New Zealand: Gangs Say New Government’s Gang Policies Hurt Both Their Culture and Their Feelings

I met a Maori once.

He was good to party, I can tell you that much.

These people are hardcore though. If you can’t enforce laws against them – especially when they’re engaged in organized crime – you’ve got a pretty serious problem.

New Zealand Herald:

A prominent Mongrel Mob president claims National’s gang policies are devastating, a breach of their human rights, and will create a “psychological war”.

Speaking exclusively to the Herald, Waikato Mongrel Mob Kingdom leader Sonny Fatupaito said after reading up on the proposals, he believes they will cause chaos.

“I think that punishing everybody actually feels like it’s a prison.”


Sonny Fatupaito


Paula Ormsby

He said the dispersal notice policy, which would give police power to hand out seven-day public non-association orders to those they suspect are in gangs, would prevent people from attending tangihanga, birthdays and other events they should have a right to be at.

This, Fatupaito said, would particularly impact those who have siblings in gang organisations.

National’s proposed gang policies also include making gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing, with the intention that convicted gang members would face “tougher consequences” for their crimes.

As well as this, the party would ban gang patches in public places and boost police powers to enable warrant-less searches to find guns held by gang members, to prevent some gang members from communicating and to restrict their public meetings.

Although Fatupaito said banning gang patches wouldn’t be as much of an issue for his chapter because they wore it in their hearts, he said others would struggle.

“I feel that we have every right to be like every New Zealander, they have the same rights that we should have. The right to be to express who we are, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of expression, it’s a human right.”

He believed they had made “tremendous progress” over the last few years and although he said National’s policies would have a negative impact, he was open to sitting down with them.

“The Kingdom has always had an open-door policy with anyone, especially politicians, you know, if they wanted to come down and sit down and allow us to be part of the process.”

This is the same thing the blacks do.

If you say “but you’re in a gang,” they say “but that’s who we are.”

It’s true, I guess. They’re not lying.

Gangs in New Zealand are weird