- E ara ko te ara ki a Puanga i te pae marangai ko te matahi o te tau tenei tere ake nei. Whano, whano, whano mai Te Hui. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. This week on The Hui ` - Today our mission is to execute a search warrant under the Gangs Act 2024. - Cracking down on Gangs. - The purpose of this warrant is to locate the clothing worn by (BLEEP) at the time of his offending. - Six months after Gang Disruption Units were rolled out across the country what, if anything, has changed? - The target of this warrant wore an article of clothing into a store here in Hawke's Bay. Clearly the gang members are not overly enthusiastic about giving us their patches. - Nothing's changed, really. (CHUCKLES) I think gangs are here to stay. Captions by James Brown. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - Kua kotia atu nga mate na te kaha o te po, nga mate o te wa, haere mai, haere. Tatou kei te pito ora, tihewa mauri ora, and welcome back to The Hui. Eastern District is the only district in the country to have two Gang Disruption Units, one in Hawke's Bay and the other in Gisborne, in Tairawhiti. Detective Senior Sergeant James Keene is in charge of both of those units, and The Hui spent the day with him and his team to see what the GDU does. (PENSIVE MUSIC) - All right, guys, thanks for coming. Today our mission is to execute a search warrant under the Gangs Act 2024. The purpose of this warrant is to locate the clothing worn by (BLEEP) at the time of his offending. Take note of the Kohanga Reo. That's our target address, from a wide view. Note the number of gang associates or gang members addresses nearby. Our main port of entry is on the front. We do not believe there's children present, but don't discount that. We'll leave here ` 10 minutes should be enough. Sound good? Any other questions? I'm Officer in Charge of the Eastern Gang Disruption Unit. Our role is to investigate gang crime. Our main focus is the new Gangs Act. So if you are wearing what qualifies as gang insignia in a public place, and it's knowingly being worn and it's on display, an offence has been committed and you are liable to be arrested. The target of this warrant wore an article of clothing into a store here in Hawke's Bay. It was reported through 105. That file comes to the Gang Disruption Unit. The process would be to apply through the courts for a search warrant. And today's the day we're planning to execute that search warrant. - No guns? - No guns. No. No guns. Good girl. Oh, yes. Good girl. - How do you get tipped off for these kind of things? - Often we get notified by security staff at stores; by members of the public, generally phoning into the police 105 number; police units out and about might witness something. (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC) - And so, when you go in to confiscate, say a patch, what's the reaction you get? - Uh, the reaction can be varied. We try and do it nice and calmly, responsibly, be nice and up-front about why we're there. Clearly the gang members are not overly enthusiastic about giving us their patches. But we haven't had any really hairy situations. It is no secret, I guess, that Hawke's Bay, or Eastern District in particular, has a high gang population. We have just under 1200 patched gang members within the district. Prior to the legislation, you would routinely see gang members wearing gang patches on the streets when they're going about their day-to-day business ` so that might be within their vehicles, or it could be, you know, even in the supermarket, in the petrol station. The legislation has had quite a desired effect within Eastern District to stop that overt intimidation of gang members wearing their patches in public. - Is there much pushback from gang members, or have you been quite surprised at the compliance? - Um, pleasantly surprised at the compliance, if I'm being honest. Due to our engagement teams getting in front of gang leaders and providing education on the legislation coming in prior to November last year, it was pretty clear direction that the police were going to be out there enforcing the new laws. We haven't seen what was to be expected, from breaches. So I think gangs need to take some credit in that. Dealing with gang members on a day-to-day basis out in the community, they have been pretty receptive to the legislation coming into force. - We went to see local community leader in Flaxmere Henare O'Keefe, to see what he thought of the Gangs Act. Would you say that it has made any difference in the last six months? - I haven't noticed. Nothing's changed, really. (CHUCKLES) You know? It's just life as per usual. I'd like to say yes, it's made a big change, but hand on heart, I can't say it has. I've talked to gang members about it. 'Bro, what do you think of these gang patches, having those removed?' 