Three new positions to be advertised next month will bring to 12 the number of officers working full-time on organised crime in the Southern police district.
Part of the previous government's promise of extra police staff, the additional roles will be to co-ordinate a district-wide approach to organised crime, bringing together squads already working in Dunedin and Invercargill, with support from the police intelligence section.
The new structure would mean continuing work such as the recent efforts to disable the hierarchy of the Dunedin and Mataura chapters of the Mongrel Mob Aotearoa gang, Southern crime services manager Detective Inspector Steve McGregor said.
"Operation Rocket" resulted in the arrest of 11 Mongrel Mob Aotearoa gang members and associates, including the president of the Dunedin chapter, James Stevenson (36), and senior patched members Jack Thompson (27), Garth Tairi (37) and Shane Parkinson (32), all from Dunedin.
Stevenson, Thompson and Parkinson pleaded guilty in the Dunedin District Court to multiple charges and Tairi admitted one charge.
Their arrests in April were the culmination of a six-month mainly electronic investigation targeting the gang hierarchy's drug-dealing.
Taking away the gang's leadership and its premises were key to disrupting organised criminal activity, Det Insp McGregor said.
As well as the arrests, the Crown seized the mob's headquarters in Middleton Rd, Corstorphine - where police say gang members socialised and drugs were used and sold - and several motorcycles and a caravan police allege were paid for with proceeds from organised crime.
Det Insp McGregor said police believed only two patched members of Mongrel Mob Aotearoa remained active in Dunedin, but there were probably several more who were not active.
There were also about 15 or 16 associates and hangers-on who were active at varying levels.
"There would have been young recruits, aged 14 to 17, who we are hoping will be deterred by this.
"If you can deter them now, you are saving yourself a considerably bigger problem than we've had to deal with in Operation Rocket."
The gang's criminal activity in the South was mainly in the relatively quick and easy sale of cannabis, sourced in bulk from around the South Island by key people, broken down by the gang and sold by associates in tinnie form.
Organised groups could double their money during the process, he said.
Where the drugs originated was unknown.
Police believed most of the cannabis available in Dunedin had some connection with organised crime groups, Det Insp McGregor said.
He was confident Operation Rocket had handicapped Mongrel Mob Aotearoa's hierarchy and hoped it would curb their criminal activity for some time.
Already the gang's presence was less visible in the city and some members had stopped wearing gang colours.
It was about eight years since the last major successful operation targeting Dunedin's Mongrel Mob leaders, Det Insp McGregor said.
That operation forced a new structure on the gang, which had taken until last year to gain real momentum.
A similar operation targeting Black Power several years ago ended with key figures in the gang's hierarchy imprisoned for violence and drug offending.
"The last couple of years in Dunedin, the public had not had to suffer Black Power-related activity.
"Of course, it arguably could be said that was how the Mongrel Mob gathered its momentum, but then again, from a public safety perspective, we also didn't have the niggling between the gangs on the street."
Preventing a resurgence of organised criminal activity after a big operation was "easier said than done", but Operation Rocket had sent a message police hoped all organised crime groups would heed, Det Insp McGregor said.
Police were realistic and knew that wiping out organised criminal activity was not as simple as arresting the ringleaders.
"You have toddlers wearing the colours, you have the very young ones talking the language, and kids are kids - they look to their role models and if their role models are gang members, it's always going to be very difficult."
