That's Gangsta!

The gang patch legislation finally passed in the House after a long period of fanfare from National.

Gangs won’t be allowed to publicly display gang insignia on the body or in vehicles, and if they’re very naughty i.e. caught thrice, police will be able to enter private homes to search.

How confrontational for an officer earning about $70K. Call me a coward, but I’d rather nick a shoplifter than break down the door of gang members to rummage through their closets. And what about in a rural town where they know where I live too?

All good in that many people fear and loathe gangs, but in my opinion, this law is a symbolic and expensive move of style over substance. And amping up police - gang tensions for no significant result.

Does crime increase or decrease because of what someone is wearing - or can they use more subtle signs to signal their strength and unity if they wanted to?

Will their clothing control their actions or are the root causes unaddressed?

There are many criminal enterprises in the world and if we take the Italian Mafia as an example, I don’t think they even have an outward symbol.

Google gives me this result.

What do you think?

Completely unscientific - but my point is - gang membership is, if I had to guess, much more than insignia.

It’s about strength, protection, trauma, fear, maybe socio-pathy, a feeling of belonging, money, power, business. Gangs operate the world over because in some way, it pays to belong.

Anyway, who knows? Maybe this new law will just make local gangs reach deeper, and become stronger, more agile, more covert. You never know what unintended consequences can happen if you don’t do your thinking before hand.

Sun Tzu said “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Somehow I doubt there’s been much reflection behind National’s flagship law.

And with police numbers already stretched, is this the best use of police effort and time i.e. to get them to run around ticketing gang members and pulling patches off of bodily garments or breaking into homes to find stickers?

I understand why Luxon and co. went for that [“We are the party of law and order”] but it’s a real pity when the government instructs police to stop attending most mental health calls outs for this.

They were even warned by police that stopping mental health call out support may likely result in injuries and deaths. And to add insult to injury, we’ve seen zero signs there is a corresponding uplift in social services or mental health resources to pick up the slack - only more cuts on that side too.

There are many pressing issues police are already stretched on - cyber crime, fraud, assaults, domestic abuse, illicit drugs and firearms, paedophilia, rape, burglary, retail crime, driving offences, the list is long and serious.

So if the government directed police to stop illicit drugs or firearms from entering our country rather than cut our customs budgets and front-line staff, if they tried to support troubled youths to help prevent them entering a life of crime, or maybe just listen to John Key’s Chief Science Advisor who told them incarceration and boot camps ultimately increased crime, maybe I’d have more respect for their efforts.

Or how about just funding police instead of threatening them with a fiscal cliff next year? I’m not making it up: Police have been ordered to find $120 million in savings in the next year, or risk falling off a fiscal cliff.

70% of the police’s budget is personnel and they are already facing an experienced police exodus.

But so far all I see from this government are games to re-arrange chairs on the deck while elevating huge billboards of their own faces, to tell us how good and smart they are, when in my view, they are deserving of a Grade F so far.

When I first started writing here on Substack I wrote a post called “New Zealanders deserve more than marketing” and at this point I think “New Zealanders deserve more than cheap gimmicks and lies.”

BTW - Below are Destiny Church members in NZ. They are not part of the government’s gang legislation.