'Oh... Doesn't really bother us.' He said, 'They can't identify us now.' (CHUCKLES) - But the purpose of the Act was to reduce gang activity, reduce fear, reduce intimidation in the community. Do you think the community feels any safer after the legislation? - The removal of the patches? Yeah, I would say there's a component of our country which would see that as less intimidating. Whatever the legislation is, we're not getting to the heart of it. It's reactive. There are certain factions of our community, I've no doubt they possibly feel safer. But to the likes of myself, we're around it all the time, so to speak. It's just... no big deal. (CHUCKLES) You know, we're not gonna legislate our way out of this, out of any form of social ills. I think gangs are here to stay. I don't believe gangs will ever go away. - Later on, we caught up with Detective Senior Sergeant James Keene after the search warrant was executed. - We arrived at the front door, nice and casual, nice and friendly. Our target came straight out. We explained to him why we were there and the procedures of the search warrant. We asked for the item of clothing. It wasn't at the address, because he'd lent it to an associate. He took us into his room. He showed us in his drawers. He showed us around his room. It was all very friendly. He's said to us that he's gonna arrange for that article to get dropped off at the police station in the next few days, so we've taken his word on that. So there was no arresting today. - So say he does come through and he drops it off, What will you do with it? - That will be seized by us. It will go into our property store until such a time as there is a conviction or a guilty plea, and then a judge or the judiciary will make a decision on what happens to that item ultimately. So it will either be destroyed or it will be given back to him. - But police are heading back to the whare shortly. - Extremely nice family. Lots of moko running around. So we're actually heading back there mid-morning to drop off a food parcel, just because, you know there's lots of people in the house, and understand that sometimes it can't be easy for big families to cope with life, I guess. And yeah, just a little extra thing that we do on occasion. - Is that normal? - Uh, it is normal if the circumstances arise. Often our job is an enforcement job. But we also have another role to play in society, and that's to help people out, and that's the reality of what we do. I mean, the group is set up to disrupt gangs ` it's in the name of the group. But at the same time, we offer support where we can. - The food parcel is free because police have a relationship with the food charity Nourished for Nil, which lets them access kai for whanau in need. - Thanks, guys. From my perspective, the warrant itself went extremely well. Yes, we didn't get the article of clothing, but ultimately everything was nice and friendly. And that's down to your guys' approach, so well done on that. He's mentioned to us that there is some interest for him to leave the gang, so that's a connection for us, right? So we've discussed about getting hold of the engagement team and providing some assistance to him to sorta get through that process. - The Gang Whanau Engagement Team's responsibilities are not just with gang members. Part of their responsibility is also to consider how they might be able to influence gang whanau, for example, rangatahi, potentially the future gang members. I try to get my teams to look at how can they address the criminogenic factors in a home ` if it's unemployment, if there are drug addictions, no driver licensing. The more we can reduce those criminogenic factors, we can only be helping the situation, both in terms of crime, both in terms of outcomes for not just the whanau but also broader society. Unfortunately, we as a region have the highest crime rate per capita in the country. We've got the second and third largest iwi in the entire country. I think there was 130-plus, from my last count, marae. So there's huge opportunity for us to work with Maori. There is a small percentage of Maori that account for between two-thirds and three-quarters of all police's business here in the Eastern District region. I don't pretend to speak for iwi. From a police side, we acknowledge and understand the importance that the relationship that police has with iwi ` it has to be a relationship of trust if we want it to be meaningful in any way. - We've made 69 arrests for gang insignia breaches. At the moment, we've seized 17 gang patches ` that's proper gang patches ` and approximately 59 other items of clothing that would be considered gang insignia. Probably close to half of the investigations that we do uncover never are ever taken any further, because as a team, we determine that the reported insignia breach is not actually considered a gang insignia, so that person is free to wear that article of clothing under normal circumstances. - We've always enforced the law, and we know where we've ended up as a consequence of that. So there is really an opportunity for us to think, OK, how can we engage? We don't want anyone getting arrested. We don't want them in our police cells. And we don't want them going through the courts either. - Na Aroha Treacher tena purongo. A kati, after the break, we have Assistant Commissioner New Zealand Police Paul Basham. Kia ita tonu mai ra e nga iwi ki ta tatou hui. - Hoki mai ano e ta mara ma. Assistant Commissioner New Zealand Police Paul Basham sits down with our reporter Aroha Treacher. The Assistant Commissioner talks