Anti-P team ‘out of shadows’
Campaign ‘flips the script’ on addiction, writes Matt Shand.
A self-proclaimed group of ‘‘meth vigilantes’’ claims to have gone straight in its fight to rid the country’s streets of drug dealers.
The Anti-P Ministry, which was started two years ago by former gang members Brendon Warne, an ordained minister, and Junior Kapene, now admit their guerrilla tactics were ineffective when weighed against the risk.
What started as a few members kicking in doors and running suppliers out of town has grown into a nationwide organisation with more than 6100 members preaching a life free of drugs.
‘‘What we were doing then was targeting the supply,’’ Warne said. ‘‘What we have done now is come out of the shadows and started a movement killing the market altogether.’’
The Anti-P Ministry has grown to include walk-in meth clinics being set up by members and a weekly Online Recovery Church broadcast live to Facebook members with up to 500 viewing each week.
‘‘We flipped the script addiction,’’ Warne said.
‘‘Having the message out in the open is doing more good than anything. I also studied and got my mental health and addictions on level 4 qualifications.’’
Most members of the Anti-P Ministry are ex- users or whanau. Users track days clean via phone apps, which is a source of pride for a member when they can show off how many days they’ve been clean. At the time of the interview, Warne was 727 days clean, another group member called Rahera was 1060 days clean, and Kawerau chapter leader Dee Rumbal was nine months and nine days clean. The organisation believes every day a user is clean equals less money in meth dealers’ pockets.
Rumbal said she became involved in the Anti-P Ministry when she was looking for help getting clean.
‘‘Being surrounded by people who know what you are going through and know what it is like is so . . . supportive,’’ she said.
Ex-Black Power NZ President Junior Kapene said the Anti-P Ministry was his way of paying back for what he had done in the past. Kapene can speak first-hand to the change in Anti P Ministry tactics having been arrested for kidnapping an alleged meth supplier.
‘‘I went into an (alleged) P house, kicked the door in and kidnapped the cook. I didn’t think that . . . was doing any harm but there are kids in these houses who saw me doing that.’’
Kapene said it was that guilt that drove him to help Warne during the early days of the Ministry, but the tactics they employed were revealed to be repeating a vicious cycle.
‘‘I wondered how I turned out the way I did . . . seeing something horrific like that. Just like I did to those two kids watching. They are now carrying what I carried. It was not going to work out that way.’’
Kapene left for Invercargill to get away from the scene and he became an ardent member of the Anti-P Ministry’s new way of conducting itself – legitimately with no violence. ‘‘Me doing this is the best thing I can ever be part of in my life,’’ Kapene said.
‘‘P is not going to go away so long as people want to use it. We need to give more people help to get clean.’’
Police said they welcomed help from community organisations in the fight against methamphetamine.
‘‘Police are committed to reducing the impact of methamphetamine on our communities,’’ said Richard Chambers, assistant commissioner, serious and organised crime.
‘P is not going to go away so long as people want to use it.’ JUNIOR KAPENE