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Download AudioA long-term gang member says former police minister Stuart Nash shot himself in the foot by trying to show how tough he could be.
Mr Nash was stripped of the portfolio yesterday after revealing in a radio interview that he called the Commissioner of Police two years ago and urged him to appeal a judgment on the gun buy-back law.
Hawke’s Bay community activist Denis O’Reilly says he likes Mr Nash, but like many of his Labour colleagues he was playing to the prejudices of the mainstream population about things Māori.
“He did the same thing here when there was the false accusation gangs are out looting around the place and his comment was ‘why don’t you take your patches off and get stuck in,’ and that was exactly what those lads were doing, and they weren’t doing it as members of gangs, they were doing it as members of whānau they were looking after old people, they were rescuing taonga,” he says.
Mr O’Reilly says it can make a real difference who the Police Minister is.
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