Drawing The Heat.

A Matter Of Signals: What is a government saying about itself when it parlays with known criminals? What is it signalling about its willingness to openly confront them? More to the point, what message does it send to all the decent, law-abiding, charity-workers who struggle every day to convince their neighbours that gangs are a curse upon their community to be resisted and shunned? 

TIME WAS when people observing the transfer of funds from politicians to gangsters knew what they were looking at – graft. The “Five Families” of the New York Mafia were justly notorious for the number of politicians, judges and cops they had “in their pockets”. One suspects, however, that even Lucky Luciano and Joe Bonanno would have raised their eyebrows at a transfer of $2.7 million from the US Government to La Cosa Nostra! Such outlandish behaviour was bound to “draw the heat”.

So what was Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson thinking of when they approved a $2.7 million grant to a chapter of the Mongrel Mob? Officially, they were hoping to enlist at least some members of the Mongrel Mob in the fight against methamphetamine abuse and addiction. Working, presumably, on the principle that “it takes a thief to catch a thief”, or, in this case, “it takes the sellers of a dangerous illegal drug to reduce the harm of a dangerous illegal drug”, the Government has clearly decided that there is more to be gained by working with the gangs than against them.

References have even been made to the strong working relationship that developed between the former National Party Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon, and Black Power gangsters back in the early 1980s. But, one might as easily describe the Anglo-Saxons’ payment of the “Danegeld” to the marauding northmen as evidence of their “strong working relationship”. Certainly, Muldoon’s intervention was instrumental in persuading Black Power to keep the peace vis-à-vis Pakeha New Zealand. Such arrangements, however, can only ever be temporary. At some point the “price” of peace becomes too high – even for Rob.

It all boils down to signals. What is a government saying about itself when it parlays with known criminals? What is it signalling about its willingness to openly confront them? More to the point, what message does it send to all the decent, law-abiding, charity-workers who struggle every day to convince their neighbours that gangs are a curse upon their community to be resisted and shunned? What do they tell them when they see millions of dollars handed over to (allegedly) “reformed” gangsters, while charities are forced to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops to secure a few thousand?

In a recent web posting, the veteran left-wing journalist Gordon Campbell wrote: “Engaging with gangs doesn’t mean you’re coddling them or condoning their criminal actions or granting them a legitimacy they otherwise lack. But because they exist, and because they are in contact with other, marginalised members of society, it is worth talking to them, at least.”

I could not disagree more strongly. Those other “marginalised members of society” the gangs are in contact with are their victims: the people upon whom their criminality heaps all manner of pain and sorrow. Dear God! One might just as easily observe that Neville Chamberlain “engaged” with Adolf Hitler at Munich! Not to coddle him, you understand, or condone his criminal actions, or lend his naked gangsterism toward the Czechs a legitimacy it would otherwise have lacked. No. Chamberlain “engaged” with Hitler because he wasn’t ready to fight him. What’s more, Hitler knew it.

What must Hamilton’s Mongrel Mobsters have been thinking as they pocketed the $200 “koha” from Paul Hunt, New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner? Were they nodding sagely and silently praising the soft-spoken bureaucrat for his willingness to engage so fulsomely with their organisation? (Unlike the Green co-leader, Marama Davidson, who declined to offer this customary gratuity?) Or, did their lips curl in scorn at Hunt’s pusillanimous naiveté? Were they thinking to themselves: what a funny old world it is when, one week, the cops bust you for distributing “P”, and the next you’re being patronised – and paid! – by the Chief Human Rights Commissioner himself!

Either way, the message conveyed was the same: weakness and confusion.

In addition to the Anglo-Saxons’ silver and gold, the Danes would have carried away a very similar message. Likewise, Lucky Luciano and Joe Bonanno, in their gangster paradise, would have lamented the unbelievable stupidity and cowardice of the authorities. “Saps!”

Jacinda Ardern must understand that organised crime is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop – until her Government decides to stop it.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 July 2021.

National's Going Gangbusters.

Criminal Enterprises: Gangs are not welfare institutions. Nor are they a substitute for the family their members never had. They are ruthless, violent, criminal money-making machines. That is all.

OKAY, first-things-first. Gangs exist for one purpose – and only one. They are a sure-fired, time-tested institution for making crime pay – and pay big. National is right to go after them, not only because most voters will cheer them on for doing so, but also because gangs injure individuals and damage society. Pushing any other kind of argument simply makes National’s job easier. “Look at the Left”, Simon Bridges will crow. “Soft on crime. The gangster’s best friend!”

In their essence, gangs are based on the notion that there is safety in numbers. This doesn’t just apply to violent conflict where, obviously, the more “soldiers” you bring to the fight the better chance you have of winning it. Safety in numbers also applies to practical criminal behaviour.

