By Chris Trotter*
It requires a considerable imaginative effort to understand the behaviour of the Christchurch Mongrel Mob. Commandeering Christchurch hospital carparks. (Having first “commandeered” a number of road cones.) Intimidating hospital staff and patients. Revving their guttural motorcycles at all hours of the day and night. Why would anybody do that?
Hospitals are generally considered to be places of refuge and sanctuary: institutions where all kinds of aggressive, anti-social behaviours likely to impede the treatment and recovery of patients is strictly forbidden. Even in the midst of a full-scale armed conflict like that currently devastating Ukraine, an attack on a hospital is treated as a particular heinous war crime. To interfere with the treatment of those suffering from injury or illness: acutely stressed and vulnerable human-beings; indicates a truly disturbing level of depravity. Who could do such a thing? More to the point, who could allow such a thing to be done?
These were certainly the questions uppermost in the minds of those who heard the reports of the Christchurch Mongrel Mob’s behaviour on RNZ, and/or read about it in the press. Not simply: “What sort of people behave like this?” But also: “Why were they allowed to get away with it?”
Hearing of these crimes, and considering their location, most New Zealanders’ first assumption would be that the Police were called to the scene and the perpetrators arrested, charged, and detained. To live in a civilised society is not to anticipate that there will be no criminals and no crime, merely that those who break the laws which make civilisation possible are held to account. A civilisation in which the law may be broken with impunity will not remain a civilisation very long.
And this is, of course, the profoundly disturbing aspect of the behaviour of the Mongrel Mob at Christchurch Hospital – that they were not held to account. Those forced to endure the inconvenience, the intimidation and the disruption waited in vain for decisive action on the part of the hospital administration – and law enforcement. All manner of assurances were given; all kinds of excuses offered; but the behaviour did not cease, and it perpetrators continued to walk free.
It does not help that New Zealanders have witnessed similar scenes before: instances of city streets and highways being “commandeered” by motorcycle gangs who have used their temporary control of these public spaces to intimidate (and in one shocking incident viciously assault) other road users and members of the public who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, law enforcement may object that those engaged in such behaviour were later summonsed for their infringements. All well and good, but the public expects – and has every right to expect – that clear breaches of the law, not to mention “the peace”, are confronted as and when they happen. Because, if law enforcement extends no further than issuing summonses after crimes have been committed, and refuses (out of fear or lack of resources) to intervene as crimes are taking place, then the public’s faith in the Police will be shaken to the core.
Law enforcement’s inaction is dangerous for another reason. When the motorcycle gangs take over the streets and the highways, and the Police response is not to require them to observe the rules of the road, but to request that alarmed members of the public exercise patience and forbearance – what is the message being sent?
It is a message of weakness and fear. It is a message which reassures organised criminals that they possess more coercive power than the Police. It is a message that says: if there is nothing to stop gangsters taking over the streets and the highways, then there is nothing to stop gangsters taking over a hospital’s emergency department.
What’s next? If hospitals are no longer off limits to criminals, if medical staff can be intimidated and frail patients frightened out of their wits with impunity, then why not apply the same methods to witnesses, lawyers and judges? If the Police will not intervene to protect our hospitals, then what reason do we have to suppose that they will intervene to protect our courts?
Are those in command of the New Zealand state even willing to ask these questions? Or, are our politicians and public servants committed, instead, to a policy of appeasement? Certainly, there appears to be a general reluctance on the part of the state’s coercive instruments to exert their powers against individuals and groups who depict themselves as the victims of colonisation and white supremacy. Māori and Pasifika have learned that charges of historical and institutional racism have the effect of Kryptonite on the superpowers of the white settler state.
One has only to consider the messages embedded in two recent New Zealand historical dramas “The Panthers” (2021) a television series about the rise of the Polynesian Panthers and the infamous Dawn Raids of the 1970s, and “Muru” (2022) a cinematic “response” to Operation Eight and the Police raid on Ruatoki back in 2007. The viewers of both productions can hardly avoid the conclusion that the colonial state is the historical enemy of brown New Zealanders, and that its coercive instruments cannot be trusted to treat Māori and Pasifika people equitably.
To aggressively assert the powers of the State in the manner of Rob Muldoon in 1976, or even of Helen Clark in 2004, is no longer seen by public officials as a clear-cut issue of protecting the equal rights of all citizens by the equal application of all the laws. As currently interpreted by state actors, te Tiriti o Waitangi interposes all manner of caveats against moving decisively against the sort of behaviour on display by the Mongrel Mob at Christchurch Hospital.
Were any New Zealand government – Labour or National – to embark on a rapid build-up of the state’s coercive forces, sufficient to suppress the anti-social behaviour of criminal elements, there would be an outcry. Such a policy would be denounced as irredeemably racist. Its critics would demand to know against whom our beefed-up Police, Corrections, SIS and NZ Defence Forces were intended to be deployed. Would these overwhelmingly white bodies of men and women be unleashed against Pakeha? Or, would they, instead, be held in readiness against the nation’s most exploited, marginalised and institutionally oppressed citizens – Māori and Pasifika?
In confronting these vexed issues, the observation of the British poet, W.H. Auden, contained in his eve-of-war poem “September 1 1939” is, once again, confirmed:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
112 Comments
Which leads us to "What should we do about it".
Ask the right wing - lock them all up (proven not to work). Unfortunately very politically popular with their base (who I'd expect to be educated enough to know it doesn't work)
Ask the left wing - it's about addressing systemic poverty issues - agree, but even if we were to do this today, the first batch of kids born into this better world are 15-20 years away from not being criminals, it's not politically acceptable to wait that long.