about the impact of the Gangs Act 2024, six months after its implementation. Kia titiro ake ra tatou. - Well, first of all, kia ora and welcome to our whare here in Wellington. It's nearly six months in, since the legislation dropped. Where police made, I think, the right decision to enter into a period of engagement, hui with gangs and different gang-associated groups to educate and encourage those groups about what was coming, that was constructive. Around 500 meetings over three months, up and down the motu. That led to what we're seeing now, which is high levels of compliance. We haven't seen an escalation in conflict or violence or intimidation relative to the Act. We're not seeing people wearing patches. We're not seeing a lot of insignia breaches. Those numbers are quite low, when you look at them over six months. Communities are providing feedback and the reporting is all really positive. - Is there any feedback from the communities that say they feel safer? - Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Anecdotally, what the legislation set out to do, I think has been successful. - Do police have to meet any KPIs or certain targets? - No. - So, under the Gangs Act, is it now easier to get a warrant approved if police need to go into a private residence of a gang member? - No. I mean, there is a process. We have to go to a court, apply for a search warrant. The standards required for that search warrant haven't changed, and the judgements that the court needs to make before they issue that warrant haven't changed at all. So no. - Say I'm a member of the public, and I see someone in Kmart who I think is wearing a gang patch, and I can just ring maybe the 105 number and report them, is that strength enough to have a warrant issued? - We would receive the 105 report. We would undertake an investigation and look to do some work to see if we could identify ` one, and confirm that it was a gang patch, two, the person who was wearing it, three, are we able to say definitively that we've identified the person and that we have an address for that person? So if those kinda elements of an investigation are met, and we're able to then go to the court and seek a search warrant, then that's the sort of process that we would undertake. But there's a whole lot of steps between a 105 report and us walking through the front door of an address to execute a search warrant. - And we don't issue our search warrants, right? - Yeah. - People might be surprised about that, too. - As I understand, you may not always need to go through a judge to get the warrant executed ` correct me if I'm wrong. - So, there are certain provisions that allow us to execute a search without warrant. So that's true. But the starting point is always about... you know, to obtain a properly court-authorised warrant. To the best of our ability, we would look to observe everyone's privacy and human rights as we go about those search warrants, particularly around children and/or women in the house, and old people, for that matter, as well. When we are walking into an address or walking on to a property, what is the things that we need to be alive to and aware of in terms of human rights, privacy, tikanga? - So the GDU, the units that have been set up ` in particular Hastings. - Gang Disruption Units, yep. - Yep. We got to spend some time with them. Are those officers that are in that unit, do they get any special training or processes put in place to avoid any racial profiling of Maori? - Uh, I can't say that there is any particular training specific to your question. What I can say, though, is we are a values-based policing service, so we take our values very seriously ` professionalism, respect, integrity. Commitment to Maori and the Treaty of Waitangi is one of our values and has been for a very long time. - The day that we were there with the team, they did execute a warrant. - Sure. - And there was a surprise of young children being on the property. - Right. - So how are the officers trained in those situations? - If we hold intelligence or we have information to suggest that there are young children at the address, then we will adjust the approach that we take to the way that we will go about that search warrant. We can adjust for that and make sure the right supports are in place. - After they'd executed the warrant, a couple of the officers went back and gave food to the family, because they could see this family was in need. It was quite a surprise for me to see that level of compassion. - Look, we won't always get it right in these contexts, but on this occasion, that's a really positive example of our values. - When I see organisations like Destiny's Church that do have, say, jackets that look like patches, how do you make that distinction of, do we prosecute these people or prosecute these ones? I just use the Destiny example, because they've been in the media lately for quite a lot of aggression. - Yeah. It's a fair question. There are specific provisions to why a gang is put on the schedule that applies to the legislation. There's a pretty compelling argument that Destiny Church, at this point... Well, when I say it's a compelling argument, we would assess that that group