Kerre Woodham: This Ōpōtiki situation is a result of gangs being allowed to do whatever the hell they want

With miles and miles of open sea, 160 kilometres of coastline, 13 clean, fast flowing rivers and 11,200 hectares of native bush, the Ōpōtiki District is the perfect home for a community that appreciates and enjoys outdoor activities and the natural environment.

It would also appear to be an ideal habitat for gangs and gang members right now. Ōpōtiki, population 9300, is in effect, closed for business.

As the posturing and chest beating between two opposing gangs reaches a crescendo. Hundreds of members of the Mongrel Mob - sub branch Barbarian - have come to town for the tangi of their gang president, who was killed on Friday in an alleged altercation with rival gang members.

Gunshots have been heard in the town. There have been three fires in the past three days, all suspected arsons.

Apparently, some Black Power families are being evacuated from the town out of concern for retaliation. And the local high school and the local kura have closed of their own volition.

The primary school is technically open, but parents are choosing to keep their kids home. Some businesses have closed their doors. The streets of Ōpōtiki are very quiet. And this is the way it will stay until the gang members decide that it's over.

Not the townspeople. Not the police.

The ball is very much in the court of the gang members and this is just a natural progression from seeing gang members flout lockdown rules for the two years that everyone else was gritting their teeth and doing the right thing.

I cannot recall a time when a dispute between gang members shut down an entire town. Kids schooling is being disrupted. Mind you, the teachers are striking anyway so you could share that disruption between the gang members and the teachers union.

Businesses are shuttered. Public facilities are closed and the people of Ōpōtiki just have to wait until the gangs work through whatever it is they feel they need to do.

The death of a father, the death of a friend is always sad. There are families going through that right now all across New Zealand. But gangs seemed to grieve in a different way to the rest of us.

I don't even begin to understand the culture and long may that continue, but the idea that your right to grieve trumps the kids right to go to school, or that your pain justifies the lighting of fires and the firing of shotguns, or that your suffering is such that you hand out your own justice, while the rest of us have to depend on the police and the rule of law sticks in my craw.

The gangs have been left to do pretty much as they wish for the past five years. More than that, they have been treated as equals at the table without ever having to earn the right to be there.

They make a few airy-fairy promises about, ‘Hey we're just here to get the guys off meth and trying to make them to be better men and this is the only family they've ever known and we're the only ones who can reach them so give us some government money’, and the Government has agreed.

‘Yeah, okay, these are complex cases, you’re complex people, have some money.’

They haven't earned anything and they don't seem to have delivered much either.

They have been treated as though they have an equal say and an equal right, without doing anything to earn that and this is the sum result.

I am so sick and tired of seeing the brazen macho posturing of all of these gangs who choose to live outside the normal bounds of society and who are really, really proud of it.

You see the pride they take in motorbikes. You see how they love hanging together and, as a group, inspiring awe among some kids with very few choices in life and fear with those who think what the hell are those going guys going to do next?

Because they know your ordinary citizen knows if whatever they decide to do, there is going to be precious little that the police can or will do about it. They have been sticking two fingers to the rest of us for years and years.

This situation of Ōpōtiki is an inevitable result of gangs being allowed to do whatever the hell they want.

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