The left wing comment comes closest to the right solution, but also that there must necessarily be a delay in seeing the results. But the bigger part of that question is how do we reduce poverty?
I would suggest that we change our governmental mindset to support the creation of industry, producing good paying jobs (better than the minimum wage) creating opportunity, a sense of self worth and an understanding of the value of money. Take a lot of the focus away from the major centres too.
It's not even necessarily poverty, by far and away the biggest influence in dysfunctional teens and adults is the absence of a solid and consistent father figure. Being poor just exacerbates it.
Is this fixable? I don't really know, we've spent the last half century or thereabouts dismantling the traditional family and promoting dysfunction.
Poverty is one part of the equation but we have kids raised in families with shitty attitudes. They're taught that they're a victim, and this is reinforced when they are "compensated" through generous welfare payments to Solo mothers who can often take home more per week than a wage earner.
There's massive amounts of poverty in Africa, but you don't see them pulling the fingers while holding a can of Codys every time a photo is taken.
The previous government did create some charter schools , which appeared to work well with impoverished communities ... and which presented excellent male role models to the kids ... army guys & the like ...
... sadly , Jacinda did not approve ... and scrapped them ....
Charter schools were receiving up to 8 time more per student than state schools (https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1808/S00011/charter-school-funding-is…). They were a joke with many of them rorting the system with phantom children attending (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/287659/charter-schools-'over-funded…).
Charter schools were just a push by the right to replace teachers with unqualified minimum wage bums who had the kids marching in circles if and when they attended school.
Good riddance.
Charter schools were just a push by the right to replace teachers with unqualified minimum wage bums who had the kids marching in circles if and when they attended school.
Yes, and the kids the state system were failing are just collateral damage and too-hard basket stuff, right?
Because the current system is already failing them at that point. Unless your argument is, like I say, they're just collateral damage and should be considered a write-off because one approach to education didn't get any cut-through with them? The education unions may feel that treating those kids as cast-offs is acceptable, but I would rather they get another crack at things like reading, writing and fulfilling learning.
Please note: I can think that state schools are underfunded and under-equipped to deal with modern students but also that students that those schools have effectively given up on should be given a chance in a different environment. These aren't incompatible points of view. It's called 'not letting a political base dictate policy that affects kids who need more assistance than the state system can provide'.
Charter schools were not limited to kids who were failing under the current system. Any kid could attend. If you are willing to increase funding 800% per child for charter schools why not at least double it for state schools? Why wasn't there a cap placed on funding per child? Because this was a perk to buy Act's vote to get rid of the unions and state education.
Your strawman of the unions treating kids as cast-offs and collateral damage is laughable. You show your political bias as that was Seymour's and most of his supporters real motivation for charter schools was to get rid of the unions and state schools and eventually paying less for education so as to allow for tax cuts for Act supporters. Your comment above shows deep down you know this was the driver.
Unfortunately for you and David charter schools failed miserably with costs ballooning and results being atrocious. Any person with half a brain could see this was the only outcome of such a stupid system.
...and scrapping them, was that anything less than a sop to the education unions who donated into Labour's campaign? What replaced them? Did Labour drastically increase funding for state schools? What are our literacy rates for state schools like since they've been scrapped?
You can cry politics about their existence all you want, but the unwinding of them was just as cynical and politically motivated, but what's even more egregious is that there was no meaningful substitute or substantive improvement for state schools. Surely anyone with half a brain can see that's clearly worse - it shows a clear intent to use struggling kids as political footballs without actually doing anything to improve their lot is going to result in predictable consequences. But hey, a bunch of adults got to point fingers at each other and talk politics, so that's the main thing, right?
Be honest. What you're really saying is actual solutions for improving the education of kids who can't get it from the state system is a lost cause if it means deviating even slightly from a totally state-run education system. I can't accept that. I also can't sit back and watch generation of kids and generation of kids be lost to a system that everyone knows is failing them. If people were as angry about that as you seem to be about the fact we tried charter schools for some kids, then maybe it might mean more of them learning to read and write and fewer the consigned to the too-hard basket.
There's a lot of other options that could have been used to assist failing students. More support for apprenticeship schemes to direct students into areas where there is a labour shortage e.g. construction, farming, which Labour has put in place (https://www.labour.org.nz/news-supporting_more_kiwis_into_jobs).
The return of night schools would also assist (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/15395/one-in-four-schools-'will-scr…').
Targeted funding to address truancy (https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/01/40-million-investment-to-keep-childr…).
There is definitely issues that need fixing and I am not denying that. The problem I have is that chartered schools was a blank cheque given to a bunch of cowboys that had no idea what they were doing (apart from grabbing a ton of money). Furthermore, the introduction of charter schools were motivated by a desire to privatise education and cut education costs. Your strawman that if you don't support charter schools you don't want to improve education in NZ is childish.
I want any Government to do its due diligence on any proposed education system before throwing a ton of money at it. You would expect Act as a party supposedly concerned about wasteful Government spending to take such an approach. However, its blind hatred of unions led it to bribing national to introduce charter schools in a vain hope it would stick it the the unions. Charter schools were always going to fail (see https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-myth-of-charter-schools/) and the fact Act couldn't see that is telling.
Your strawman that if you don't support charter schools you don't want to improve education in NZ is childish.
No, my argument is that abolishing them without any credible replacement for the needs of kids who weren't being met in the state system was shitty and callous governance.
I'm not so wedding in my politics that I'm committed to care one way or the other just because. As a parent I despair for kids leaving school without being able to read or write. Frankly any intervention that improves that would be a vast improvement, but it's long overdue - and a long-tail of kids who can't or who are unable to read and write cannot be acceptable as an outcome.
Maybe an analogy will help.
