Q+A - Chester Borrows & Michael Laws interview on Napier Siege, guns, gang patches and other crime issues]

Sunday 10th May 2009: Q+A’s Paul Holmes interviews Wanganui mayor Michael Laws and National MP and former detective Chester Borrows

Points of interest:
- National MP says police were right to wait to end (Napier) siege
- Borrows: New Zealanders would be alarmed by the number of guns in this country
- “Easily” a million unregistered guns in New Zealand
- Laws calls for police to be armed, makes him “feel safer”
- Wanganui patch ban will cover “vast trenches of Wanganui”, not just CBD
- Laws certain that Wanganui patch bill will lead to nationwide legislation

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz;

http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

CHESTER BORROWS & MICHAEL LAWS interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Mr Laws has been very much in the news with Chester Burrows of course for trying to force a ban on the wearing of gang patches in Wanganui. Mr Laws has been very mindful of the influence the power of the gangs in his city, Chester Burrows former Police Officer and Wanganui MP has very much backed Mr Laws and has had the pleasure of seeing his bill become law in parliament this week. But Chester Burrows as a former policeman 24 years you’ve been in dangerous situations as they were for the Police Officers in Napier this week. Do you ever forget those experiences?

CHESTER BORROWS – Wanganui MP
No you don’t they stay with you for a long time, and I think the feelings of the guys right at the front of this will be that everyone's a commentator and there'll always be several layers of accountability between what happens and those who are having the most to say about it. The people who really know about this are the guys on the front line.

PAUL Right so how traumatic would it have been for those AOS guys there inside that cordon?

CHESTER Well you’ve gotta remember that Len Snee was one of them so not just another Police Officer but one of the AOS as well, someone they had tremendous respect for and someone who had spent 30 years in the Police and was still as fresh you know then as he was 30 years before.

PAUL Well it's like anything isn't it I spose, whatever you do you're going round for the first time I mean a situation like that. You knew Constable Snee's brother I think.

CHESTER Well most of us did he was a PTI at the Police College when we were training a long time ago.

PAUL That’s Ben?

CHESTER Yes.

PAUL What's your view of the way the Police handled it in Napier?

CHESTER I think they did it exactly right, I got sick and tired of hearing people wanting to paint them as Keystone Cops that they should have been in there, but none of them would have volunteered to be first through the door, they have to be very precise about this and if the wrong decision had been taken too quickly the Police would have been absolutely caned, I think they did a fantastic job we should back them.

PAUL Given that this fellow Molenaar was known to the Police, given that they suspected he had cannabis there and was doing a bit of dealing perhaps should they have taken the precaution of weapons to that house?

CHESTER I don’t try and second guess what they should have done, as we've said before Len Snee was involved in the AOS, he made the call that he did and I guess the thing to say here is that a lot of these incidents where Police get shot or shot at come right out of left field, and the other thing you’ve gotta remember that through communities there are a lot of people with similar credentials to Molenaar how do you respond to them every day on a daily basis.

PAUL Should the Police be armed in this country?

CHESTER Well I think you need to bear in mind that the Police are armed to a degree and the option of taking a weapon on a search warrant like that lies with the person who's going to attend the warrant.

PAUL Could they have got weapons if they'd wanted them?

CHESTER Well I believe they could have.

PAUL John Tamihere made the point that this whole business in Napier is gonna make us start to wonder about the number of weapons big serious weapons we have in this country. Would people be alarmed if they knew the number?

CHESTER I think they probably would, you’ve gotta remember for many many years shotguns for instance were never registered so we just don’t know how many are out there, how many came back from the war the old 303s you know they're all around the place, I've got one, so probably one in every ten males has got an old Lee Enfield.

PAUL So are we talking a million?

CHESTER Easily. Well you can do an operation in a small town and locate several sawn off shotguns or firearms in the period of a week or two and find that you know none of them are registered, we've got no record of them

PAUL Is there any way we'd find them I mean if a government brought in stricter gun laws would you find them.

CHESTER No, the horse has bolted.

PAUL Should we arm the Police as a matter of course at all times?

CHESTER Obviously you know I'm not the Minister of Police, I can't really make a comment on that, I've got fairly firm views, I will one day.

