: that are MP's a young malty women. And I think
Speaker 3: that Wahini led far have actually made a huge change
Speaker 3: and that change has been developing, and I hope this
Speaker 3: new policy does not interrupt that trend.
Speaker 2: How seriously do you think gang members will take the
Speaker 2: ban on patches and insignia?
Speaker 3: Well, I think most will follow mister Goldsmith's advice, and
Speaker 3: that is struggle not to get caught. And the advice
Speaker 3: from most leaders is, you know, leave your patch at
Speaker 3: home until we see how this thing works out. But
Speaker 3: you know, if you try and take a patch of
Speaker 3: someone by force, you can expect to have force in response.
Speaker 1: And do you think that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I don't know. As I said, it's a bit like
Speaker 3: mister Trump's presidency, we don't really know what's going to
Speaker 3: roll out, do we.
Speaker 2: If you're not allowed to wear your patches, aren't there
Speaker 2: other ways I imagine, well a gang picking a color
Speaker 2: or something exactly.
Speaker 3: It's semiotics, you know. For instance, you know, I come
Speaker 3: from the fahna of the fist. The fist is an
Speaker 3: upraised fist as a sign of resistance that's internationally accepted.
Speaker 3: We've often used Nelson Mandela's fist as a semiotic our
Speaker 3: colors are police blue. Yes, you start to try and
Speaker 3: unpick these things at a semiotic level, you really end
Speaker 3: up in a struggle and you could end up with
Speaker 3: the Nike Swish as being you know so so young
Speaker 3: people particularly are very very quick on social media, and
Speaker 3: these things will morph and change. It's not what you're wear,
Speaker 3: it's how you behave that's the issue. And if we
Speaker 3: focused on behaviors, that's where we'll get societal change. I
Speaker 3: can understand where people get intimidated by a big batch
Speaker 3: of gang members, especially if they're behaving abysmally. But I
Speaker 3: was on that Hekoy there were well over forty thousand
Speaker 3: people there. There were a lot of people with the
Speaker 3: mutter aura, with facial mukalls, with carrying weapons as traditional
Speaker 3: weapons and whatever, and the vibe was fantastic. So it's
Speaker 3: not just a big collection of people. The police already
Speaker 3: had the provisions of the Unlawful Assemblies Act well, where
Speaker 3: three or more people gathered together causing the stress of
Speaker 3: fear amongst the public could be arrested and see so
Speaker 3: in a way, this new legislation is just pandering to
Speaker 3: an anxious, white middle class population, who the research demonstrates
Speaker 3: are the people less likely to be affected by gang activity.
Speaker 2: In terms of gang patches, Dennis, what do you have
Speaker 2: to do to get one?
Speaker 1: Do you have to do something bad?
Speaker 3: Well? I earned a patch, and I don't think i'd
Speaker 3: anything bad. I'm no saint, but I was good at organizing, work,
Speaker 3: at finding people accommodation, helping people get representation and the law.
Speaker 3: So like most, you know, the all blacks have a
Speaker 3: thing of no idiots, you know, and so generally showing
Speaker 3: that you're prepared to contribute to your fano, to work,
Speaker 3: to assist, to try and make things better. I don't
Speaker 3: know of any specific club that says you've got to
Speaker 3: go and commit crime, although I've heard those stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that a bit of a misconception that all
Speaker 2: patched members have done something? You know, that they've had
Speaker 2: to go and do something.
Speaker 3: There will be different crews who have got different morals
Speaker 3: and values.
Speaker 1: When it comes to gangs.
Speaker 2: We're constantly told things like prison is the gang's recruitment center.
Speaker 1: Is this Trueue?
Speaker 3: That's true?
Speaker 1: So what happens there?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean you're in a closed environment. Prison by
Speaker 3: nature is a violent society and the research demonstrates that,
Speaker 3: and so you better affiliate with someone.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to those anti consorting laws and
Speaker 2: stopping members from communicating with each other, what do you
Speaker 2: think the repercussions will be by I guess criminalizing people
Speaker 2: because of association rather than their behaviors.
Speaker 3: Well, in the main where Maori and Polynesian where gregarious,
Speaker 3: we're part of broad network families and it's going to
Speaker 3: be a bit difficult, isn't it, you know, And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we saw the two hoy raids and the
Speaker 3: misreading of what was going on there, and I think
Speaker 3: there's lots of potential for that, and that's why I
Speaker 3: think softly softly. I heard mister Basham speaking earlier about
Speaker 3: that they the police will be taking a cautious approach,
Speaker 3: and so I think we just need to make sure
Speaker 3: that everyone's faro is safe. And by that I mean
Speaker 3: Gangfarno and police Farno. Those policemen and policewomen want to
Speaker 3: go home to their farna at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: and similarly, gangfaro don't want men coming in smashing down
Speaker 3: their doors and terrifying their kids and the older people.
Speaker 3: So you know, I think let's you know, focus on
Speaker 3: on sort of looking after each other, pro social leaders
Speaker 3: to the four please, But we are entering uncharted their
Speaker 3: waters here, and yeah, I don't. I can't really predict.