Man dying of incurable cancer (based on the advice of 100 of the world's top medical professional) agrees to pay $100 to John for a cure that involves John slapping the dying man's face once a day. You tell the man the man he is wasting his money and should stop paying John for the slapping. The man says if "you don't have any credible replacement for curing my cancer the slapping continues". All you can do at that stage is shake your head and walk away.
As a parent I do not want to pay for what is effect flogging a dead horse. If the government is happy to fund students in charter schools at $4.4m for 39 kids i.e. $112k per child (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/troubled-north-charte…) then as a taxpayer with children in public schools I expect the same funding for all children (my child's schools are $3k per child (see https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/per-student-funding).
Cool. Nothing stopping the Government from doing that if the actual outcomes are what matters, which was the whole reason for reforming charter schools in the first place. Although here you are trying to convince me that the funding and the outcomes aren't linked. So why would you be so bent out of shape that your kid isn't getting it and someone else is? Golly, what a pickle.
Even better, we don't need the snarky analogy, because if the outcomes actually mattered at all, you would have seen radical changes across the education sector and a huge focus on lifting basic literacy and numeracy rates amongst young children, pre- and post-Covid. But we didn't. So here we are. The funding doesn't matter, but it does. The outcomes apparently weren't great, but plummeting literacy rates in normal school with no credible intervention is 'nothing to see here' level stuff. If you don't want to flog a dead horse, then maybe let's not ignore the glue factory that is our state education system. If people genuinely care about outcomes for kids, nothing should be off the table, except for doing nothing - which is what I'm apparently supposed to believe is better.
Clearly , someone here is seriously heavily angry about charter schools ... but , they only had a 3 year trial here , before Jacinda cancelled them ... she prefers to have no competition nor innovation in our education & in our healthcare systems ...
... if her approach is the right one , why have both been in a rolling crisis for so long ...
Charter schools allow customised curriculums , often for impoverished kids ... in the USA & in the UK , success for these kids is evident ... and , good teachers can earn more than standardized teachers within the state education system ...
Can't see anything in those links that point to 8x increase, but note it does say new state schools also initially receive more than an existing state school.
We know the funding for all schools needs to be increased.
I don't think it is the issue of charter schools per se, but the funding formula for any type.
If you want to stop delinquent kids from becoming full blown adult criminals then that doesnt come cheap. I would expect schools dealing with the bottom rungs of society to require far more spending per kid than the schools catering to the middle or upper classes. I'd far rather taxpayer money be spent on charter schools than on prisons to house them once they turn 18.
by far and away the biggest influence in dysfunctional teens and adults is the absence of a solid and consistent father figure
Not always father figure but I would extrapolate this to male role models in general. Not many men wish to enter teaching as a profession for it is so fraught with historical bias towards men being paedophiles that all it takes is a child saying something the wrong way, a complaint made and he male teacher can be suspended, and even lose their ability to teach on a sheer accusation. Some of my best teachers were men, they show fairness firmness and empathy which boys need to aspire to. Today being a white male has so much of the wole world trying to make you feel shameful for near everything that you can't function. Not withstandin the extremely positive leaps made in womens rights and ability to work in any area while commanding a great salary, instead of focusing on men as the perpetrators of all problems, society needs a true concentrated effort on raising better boys to help a societal shift to the better direction. Sadly at the moment it is limited to things like mens shed which, and correct me if i'm wrong, doesn;t receive any grant funding.
The kids are in poverty because of their useless scumbag parents. The benefit paid to them for their children gets used as a source of cash for their own drug fuelled dead beat lifestyles and so the kids go feral.
NZ will be a crime ridden hell hole run by Australian mobsters unless we get real tough real soon.
This situation is no joke.
100% agree. Safe to say the average kid born in NZ in a low-income family grows up with more privileges and opportunities than those born to low-income migrants here.
I myself grew up in a less than decent part of town, but fortunately had more migrant families than locals in the neighbourhood. The kids born to Asian migrants often stood out for having great demeanour, staying on top of schoolwork and spending evenings working with parents at home or in the family business.
Many of them managed to excel in their careers while staying grounded as people.
I travel extensively for work and personal reasons. I invariably talk with the Corporate Cab drivers when commuting to the airport, most of whom are immigrants. I am continually astounded at how many describe their children as doing well in music and academic activities. Invariably they are Asian/Indian.
I'm happy to admit that I will be outworked and outsmarted by these groups in my work environment. And I consider myself a pretty solid performer.
Locking them up being "proven not to work" depends on what you are trying to achieve. NZ does not have the systems or resources to properly rehabilitate repeat offenders and the likes of people who are in gangs. At least putting them behind bars gives the public some relief from their antisocial and/or dangerous behavior. First hand recent experience was got robbed, police caught the offender who had a whole house full of stolen goods, was charged and found guilty, should have been sent to jail for 3 years but was sent back home after 3 months to "serve" preventative detention. After about a week we were robbed again and guess who by... Police now back working on the case for someone they have just successfully caught and prosecuted a few months ago. I guess at least Labour get to claim that is one less person in prison under their lead.
Agree we need to focus on the next generation but anyone who commits a jail worthy crime should be sent straight there otherwise it is the public and victims that are paying.
"Office bound" comments above misses the point. Punishment and rehab don't work, but that fence between criminals and us sure does.
Commonly an active criminal on leaves a trail of offences behind, even several a day. We have to value the harm caused and not shrug it off. Somebody's old banger car can be their significant asset, and not able to be replaced when trashed.
Prisons are expensive to run, but very minor when measured against the huge - huge - trail of destruction that criminals leave behind.
