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A veteran gang advisor says National’s anti-gang policies are based on emotion rather than evidence.
Harry Tam has been running hui for Mongrel Mob chapters about the October election, including encouraging them to sign up on the general roll so they can vote against National Party candidates.
National leader Chris Luxon has rejected a report by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor that New Zealand which says the country cannot arrest its way out of the gang problem.
He’s promising to ban gang patches, increase police warrant and search powers, and make gang membership an aggravating factor in sentencing.
Mr Tam says locking more people up for $190,000 a year, plus the huge cost of a criminal prosecution, shows it’s not about value for the taxpayer.
“If Luxon did his sums – I’d hate to think how he ran Air New Zealand, maybe that’s why they always had to get the Government to bail them out. But when you’re running the country on the same basis, there’s no one there to bail us out. These are things the voters need to understand. This guy, what he’s proposing to do is basically going to bankrupt us,” he says.
Mr Tam says over-policing of marginalised communities can lead to outbreaks of violence, such as the current riots in France.
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