Minister Mitchell,
You will recall earlier this year a gang shootout following a rugby match in Hastings. It came about after a match had to be called off between two teams that had affiliations to rival gangs.
One of those teams, YMP, came from a small village where I grew up called Raupunga.
Seven members of that team were in a van driving home from Hastings, after the called of match, when they were attacked by members of the rival gang. A terrifying car chase ensued with the van coming under fire and being riddled with bullet holes.
The driver of that van was my brother, Guy.
Guy has coached the YMP team for years and he is definitely not a member of a gang. He is manager IT at Wairoa College, a father and grandfather.
Of the seven members of his team with him in the van he was driving that day, two were gang members.
Neither of them wear patches to practice.
Neither of them wear patches to the games.
When YMP play at their home ground in Raupunga, no gang members who come to watch the game wear patches either. That is a choice they have made, not one imposed by my brother.
Maybe some day you might like to have a chat with Guy to see how a rugby team in Raupunga has achieved something you have had to impose by law. But I digress.
On that day my brother could have died, so I have no reason whatsoever to come to the defence of gangs in any way shape or form. But two recent events have raised some serious questions that I felt needed answers from you.
The first was the size of the armed police presence at a funeral of a gang member in Matapihi, a small Māori community in the Bay of Plenty.
The second was a 13-year-old boy calling for help on the footsteps of a locked police station in down town Dunedin at 6pm on a Sunday evening - where no one came to his aid.
First the funeral, and again some context, from the tangi of my father - in Raupunga.
As is custom, when my father died we bought him home for the tangi. He lay in the front room of our home for three days as people came to pay their respects, laugh and remember a life well lived. He was surrounded by his whānau - including his grandchildren, his moko, from the deep south in Dunedin. It was their first experience of a tangi.
On the last of those three days I will never forget the roar of motorbikes as they pulled up outside our house, which was alongside the main road and right next door to the police station.
Remember those days, a police station in a village of less than 500 people?
When I looked out the window I saw patched gang members standing, helmets in hand, waiting for my aunties to invite them into our home.
When they did enter, the haka they performed for my father, the Pākehā schoolteacher who had taught them, was something that has remained with me to this day. It was raw, it was emotional and it was filled with respect.
This was a memory that came back to me as I watched the kuia confront the armed police officers who stationed themselves right at the entrance to the urupā, the burial ground, so they could, in the words of your commissioner, retain law and order.
Minister, not only did that fly in the face of human decency, it was also totally unnecessary. Once on the urupā the aunties would have been in full control. Nothing your police could have done would have matched the mana the kuia held on this sacred piece of land where their tūpuna lay.
And why were your police officers there at the entrance to the urupā?
Because of a law that had been passed a few weeks earlier that banned an item of clothing. I am not sure how the Police Commissioner kept a straight face when he claimed that they were getting tough on crime: “If people break the law they will pay the price”.
Shooting up my brother's van, that’s breaking the law!
Running a drug cartel, that’s breaking the law.
Wearing a patch at a funeral - priorities, Minister?
Which brings me to the 13-year-old boy in Dunedin who, when surrounded by hooded teenagers outside the Dunedin Police Station thought he would be safe once he got inside to tell the police what was happening.
Imagine his despair when first he found the door to the Dunedin City Central Police Station was locked (it is locked at 6pm on Saturday and Sunday) and then found that no one answered the door when he frantically knocked on it hoping to find safety inside, protected by - the police.
Instead, the gang of hooded teenagers stood on the steps of the police station and laughed at him, demanding that he give them either his phone or his shoes.
With the door to the police station remaining firmly locked, he threw them his shoes and ran for his life. His mother received the call from her terrified son and, with his grandmother, raced into the city to find him.
When they called the police for assistance the phone was answered somewhere in the North Island, even though they were now standing outside the locked Dunedin Central Police station.
With people inside it!
Now, I am not placing any of the blame on the local police here Minister. Here, the buck surely stops with you.
Next time you stand in front of those cameras, I hope someone will ask you about the 13-year-old boy in Dunedin.
I hope someone will ask you about the teenagers who robbed him on the steps of a police station and the message that sends to them about how tough you are on crime.
I hope some will ask you where are the resources that are needed to keep police stations open 24/7 - especially ones in the middle of a city.
If you are going to get tough on gangs then use the law, and the police, to break them where it hurts.
Follow the money and the real crime.
The irony is that those behind the big foreign drug cartels linked to our gangs don’t wear patches, they wear Giorgio Armani suits.
Now there’s a thought.