Absolutely Northlander, it is not really the much touted "softly, softly",..."let's address the underlying issues",... offer "wrap around" government intervention", ...blah, blah. Nor is it "punish the little sods".
It is about "parking" the miscreants away from society so that we (yes, imperfect) citizens can get on with life unhinded by too much agro.
Oh, and while they are parked, best they do something to offset the cost of their time away. Several generations of Auckland Grammar pupils received an excellent lesson on life by watching the crims hack out curb stones from the adjacent prison quarry....under the gaze of guards actually armed with rifles!
By all means offer avenues for reform but the choices are stark,...as Chris's initial sentence states...criminal action without sanction, threatens the very foundation of civil society. The choices offered to first time offenders should be equally stark!
Lock them up for longer.
Going in at 20yrs of age for aggravated assault and being paroled after 3 yrs leaves you with a criminal who will reoffend.
Try putting them away for 10 years and then when you get subsequent offences push it to 15, 20 or 30 years. Consistently we hear of the criminal with multiple convictions for assault, domestic violence, robbery. In my world I'd like to see them put away for longer periods with less leniency for early offending. Not too many bank robbers or meth dealers in their 70's.
Welfare dependency and lack of parental role models is the stem of this issue. Funny, not much 'aroha' being displayed when most perpetrators and victims of violence are Maori.
At $150k a year locking them all up for a long time is not a good solution (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/exclusive-expensive-failure-new-zealands-…)
Either decrease prison cost (e.g. Escape from New York becomes Escape from Chatham Islands) or just give them $20k a year, an apartment to live in and a playstation and accept a beneficiary is cheaper than a prisoner.
Per my point above though, society still has to put up with their crimes unless they are locked up. Giving them $20k and a place to live just means more neighbours getting robbed, abused, threatened etc. Just like how we pay for schools to educate, doctors to provide medical care, and police to enforce the law, society should happily pay for criminals to be locked away to give the rest of us law abiding citizens a break from their behavior.
Have to ask why it costs that much? Aside from the initial capital outlay of building a prison, where the hell do all these overheads come from?
There's approx 4k prison officers required, with 8k inmates. $40k per inmate for officer (assuming $80k salary). Yes there's other staff such as administration, food prep, laundry etc, but the ratio of those to inmates will be miniscule.
So $110k to provide food, power a lightbulb and maybe a TV, hot water, they don't need heaters that's what blankets are for. What am I missing?
Also use extended periods of isolation for serious repeat offenders. I can imagine each time they get locked up it's like visiting the family for Christmas.
- "Oh hey bro you're back hahaha, what did you do this time?"
- "Robbed a few people on the bus, ram raided a couple of dairies".
- "Ohhhhh cheeerrrr my man, did you hear Mongrel Mob are starting up a new chapter in your neck of the woods"
- "Aww mean I'll hit them up brother"
Each subsequent return to prison should be harsher and harsher until their single brain cell starts to divide.
Others have alluded to it already, but from where I'm sat a particular problem seems that we get it wrong from both sides of the spectrum. Our society has this strange 'No Man's Land' approach to crime and recidivism, where we don't/won't invest enough in those who can be stopped and reformed, but we also don't accept that some people are so far gone that only divine intervention would save them (and from whom the rest of society needs protection).
The left wing approach is obsessed with absolving offenders of any blame. It's always the fault of "poverdee", of past colonial injustices, of discrimination ... everyone and everything but the criminal smacking the shopkeeper about the head is to blame, but never the criminal. There is an entire industry of "blame absolvers" in academia, politics, law, social work and so on. Theodore Dalrymple's 'Life At The Bottom' does an excellent job of explaining this concept and why excusing criminal behaviour is so problematic.
However, the right wing approach would have us always parking ambulances at the bottom of the cliff and never trying to prevent people from jumping off, completely ignorant of the fact that upbringing, relative deprivation, education etc are all influencing factors. We need to spend
We need to do better in several key areas:
- Stopping youth on the path to crime with better education (good luck getting either Team Red or Team Blue achieving this, they're both crap in different ways) better career opportunities, brighter future prospects.
- When an offender commits their first offence, throw everything and the kitchen sink at properly rehabilitating them. Once again, this will be expensive, but is it any more expensive than allowing someone to fall into a life of recidivism?
- With those systems in place, stop the excuse-making and blame-absolving. Nzdan posted a good comment about this above; the shitty attitudes (egged on by the excuse-making industry and tolerated by much of society - for example just look at some of the Facebook comments excusing the behaviour of those gang idiots attending the tangi in Chch) need stopping, and we must be clear that ultimately the decision to commit a crime is made by an individual ... they aren't possessed by some otherworldly force to nick a Mazda Demio and drive it through the front of the Bottle-O. A tough upbringing is a factor, but the decision is ultimately theirs. The world is full of people of limited means, whose families may have suffered even worse in past generations, who don't go out and commit crimes.
- Accept that despite the best intentions and efforts, there are some people who are criminal through and through. This is where we need to be more willing to lock them up and throw away the key, not to reform them (because they can't be reformed) but to protect the rest of us from their criminality. Sad, of course, if a different upbringing or support system could have fixed this, but it's too late now. Once again, it's expensive to keep prisoners locked up, but what is the cost to society of letting them run riot and intimate and terrorise the public? Maybe we need to build cheaper, nastier prisons for the long-term guests.
Clearly it is not poverty. If it was poverty then the 1930s would be high crime not as they were low crime. It is not poverty but it is inequality. Inequality of opportunity; inequality of ambition. It is knowing you are at the bottom of the heap and have no hope of moving up.
It will require an effort to change our society so no quick solution. However massive increase in child benefit would help. Think of children as the best investment a country can make. Far more respect for non-academic work. Our teachers by definition are academics (not even good academics since those who can do and those who can't teach). More apprenticeships and fewer university students.