PAUL What do you think Mr Laws?

MICHAEL LAWS – Wanganui Mayor
Oh I'd like to see the Police armed.

PAUL Well nobody minds seeing Police with a side arm at international airports.

MICHAEL In fact a really interesting thing is that every time you see an incident like this and you see armed Police people actually feel safer, it's almost a palpable emotional connection that you see armed Police with side arms and you go whew I actually feel safer, and I think we've got to the stage in New Zealand now there are so many bad people out there and the public requires reassurance gee just about everywhere that arming the Police is an option and if you can get side arms at any time you want then the big question is why wouldn’t you. In a place like South Auckland on a Saturday night it seems senseless that you wouldn’t simply automatically routinely arm your cops.

PAUL Could you as Mayor of Wanganui get a bylaw passed arming your Police?

MICHAEL Oh I don’t know, is that the next place to go Chester? Listen we should never have had to do what we did in Wanganui, I mean there should have been legislation against gang patches and intimidation and the wearing of colours and the advertising of their criminal connections and the recruitment of young kids, this should have been done 20 years ago.

PAUL What dealing to the gangs?

MICHAEL Absolutely, I mean the reason – Wanganui I don’t think's got a worse gang problem and Chester and I would agree on that than most other provincial cities in New Zealand. Hastings, you know Porirua, Invercargill, Janie Annear from Timaru sprang up the day after and said listen we want that gang patch law here too, but the issue here for us is somebody had to lead this so it's just that we decided we would.

PAUL Well let's talk about your gang patch law, what is it actually going to achieve?

MICHAEL From our point of view, when I first took this to the Council what three years ago and said listen it's time we did something and this is a way. There were three things we wanted to do, one we wanted to remove the intimidation factor of gang members wearing patches and there is an intimidation factor.

PAUL Yeah but is it the patch that’s intimidating or the person, or their demeanour the way they go about the place?

MICHAEL The patch is really interesting because as soon as a patched gang member wears it or gang colours they're on, it's almost like an emotional switch flicks on and it's I've got to act up to my patch, it's staunch, it's big and I've got to have behaviour that accompanies that, and so that is that reason. The second reason is because they then strut around the place intimidating people and impress impressionable young kids who see hey gang life look at this you know, it gives me a status I'll never get any other way, and I guess the third thing though is that it allows the Police to in actual fact target people who essentially are criminals.

PAUL Well they waste the Police time while they're finding people or putting procedure in place for people with their patch on instead of stopping the Mongrels selling drugs.

MICHAEL That is not the message either the Police at headquarters level at local level or the Police Association to represent what the front line cops say.

PAUL Did the Police want this Chester?

CHESTER Yes they did and it's important to point out that it's not a waste of Police time, just a few years ago in Wanganui we targeted gang members for all crime, so gang members were seen they were stopped they were tipped out of their cars, they were searched so were their premises, we concentrated on them, overall crime went down significantly, so whenever you're dealing with gang members you're not wasting your time you're actually being proactive, and what a patch does about a gang member is he puts it on like a uniform, he says in on duty and once he's done that then he takes on the mantle of rapist, arsonist, murderer, drive by shooter, home invader and he's fair game for anyone.

MICHAEL And let's remember how these people got these patches. The day after or the night after, or the night of Jhia Te Tua's shooting, I mean killed as the result of a senseless gang war because it was just strut strut strut strut stuff and finally this little two year old girl has her life snuffed out, the first thing that they wanted to do in the evidence coming up in the court was patch this guy, you know they said let's patch him up now he's killed a two year old, great, and that’s the whole thing about wearing a patch you’ve got to have done something evil, antisocial, bad, criminal, that’s how you get to be a patched member.

PAUL Is that one hundred percent true?

MICHAEL Ask any patched gang member how they got their patch, if they're honest with you they didn’t go anything good, they didn’t help an old lady across the street.

PAUL Your legislation applies to the CBD the Central Business District of Wanganui.

MICHAEL No it applies to all our public places.

PAUL Does it? What about the suburbs at the mall?

MICHAEL Yes, absolutely, we will now define it.

PAUL But what if I go into the mall or come into the Central Business District, I'm a patched gang member and I simply put the jacket inside out, you can't see the patch.