doesn't meet those conditions at the moment, for a variety of reasons, although there are many that might debate that point. The gang scene in New Zealand is a very complex one ` from outlaw motorcycle gangs to sorta more ethnic gangs, the Black Power and the Mongrel Mob and various variations in that ` is very nuanced. I can't say that we had positive engagement with all of the gangs. But what I can say is we had positive engagement with most of the gangs across the ethnic gangs in particular. We aspire to be quite a police force that reflects the community. Given the amount of interactions that occur up and down the country every day between police and the community, and in this context, gang members, the relative lack of violence that occurs in that interaction, I would argue, reflects that professionalism on our part and the fact that those relationships, for the most part, are pretty... what's the word? Well, it's New Zealand, right? It's New Zealand. We live here together. - No reira e te iwi, he korero ano te haere ake. Whai muri i nga whakatairanga, ko to tatou tapui tamaka. Our panel of experts, Professor Tracey McIntosh and Fete Taito, are with us next. - E wetewete tonu ana ta tatou hui i nga take nui o te wa. Let's turn now to our panel of experts. We have Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau Tracey McIntosh. And also joining her is former member of the King Cobras gang and a survivor of state abuse in care ` Fete Taito is with us as well. E aku rangatira, tena korua. Nau mai. Thank you very much for joining us. Fete, let's start with you. OK. We've heard from the police in both of those parts. What are you hearing on the ground? What are communities saying about the GDUs? - Yeah, I guess, um, I think what's important here is to know that, um, how the police have handled this in the first place was communicating with the gang liaison, with gang members, because they had these advisory groups around the motu, you know, before the legislation came about. So I think we heard there, saying that they've had meetings and hui with gang leaders. And that's the way to go, really. And it's helped to soften the impact of this legislation. You know, politicians can make all the legislation they like. It's who's gonna carry it out. And so for the police, you know, hats off to them for meeting with the gang whanau first and explaining about the legislation. So in terms of on the ground? Yeah, it hasn't really made an impact on the gang whanau, that I've heard. - Not much impact at all? - No. No. - Wow. So, Tracey, you know, I thought this was gonna be the disrupter. I thought this was gonna be the big change. That doesn't seem to be the case at all. - No, and I think we have to think about what it does and what you want it to do. So I would sorta sit this within what I would call 'performative policing'. So, performative policing, really it's about what the external... what mainstream society thinks is happening, but is quite different to what's happening inside. And so that notion around really disrupting ` disrupting what? And for what? For what gain? So I think if you really wanted disruption, surely you would want to see greater levels of flourishing, tamariki feeling much more secure and confident, and that would be your desistance policy, because there would be other pathways opened up to you. I don't know if we can just sort of... a focus on gang patches and regalia is going to do anything like that. I don't think any of those who sit within those places ever expected it to. - Yeah. And that's the thing this was sold on, right, was on gang patches. So after six months, 6052 charges laid, 132 patches seized. I mean, Fete, is this a bit of a Trojan horse just to try and get gang patches, and there's only 132 of them anyway? - Yeah. I mean, yeah, is that worth it all? Like, the 6000 arrests ` how much of our resources have gone into that? And what's the outcome of those? What will the outcome be of that? Nothing, really. If we looked at that, um... that story we heard just then, the judge can either give it back to them, or they can... So, for me, who's safer out of this? You know, what intimidation was there? You know? What sort of gang of intimidation was there, and to who? - Yeah, that seemed to be the selling point at the beginning, was the reduction of intimidation. Is there a change of feeling of intimidation, at all? - I'm sure that there are members of the community, broader community, that do find gang patches and regalia ` and actually, to be honest, it's concentrations of people ` that some would certainly be intimidated by. And so there would be many of those who would have welcomed this. But again, what's the broader outcome? The thing with these types of policies, what we call suppression policies, is that the research suggests that they work in the first instance ` six months, a year, maybe 18 months ` but there's no real longevity in them. They don't create the enduring, sustainable changes that we want to see. We've already seen that, on the whole, gangs have largely accepted. We've heard others say ` you know, other gang leaders have talked about being largely compliant. And that's largely because, um, I guess