Poverty... but gang memebers are always found with $20,000 in used twentys... bags of expensive drugs etc.
there is no lack of money being a patched member and that itself is the problem..... take the patch away and you staring at a life of poverty in comparison. How do you take the profit from drugs away? (Obvious but the right does not see it)
Commandeering Christchurch hospital carparks. (Having first “commandeered” a number of road cones.) Intimidating hospital staff and patients. Revving their guttural motorcycles at all hours of the day and night. Why would anybody do that?
The Mongrel Mob know full well that the only way to maintain power, control, and influence in a society where nobody likes you, is through fear. If you're trying to find any deeper meaning than that in their actions you'll only end up confused. The patches, the tattoos, the loud bikes, the reputation, the complete disregard for law and order, it's all designed to instill fear in the population; and in the police.
It's nothing new. Māori warriors used the same technique to great effect against their enemies. The stomping of feet, slapping of thighs, extreme facial expressions to make them look borderline insane, all done with the objective of instilling fear. The huge psychological advantage this gives means the time and energy put into war dance is often better spent than actually putting it into battle.
The Japanese used the same technique with their masks. Vikings decorated their ships and shields with intentionally beserk-looking faces. Fear is perhaps the sharpest human emotion, and can be used to great effect. The problem is that fear eventually turns into hate, and this is where the Mongrel Mob are going wrong.
They're treating society as the enemy. Once people get sick of being afraid all the time, that fear becomes hate. This is not only a problem for the Mob, but for society in general, since hate can manifest itself in all sorts of counter-productive and frankly very unfortunate ways. But any group who treats the society they're part of as an enemy will eventually find they don't have much of a future in that society.
Some gangs have wisened up to this, and there have been efforts over the years to try and win the public over. Making school lunches, initiatives supporting wāhine, drug rehabilitation, and so on. But they continue to make the same mistake that failed dictators make all the time. Fear works, but not if it's you that the people are afraid of. Unless you consider the people to be your enemy, you want that fear directed somewhere else.
Democratic governments understand this very well, and use it all the time to maintain support of populations who would otherwise oppose them. Manufacture fear, sure, but direct that fear somewhere else. Don't be the enemy, be the hero.
So how do we solve this? As a productive member of society, and as a voter, the best thing you can do is not succumb to fear. Learn to keep a level head and feet on the ground even when it seems like the world is crumbling around you. Easier said than done, but nevertheless essential to being able to act, or vote, rationally.
We need to start building a society where young people have a future. Gangs are absolutely feeding off the fact that there is no hope for a lot of our youth. They won't get anywhere by following the rules, and they know it. Gangs offer meaning, a sense of belonging, an outlet for frustration; even food, clothing, shelter and income in excess of that being provided by society. If they're not recruiting them, they're selling them drugs as a means to escape. This needs to change.
What we don't need to do is start fighting fire with fire. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and this is the direction fear takes us. Turning up and trying to get rid of dozens of mourning, patched-up gang members from a hospital car park is only going to end in more violence, and only addresses the symptom. We need to start addressing the root causes, and this requires patience, understanding, determined action, and rational decision-making done in the absence of fear.
The problem is you're talking about just turning the other cheek for a period of decades, undermining the rule of law amongst those who are at least currently prepared to go along with it. That's a hard sell to the wider electorate, who are finding it a bit hard to 'not buy into fear' when it's their communities being ramraided, or their local shops they have to avoid because they no longer feel safe.
Trying to ignore something clearly wrong is how people end up dying from preventable and treatable illnesses. The solution to a problem caused by a lack of intervention and pursuing ideology over upholding the rule of law is not even less intervention and ideological approaches. I do agree that there needs to be easier and more tangible rewards for young people who stay in school and work hard, but there's plenty of people out there getting kicked in the guts each day as things stand who don't resort to violent crime.
There is a trade-off in pursuing crime aggresively when it occurs with possibly negative outcomes for the public (eg. accident during a hot pursuit killing innocent bystanders) and letting gangs off the hook.
IMO a descalative strategy to minimise the risk for the public is sensible but this must be followed with a rigorous & relentless arm of law enforcement & judicial process to make clear that there is no place to hide and crime does not pay.
Criminals should not be allowed to use the blanket of the rights of indigigenous people. In any well-regulated society, criminals surrender their basic human rights (eg. freedom) by doing criminal things.
In some cases the answer might be to take them out of society (extremely violent offenders) but mostly criminals need to be hit were it hurts most, take their money, their bikes, toys, gang-pads, patches etc.
Surely the issue here is one of framing and the lens through which people view things?
Surely it would be hard, for most citizens to disagree with police build up focused on actively preventing these crimes from occurring rather than just summons in post?
How could anyone possibly paint as racist, police action that restores public service to publicly funded essential facilities like a hospital?
Isn't the idea that if the police intervene against the Mongrel Mob blocking public access to the Hospital in Christchurch, that they must be racially motivated laughable?
This annoys me tbh, because this is an excellent case of when swift decisive action by the state is justified, and hard to paint as something else.
Sometimes interactions between ethnic groups can be tainted by racism, but not all actions between the state and the individuals within it fall into this category, and acting to enforce the law decisively in cases where it is clear that 'racism' doesn't apply is something they should certainly be doing.