MICHAEL Well then you're not wearing a patch, but if you are ….

PAUL But I'm still wearing the colours aren’t I?

MICHAEL Well you might well be but you'll be the only person that knows it.

PAUL A fine of $2000 for being patched in the centre of Wanganui, who's going to pay that? How are you gonna get that?

MICHAEL Yeah but wait on you're missing the point here, the key here is the arrest and seizure, so in actual fact if you're patched wearing gang colours or displaying gang insignia you get arrested and immediately those things get seized from you, that’s the key. The final court case with the $2000 fine that’s further on down the line, it give the Police to act and act now.

PAUL Have you had good response, you mentioned other local bodies have you had good response from the other mayors around the country, do you think this piece of legislation will be requested to be applied to them as well?

CHESTER Absolutely convinced.

MICHAEL And the other thing is Paul not only do they want to do it but the really interesting thing is that I think that this will lead a national line and the best example I think, if I give you a prototype was liquor legislation, you know how – liquor bans, suddenly one place once thought we'll have a liquor ban, instantly as a consequence of that it was picked up by others and then there was a national piece of legislation and I think that will happen throughout New Zealand, I'm sure we'll have national legislation.

PAUL In a year how should we assess whether your patch legislation is working?

CHESTER Oh feelings of intimidation, community safety surveys, how often the Police have had to enforce it may not be a good measure because if the gang members aren’t wearing their patches the Police won't have to enforce it.

MICHAEL The other thing I think we've got to remember Paul too is that with the patches the Police – and this is how this piece of legislation got to be passed at the end of the day it was the cops saying you give us this legislation and we will enact it, we want it, it will make our job easier to do, and so I think we've gotta remember that this was a community Police initiative.

PAUL Right so next step will be what?

MICHAEL We have to define the public places, so that’s anywhere according to the law where the public congregates, so that allows us to you know vast trenches of Wanganui we can just say no no no no no no and then we sit down with the Police and go okay now how are we gonna implement it and if there are any other gangs that give us trouble we'll just simply add them to the list.

PAUL Very good indeed and I'm sure there's a great deal of public support round the country for the banning of the patches to be perfectly fair about it, any reaction from the gangs so far.

CHESTER Well the only indication the gangs have given is that they don’t want to lose their patches and so early indications are they’ll abide by the law.

PAUL Right do they lose the patch.

MICHAEL Yes that’s right, seized immediately and confiscated.

PAUL We'll they’ll get another one.

MICHAEL Well you know the patch is the most important thing, they usually lay down their life before they give up their patches.

PAUL A quick word to you Mr Mayor about your curious stance on the H in Wanganui or Whanganui.

MICHAEL What's curious about that? I'm representing the will of my …

PAUL …. make to you is what I'm trying to say.

MICHAEL Well no no come on mate four out of give people in Wanganui we had a referendum 17,000 people voted 82% said let's keep it so I don’t see that as curious I see that as democratic.

PAUL Chester don’t agree with you.

MICHAEL Yeah but Chester is getting educated slowly on that one.

CHESTER I've got my view, I've made that known.

PAUL Well why do you think the H should go in.

MICHAEL Yes why do you think it should go in?

CHESTER It better defines the history of the word and what's it's trying to say, it's pretty straightforward to me and we don’t run around changing the way we spell for the different dialects and this is about spelling not pronunciation, what we really hope is that all the ignorant Aucklanders around the place won't start trying to call the place ….

MICHAEL But that’s the funny part about this, whether you're gonna put the H in or not you're still gonna pronounce it the same way so I mean what the hell.

PAUL Well so what does it matter if the H is in, if you're still gonna call it Wanganui.

MICHAEL What does it matter if the H isn't in?

PAUL Well I don’t know why in provincial centres you have this kind of bizarre frankly.

MICHAEL Yeah well we'll look at what they call the new Super City Auckland and after they call it Orakei we'll see how popular …

CHESTER How bizarre.

PAUL Yeah we'll call it Ackland, we'll take the U out.

MICHAEL You could do anything you like, I imagine you'd like to be a part of that though.

PAUL Michael Laws and Chester Borrows.

ENDS

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