the rank and file have followed instruction? - Yeah, that's right. And also, you know, where should we be concentrating on? We should be concentrating on creating... you know, creating programmes to stop our rangatahi from joining these gangs in the first place. How do you stop that? As we talk, they're recruiting them. State care, still today, are pumping them into... pumping them out. In jails, they're still pumping these gang members. It's not gonna stop our gang whanau from joining them. - Yeah. So let's talk about that, right? Because I thought there was a process in place where, yep, there was consultation with gangs, but also ` and this is part of the work that you worked in, Tracey, when it became part of the Commission into Abuse in State Care ` about trying to find ways in which gangs could be involved in the development of policy. Did that ever happen, at all? - Well, it's still` I mean, Fete played a very significant role, and I think we can't really underestimate the role that he played, in terms of the Inquiry. What we heard very loud and clear, and on the day of the apology, Fete spoke directly to that, that we're not gonna have a solution without having the survivors fully involved. And I think one of the things, if we're wanting to really be serious about social harm reduction ` which of course we all should be ` everyone wants to be able to step out their door and be able to navigate the world with a sense of confidence that, on the whole, good things are more likely to happen than bad things. But if we're going to really address social harm, then we've got to really think about, where did this all start from? And the issue around state harm and the relationships that have come from that is so significant. And I think that's the problem with these types of... around gang regalia, around patches. I'm not saying that there is no value on them, but it locates the problem here, where the problem is there. So we've gotta think about, what's the entry thing, and what's our exit? - Yeah. So, Fete, let's get to that. Because I know you've got some views on the societal issues and how we deal with those. You just talked about rangatahi. How would you approach it? - Well, as we speak, different gang whanau throughout the motu are creating their own solutions within themselves, because they can't deal with that trauma, that undiagnosed trauma that the gang whanau have lived with most of their lives. I'm in, you know, my age group, 60s. But, you know, we've lived with undiagnosed trauma for 50-some... some have passed away, and passing it on to our children. So, you know, the gang whanau themselves have their own solutions. They're looking after the well-being of their gang whanau. Because if you don't do anything about that, it's just gonna continue. - Can I ask you a question about rehabilitation programmes, particularly in prisons? Do those work? Or once gang members are exited out of prisons, are they simply going back into gang communities where they're still trying to deal with those trauma issues anyway, and the programmes aren't actually getting the outcome that's required? - Yeah. From experience ` like, my lived experience, I've done.. unfortunately, I've done lags in four decades ` the '70s, '80s, '90s and 2000s. And none of those rehab programmes worked for me. But that's not to say, currently there are some... There are some rehab programmes that I think have got a lot of mana. Like the Grace Foundation, for a start. They're working with a lot of our gang whanau. So, you know, they've got some solutions there. You've got Paito Dog Kingdom. They're doing their own trauma-informed huis and that, working with their own. So, you know, throughout the motu, it's not just... They're trying to create their own solutions, and we should be supporting that, rather than making legislation to ban` - But those re-integrative programmes, rehabilitative programmes, one, the vast majority of people who go in don't even get access to those ` so we have to recognise that. But, you know, the thing around rehabilitation is around full accountability. We still haven't seen the state accountability for this. I mean, I sort of feel, when I look at all of the reports that came out of abuse in care, I believe it should be mandatory for every politician, for everyone in the police and other places to really understand, reflect, know and have read them. So the rehabilitation ones, and the solutions coming up, those are part of the issue. But you've got this much broader one around state accountability. And so these sorts of focus actually distract from some of that really hard mahi that must be done. - E aku rangatira, tena korua. Thank you both very much for your time here today. Nga mihi nui ki a korua. Kia ora mai ra. That was our panel of experts. You can find our programme, The Hui, on our YouTube channel ` this programme and many more. So please have a look, click and subscribe. That is us for this week on the programme. Join us next week. Until then e nga iwi, kia mau ki te turanga o Taputapuatea. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e! Captions by James Brown. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - Ko te reo te take.