They fact they chose not to, is what concerns me about this event.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you are wronged you should KNOW that doing a wrong in response means you are responsible for the wrong you committed and you must pay for it. You WILL pay for it. Don't step over that time immemorial line. Turn the other cheek and believe that all wrongs will one day be addressed. This line has been horribly blurred...Anyone who breaks the law needs to be held accountable - not just for society's sake but for THEIR sake...to be deterred from continuing down a path that wastes their life. It's pretty simple really. Whether you are poor or rich, black or white there is a moral code that applies to all. For example- if you kill someone you will be held accountable for taking someone's life- no excuses. If this is observed it will deter someone who in a fit of rage, possibly with the utmost of "justification" ,from shedding blood. We must not be encouraged to take the law into our own hands and that will happen if our Justice system is unwise and weak.
There is so much confusion these days about right and wrong. We've been unhitched from our moral code and Justice, like a sandcastle on the beach, is being slowly dissolved by the incoming tide of godless condemnation and false guilt.
Locking them up does work.
Ask the families of murder victims in the USA.Getting life in means they can't harm the public anymore.
This softly softly approach doesn't work.
Watching our present PM cuddling up to the criminals in Gizzy during Covid was shameful and imo lost many votes for that one action.
Stats below. Interestingly, our daily inmate counts have decreased from 10k in 2020 to 8k in 2022.
- 22.1% - Sexual Assault
- 20.9% - Acts intended to cause injury
- 9.8% - Murder
- 9.4% - Burglary
- 8.5% - Drugs
- 7.4% - Robbery
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/statistics/quarterly_prison_s…
At the election Labours stated policy was to reduce the prison population by 30% & at last count they were well on their way to achieving it.
Facilitated by some under the radar legal & policy changes, assisted by an unelected & unaccountable judiciary invested in legalities not justice & excuses such academic nonsense as "discounts for colonisation" & a Police Commissioner who mandates "policing by consent". Then there's the Courts year+ backlog which now sees many people claiming their due legal process has been denied (both victims & offenders)
So, how's that working out are you all feeling much safer now ?
So we dont end up like Scandinavia. Sweden is now like a war zone - there are shootings and bombings every day. This is where NZ is headed.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220906-a-different-sweden-gang-…
Breaking the gangs is quite simple. If the government will give away ANY drugs a person wants as long as it is administered in a hospital or a government controlled space the gangs will go broke an disappear quickly. We have been fighting the "war on drugs" for more than 70 years and it is a complete failure. When will it dawn on governments that you cannot save those now addicted (very easily) but, you can save future generations from ever starting if there is no profit in it for those selling it. Even for those now addicted, by giving it away at hospitals you will at least know who has the problem and can ask if the want help.
Think it needs to be a combination of the two. Currently though you have groups breaking the law in public eye and little or no action taking place (hospital/ Stopping traffic etc)..if it was a group of average Jo blogs doing this then the law would be all over them, but it appears from the public anyway, if you have a patch and there is enough of you, then nothing happens. A very dangerous place we are heading indeed.
Do you recall recently people driving around the streets to celebrate losing a rugby game? People walking down the road waving flags and holding up traffic. Playing loud music from speakers cable tied to the front of people movers and setting off fireworks outside the birthing unit in Mangere Town Centre. The law wasn't all over them, after a few hours they posted cops at key points to set up 1 way checkpoints and arrested 2 people.
100%, I heard of a motorcycle instructor who was hit by a gang member running a red light doing 100kph in a 50kph area, and thrown 50-100 metres down the road, while the driver fled the scene - luckily they were knocked out instantly which I think saved their life, if not well - the outcome would have been very different
The brazenness of gangs now is incredible and the blatant abuse of youths to do ram raids on small business owners nationwide hard to believe
When did woke idealism overtake basic necessities such as basic crime prevention and management or healthcare?
Labours lost their way...
There is something particularly galling about the mistreatment of hospital staff.
Antisocial behaviour at medical institutions is the ultimate ignorant, self entitled, ungrateful revolting behaviour.
Unfortunately I don’t think the target audience are big readers of interest.co.nz. or reader’s in general for that matter.
Education is the key. This doesn’t have to happen in a traditional setting. The first year fees free scheme would be better spent on a plane tickets to Burkina Faso for a 3 month holiday so the disenfranchised can gain a bit of perspective that maybe they don’t have it so bad here after all.
That: Rage against the machine, don't let the man trample your rights, i'm a 1%er bullshit won't get you far when theres no safety net to fall back on.
There was a time when medical staff & particularly nurses were untouchable & could walk any street & into any home unmolested. This was probably mostly evident after the 2 World Wars when returned servicemen knew how much they owed their carers & people knew what retribution could be dealt out by experienced soldiers. However even in my youth in the 1960s Hutt Valley the men on the edge of the law would themselves deal harshly to those who crossed the line, they had their own families to think of.
My late wife trained as a RN/Midwife in the UK in the 1970s, she said they were always careful but never felt unsafe walking home after their shifts in their distinctive red capes, people still respected them.
NZ gangs are a joke compared to what I witnessed in Easter Europe and Latin America. I can go to a pub in NZ and sit down next to a gang member and I know they won't do anything. I don't think they are dangerous to the "normal" public (unless you're driving a ute on the motorway and one hits you and stop to check if they're ok). Intimidating yes, but not dangerous.... yet.
The more they get away with the more extreme their crime will become. This will create a sense of empowerment and confidence which will fuel more extreme and violent crime. I think NZ is at this juncture, where crime could explode to unfathomable levels unless something drastic gets done to contain it.
The Iwi also need to step up their game in terms of controlling their "own". Given they view the world in two realms of Maori and non-Maori, and everything is a "partnership", then they should be out there getting the gangs to calm down.
My thoughts on this on this is government and we as a society have lost the moral conviction to be sure our morals are right and we have the right to enforce them. (This is mostly been induced by our intellectual class pushing weak superficial morality that they invented to serve their interests.) Gangs with their own alternative morality are finding out there is no pushback and that their morality is tolerated. All this talk of appeasement and alleviating poverty is probably going to be seen as positive reinforcement that their morality is correct.