Speaker 2: Do you think gangs can be their own worst enemies
Speaker 2: at times? Do you look at incidents like the gang
Speaker 2: war between the Killer Bees and the Tribesmen say in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, the Sofotel lobby shooting a few years
Speaker 2: back involving patched head hunters, Look, yeah, do you see
Speaker 2: those and just shake your head?
Speaker 3: Self defeating behaviors, misapplied intellects, all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, these incidents don't really dear gangs to the public
Speaker 2: or to politicians or police, do they?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: And I think the gang members telling you they don't
Speaker 3: care stuff. You know, they've been rejected by society, labeled
Speaker 3: and demonized, and this is their response.
Speaker 2: Do you think some gangs are better than others in
Speaker 2: terms of working together with society and being able to
Speaker 2: get along.
Speaker 3: It's hard to It's all depended upon leadership, and there
Speaker 3: will be maladjusted leaders in one group that a generation
Speaker 3: before may have been led in a very positive direction
Speaker 3: that may then go down a very negative direction. I
Speaker 3: think the arrival of meth amphetamine changed a whole lot
Speaker 3: of things. But let's face it, the people who make
Speaker 3: money from meth tend not to live in New Zealand.
Speaker 5: When you've got game members out there that don't stick
Speaker 5: to the rules like everyone else and run rossshot over
Speaker 5: the top of people's rights, when they have a trail
Speaker 5: of misery and victims sitting behind them, they're going to
Speaker 5: lose some rights. So when they want to actually, when
Speaker 5: they want to front up and atually join society in
Speaker 5: a positive way and do what everyone else does and
Speaker 5: shot and be proud key weies that actually adhered to
Speaker 5: the law, then they might get some rights back.
Speaker 2: The Attorney General, Judith Collins, has made references to the
Speaker 2: Bill of Rights and said banning insignia in public places,
Speaker 2: for example, breached the right to freedom of expression. Instead,
Speaker 2: she noted there could be more tailored offenses, like protecting
Speaker 2: the public from intimidations by gangs, for example, for making
Speaker 2: it illegal to wear patches in places like schools or hospitals.
Speaker 1: Do you reckon that's more reasonable?
Speaker 3: Well, look the most outrageous thing that happened in New
Speaker 3: Zealand a white Australian who've got a guden license. So
Speaker 3: I think you need to have a wider lens than
Speaker 3: picking on young indigenous populations.
Speaker 2: You're talking about multi and pacifica games right, black power
Speaker 2: mongol mob. But there are those that we've imported, like
Speaker 2: the killerbes, the tribesmen, headhunters. Do you reckon it's got
Speaker 2: the same values as you.
Speaker 3: Well, the tribesmen, killerbs and headhunters are all all tend
Speaker 3: to be marrying polynesia themselves. You know, you've got this
Speaker 3: five oh one thing and you've got you know, but
Speaker 3: we have real international criminal organizations working in this country,
Speaker 3: at work in this country, and I put it to
Speaker 3: you that they might dress in suits and attend large
Speaker 3: political party fundraisers. You know, that's really where the money is.
Speaker 3: And so most of what you see on the periphery
Speaker 3: well down the criminal value chain, as it were, but
Speaker 3: that's where most of the energy gets. I often think
Speaker 3: that sometimes middle white New Zealand thinks that the Mari
Speaker 3: gang member is like the Mari warrior coming to collect
Speaker 3: the rent, and they get trepidation at that level. So
Speaker 3: I just think in this whole heated environment at the moment,
Speaker 3: the apology by the crown, the doubling, the intention by
Speaker 3: the state to double the prison population, the building of
Speaker 3: mega prisons. I mean, who's going to go in there?
Speaker 3: You know, the business people on that, They'll get Ron
Speaker 3: Mansfield k C to represent them. You know, our fellows
Speaker 3: can't even get Section twenty sevens Now, if.
Speaker 2: People are worried about people joining gangs and the violence
Speaker 2: that some members may perpetrate, what do you think should
Speaker 2: be done to tackle these issues.
Speaker 3: I think that you engage people in work, in education,
Speaker 3: that you stop the labeling and you reach out. This
Speaker 3: young brown population are the working population. They're going to
Speaker 3: keep old white folks in their pensions in years to come.
Speaker 3: So rather than alienating and marginalizing them, let's work with them.
Speaker 3: You know, I think there has been some good work
Speaker 3: going on, but I'm on that front line. You know,
Speaker 3: I've been a senior civil servant. I've administered national programs
Speaker 3: of that focused around work, and we've pulled all of
Speaker 3: that stuff away or we're doing. Angela Davis, that great
Speaker 3: you know, American liberationist. She says that the prison industrial industry,
Speaker 3: you know is the new cotton fields, where where black
Speaker 3: people get locked up to make money for white people.
Speaker 3: So let's let's back off, calm down and get back
Speaker 3: on track in terms of engaging people in work and
Speaker 3: believing that our young people are full of potential rather
Speaker 3: than pathology.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Dennis Sweet.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzedherld dot co dot nz.
Speaker 1: The Front Page is produced.
Speaker 2: By Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our
Speaker 2: sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
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