Hierarchy is the key. At the top, a handful of leaders, thoroughly insulated from actual offending, give orders to “patched” crime managers who, in their turn, send out wannabe gangsters to do the actual selling, thieving, hustling, whatever. All proceeds flow upwards. Those at the bottom get the least, those at the top the most. Patched membership of gangs is strictly rationed to preserve the organisation’s essential pyramidal structure.

A gang can only remain effective if its hierarchy is respected. Absolute loyalty is demanded and ruthlessly enforced. Among gang members and associates no person is more despised than the “nark”. This animosity is entirely rational. Nothing brings down those at the top of a gang hierarchy more effectively than an informer.

Keeping the hierarchy safe explains the aura of danger and violence that surrounds every effective criminal gang. It is a feature, not a bug, because without the ever-present threat of serious and/or fatal violence – against outsiders who would do it harm, and insiders who dare to flout its discipline, the gang would swiftly fall victim to its criminal competitors, or the Police.

Gangs are not welfare institutions. Nor are they a substitute for the family their members never had. They are ruthless, violent, criminal money-making machines. That is all.

National knows this. Its members and supporters see the effects of gang activity all the time. Small businesses and farmers fall victim to their depredations almost every day. Local professionals in the provinces see their effects everywhere. In their surgeries, if they’re doctors. In their classrooms, if they’re school principals. On the town streets, if they’re the local Police Sergeant. They talk about it grimly, over whiskies, at the local Rotary Club – and complain about it loudly to their local National Party MP.

In the major cities it’s even worse. These provide the most lucrative markets for criminal enterprise: for drugs; for stolen goods; for all those other things that “a guy’s gotta have” – but which the state forbids. The cost to metropolitan New Zealand of these gang activities is huge. The methamphetamine trade, in particular, destroys lives, careers, families, entire neighbourhoods. Its victims are responsible for an alarming percentage of serious theft and fraud. Inevitably, their moral, mental and physical deterioration imposes heavy burdens on our health and corrections systems. Those who see methamphetamine’s effects up-close: the resident doctors, nurses, police officers, probation officers and social workers who clean up its mess; despise the gangs who are the drug’s principal distributors. The gangsters also see the enormous harm caused by their offending – but they just don’t care.

So, if National knows this – and frames its policy accordingly – why don’t Labour and the Greens? What happens inside their caucuses when someone like Greg O’Connor, or Willie Jackson, or Stuart Nash stands up and tells them what the gangs are really like? Obviously, their caucus colleagues do not nod their heads and say: “Thanks guys, it’s always good to get the perspective of people with personal experience of the harm gangs do to individuals and communities. What we all need to do now is come up with an effective response.” It can only be supposed that a majority of Labour and Green MPs respond to the anti-gang attitudes of their “right-wing” colleagues with the stock answers of Sociology 101.

When “Big Norm” Kirk promised to “Take the Bikes off the Bikies” in 1972, it wasn’t because he had heard the same sort of slogans repeated endlessly throughout his political career and thought it advisable to do the same. Forty-seven years ago, Kirk’s promise had the punch of the new. That’s because bikie gangs were new – as were the Maori gangs emerging from the rapidly growing provincial industrial towns and urban ghettoes. He couldn’t do it, of course. Putting an end to gangs wasn’t any easier then than it is now.

If overseas experience is any guide, there are two ways of dealing with gangs. The easiest way, adopted by Labour nemesis, Rob Muldoon, is for the government to buy them off. Let them do what they do, but always on the proviso that no “civilians” get hurt. Selling cannabis to their neighbours and their kids – that’s fine. But stay out of the city centres and the leafy suburbs – and stop providing the news media with lurid headlines. The Buy-Off has its merits as a solution, but in the end it is no match for criminal greed. Inevitably, the gangs re-emerge: bigger, better resourced and much more dangerous.

The hard way to beat the gangs is through solid, old-fashioned police work – aided whenever possible by augmented legal powers and the new technology required to make dedicated policing effective. That’s how the FBI brought down the New York Mafia. That, and by using the information obtained through advances in electronic surveillance to apprehend and then “flip” lower level gangsters: promising them immunity and a new identity in return for spilling the beans on the “wise guys” at the top of the hierarchy.

National appears to have chosen the hard way. Yes, forcing suspected gangsters to prove that they are not living off the proceeds of crime before accessing welfare payments is a tough policy. But these are tough guys. Tough – and smart. It always pays to remember that the individuals in question are criminals – well-versed in the art of ripping-off any system incautious enough to offer them something for nothing. Shorn of all its political bells and dog-whistles, National’s policy, by forcing gangsters to rely solely on the income derived from their offending, should make them easier to put away.

It’s not subtle, and it’s not pretty. But, you know what? It just might work.

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Thursday, 31 October 2019.