If government and police have got confused as to if this to be allowed at a hospital then someone with stronger moral conviction or at least the pretence of one is going to seek to replace them (most likely National and ACT). If no one does anything we will all end up having to accept gang morality but that's catastrophising and the Police will act when they realise they have the vast majority of public support and the expectation, it's just going to take much longer this way.
What do you mean? (I'm not sure on the subtext of you comment.)
"moral relativism" will be transient, it's too weak to stand for long. What we get when it's over is up in air. Someone or some ideology will seize the opportunity. Looking at the way things are going there will be at least one strong authoritarian challenger. If National and ACT can't cobble together at least the pretence of some conviction then eventually something less stable will show up.
Overseas, "moral relativism" appears to slowly morph into a regressive power game where the privileged party looks after its self and leaves the rest to decay. (You might already understand this??)
No, you get gangs occupying hospitals and their morality forced on you. Or, you can be hippie or the like and find a space outside of normal society to do what want as long as you can find a common morality with a few others.
There needs to be some kind of common morality, even if its partial, or society won't function and things will decay until a more regressive common morality will be forced on us.
Wow, your edit so much subtext changed. If you think Seymour has less moral conviction than pretty much the entire of National your in for a shock, your freedoms will be more but on his terms.
If you going to do a 180 on your initial comment (so easily) don't come in so aggressive or just have a think first. (It comes across as dishonest.)
"We already have societal morals that are codified into laws." This is not moral relativism, CT is asking why we are not enforcing them.
(Not that I'm too interested in the topic but its more Nationals lack of moral conviction than anything else)
Think back to when you were making your first reply. How could it be a more passive aggressive and personal "suggestion"? Seriously, why add "I'm afraid"? My comment did not "suggest" the reader to do or feel anything.
If we have morals codified into law surely those are superior to the alternatives? There is no relativism here. We are talking about Christchurch Hospital, we either have relative morals or codified ones.
I've some sympathy for the police. It must be incredibly frustrating to repeatedly see your difficult & dangerous work to bring an offender to Court only to see the legal system & captured judiciary decide that the offenders rights & speculative future rehab prospects far outweigh the harm done to victims. Resulting in frequent discharges without conviction, name suppression, home detention for multiple rapes etc.
It's quite obvious why many NZdrs now hold the Courts and Judiciary in contempt & consider that its a legal system not a justice system.
In the late 90s/00s the authorities in New York patted themselves on the back for being tough on crime, broken window policy, etc.
Turns out it was mostly due to the introduction of legal abortion in the 70s.
By the time you think you need to be tough on crime, you've already lost.
We have just been locked down without consent; had no search warrant access to house holds imposed, the bill of rights torn up, in defienace of the UN Human Rights Declaration a population coerced in to an experimental gene therapy.
Cunning move to get the hand wringing class worked up about gang members.
86% of arrests were Pacific Island, despite only making up 1/3rd of overstayers. The other 2/3rds were from Britain, South Africa and the US.
So the number of white overstayers that were left alone was even greater than the number of brown overstayers that were arrested.
That's a fair point. Maybe at the time there were more flights available to the Pacific Islands than there were to South Africa, Great Britain or UK?
You can't just round people up and lock them up for months until you find a means to get them home, regardless of ethnicity.
The use of public broadcasting funds to make anti-white brown propaganda rubbish such as 'Muru' and 'The Panthers' is disturbing. The left wing has grabbed control of the narrative and is pushing this racist bullsh!t. In the case of Muru, a militia group were training in the bush with automatic weapons. What was the expected response in the climate of 911?
Its time start referring to gangs as 'organized crime syndicates'. Make them illegal and associations illegal too. Force them underground and make it harder and harder for them to recruit.
Disincentivize crime through appropriate sentencing. Home detention is only used in exceptional circumstances and never for violent crimes. It may cost $150K/year to keep them in prison, but then how much does it cost society to have recidivist offenders on the loose? I'd prefer my taxes are spent keeping society safe.
CT you need to focus a bit more.
If find yourself in the situation of being attacked, your general thoughts are not about how your attacker is a victim and noting the irony of the fact that if they were locked up, they would not be there beating you today.
Not only is the attacker breaking the law but so is the Govt. breaking its social contract with us that said, we will not take the law into our own hands, as we give that power to Govt. for only them to use physical force as needed to prevent the situation occurring.
When that does not happen, then Govt. hands that power back to each individual to exercise as they see fit.
The move away from functioning families of Mum and Dad always seems to be ignored by "experts" and the govt in this situation.
It's also like why western generations aren't having as many kids, the "experts" and govt seem to close their eyes to the obvious things.
'Were any New Zealand government .. to embark on a rapid build-up of the state’s coercive forces, sufficient to suppress the anti-social behaviour of criminal elements, there would be an outcry. Such a policy would be denounced as irredeemably racist.'
So what you are saying is the reason the Police let the Mongoral Mob intimate those at the hospital was that the Police were scared of being denounced as racist? By Whom?
Or maybe, being undermanned(or not), they are just scared.
But if that is what you and them are worried about, that is an easy one to fix. Just have police task forces matched by race to the people they are confronting. Brown to Brown, White to White.
Which would take away the race card, and only leave the State vs Citizens card.
Problem is crime demographic/statistics can potentially have an inverse effect on the number of Police Officers available to go "toe to toe" with the people they are confronting.
Group A has a greater propensity to commit crime, are over represented in the prison and gang numbers, are less likely to apply to be Police Officers, therefore our Police Force is racist, "by design" some would have you believe.
Chris - Hang on a minute mate. You first argue that it isn’t right that the police did not confront the Mob when they disturbed the peace at Christchurch Hospital. Without knowing the full story, I would tend to agree. At the very least I have some questions about the Police tactics.
You do first ask if the police inaction was due to lack of resources. But you then go on to assume the ‘appeasement’ was due to reluctance to exercise exert state coercive powers “against individuals and groups who depict themselves as the victims of colonisation and white supremacy”. Ie Māori and Pasifika.
Now there is no real evidence provided for this apart from noting some other examples regarding gangs. However a similar reluctance was seen at the Parliament occupation, which was mainly white folk. And the Destiny church groups disrupting the state highways were racially mixed. So the police policy is probably not about racial appeasement and more likely be about tactics when dealing with large unruly mobs, of all races.
If you really want to find out what is going on I would suggest talking to some police or even a criminologist who actually might study these matters. And you could also ask Māori and Pacifica people living in poorer areas if they have noticed any change in police behaviours towards a policy of appeasement.
How about an article on what has actually been done with all the things the Govt has said will happen - has any of it been done? See - https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/more-tools-police-tackle-gangs-and-…
1. Wrap around of services - holding offenders to account but support to do better in the future. Can any successes be pointed to?
2. Investigating of source of funds to buy the motorbikes where the owners are on a benefit? Any successes here?
3. Confiscation of motoribikes - how many were just handed back quietly with no real consequences
Also, for me I want to see stories of how the victims are being taken care of - from owners of cars that were stolen and wrecked, to dairy owners, to people most recently assaulted on the bus in Lower Hutt. How come we never hear much about them? It’s either lazy or biased journalism presumably.
Happy to be proven wrong but suspicion is that they will just be ignored in all of this from the judicial system and government departments. How are things made right for them - as much as it can be.
Its not just gangs. When two serial rapists get sentenced to a few months of home detention as punishment, then we send a message that violence against women is perfectly acceptable in society, and men can basically do what they want to anyone because the worst that will happen to them is that they spend a few months at home playing video games on the couch with their mates popping in to party with them. Now that everyone in society has been locked up in their homes for months during Covid, we know full well that while the experience was decidedly inconvenient and annoying, the whole notion of home detention as a punishment is a complete joke.
If there is no consequence of crime, there is no fear of consequence, and criminals will offend with impunity. Why are we surprised that this is the outcome?
What is the reason behind the hospital bullying?
I would suspect that waiting for hours/days/months/years/death for service from our collapsing hospital system, may well be the cause. Even civilized people are becoming enraged. The gangs, well they will be far quicker to taking what they need, so in this case, if what is needed is medical care for their members and the queue is ridiculously long, then the rational is simple get rid of the queue.
Today the gangs, tomorrow -? protest groups as we saw outside parliament. All these events are marker points on our collapse to a south American banana republic. Columbia for instance where the root cause was the accumulation of assets and property in the hands of a few.
If you are a nurse hanging on in the nz force, here is another reason to leave for a country where the house price to salary ratio is far more affordable and working conditions far better. That is going to hasten the catastrophic collapse of the hospital system, but that is inevitable any way and making a matyr of yourself makes no sense.
Currently visitor access in hospitals is still restricted - so while parents are being forced to take turns to sit with their sick kids, gangs are going up to the wards in the dozens, and then threatening anyone who tells them that they cant be there. They are hanging around swearing and shouting at each other, while sick people are trying to sleep and recover. Again if anyone says anything to them they are threatened with being bashed.
That queue is determined by urgency of medical need, not when you arrived at point of care. Part of the problem is that care at the hospital if free whereas you have to pay for GP/Urgent care, so people go to the free place which blocks up ED. Part of the problem is the funding/cost to pts, part of it is an aging population, part of it is an aging primary care workforce - all foreseen for the last 30 years. And it's only going to get worse because our population will get older and older and older. Australia is not the panacea everyone thinks it is, in healthcare. In parts of Oz it is better, but in others it's not. Complex problem, no simple solutions.
People have always got frazzled while under stress when in hospital. That is not new.
The stupidity of Mongrel Mob and their ilk claim that they have retaliatory rights is that no colonist did anything to any one of them. Manwhile they really are being ripped off today by Tribal elite spokespeople and recipients of the "colonisation" reparations bonanza.
What we are seeing is vocal Maori elite demanding privileges, money and resources that will never be shared with folk such as the Mongrel Mob members.
What we know from all world civilisations is that they fall in any country where the law does not apply equally to all citizens.
What a mess. You can't saying anything or do anything because you will immediately be called a racist.
A few weeks ago at a large roundabout in Hamilton there was a large contingent of Mongrel Mob gangsters, blocking the round about with their motorbikes, slowing traffic, directing traffic, parking on the sidewalk next to the roundabout. All I wanted to do was run the bastards over but instead I locked the doors and looked the other way so they won't verbally assault us. I had my kids in the car and all of us were quite frightened.
Sadly I don't see it getting better anytime soon. The left has taken over, that crazy PM of ours gives the gangs money, our tax payer money, doesn't want to lock them away, doesn't give appropriate sentences because the criminals had a bad childhood, it is insane when you think about it.
You have to wonder if people will start taking the law into their own hands seeing as the police won't do their jobs, they too have their hands tied because of they do anything to the young Maori/Pacific island offender they are racist or will be raked over the coals and be treated like a criminal instead of the young punk getting treated like a criminal.
Does anyone here thing National or any other party will do things differently in terms of they way criminals are treated? I won't hold my breath.
May God save New Zealand because Jacinda and her cronies won't. The horse has bolted.
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