Crimes that shaped Bridges
Politicians are routinely accused of speaking for effect but when it comes to law and order, National Party leader Simon Bridges has walked the walk, writes
‘S low! Staccato. Eye Contact.’’ The instructions scripted atop young prosecutor Simon Bridges’ opening address to the jury at the 2007 trial of double-murderer Jason Reihana go some way to explaining why he now speaks to the nation the way he does.
For some reason, a fixation on Bridges’ voice – that slow and deliberate drawl – tends to guide most people’s first impressions of him.
Back then, the 30-year-old prosecutor had the weight of a family’s expectations of justice riding on his shoulders following the brutal and premeditated slaying of two of their loved ones.
He chose his words carefully; the wrong ones could see a murderer turned loose. Clearly, he’s not slow.
Now 41, and the leader of the National Party, Bridges embodies the ‘‘lock ’em up’’ mantra with aplomb.
Law and order is political bread and butter for his ‘‘tough on crime’’ party.
A near universal political truth is that saying those three words always polls well.
But where it might be a typically cynical play by others, Bridges actually holds the credentials.
The mean streets of Tauranga
If it can happen in Tauranga, it can happen anywhere, right?
The city of close to 140,000 has gone from being a glorified retirement village with an extensive Christian community to, in recent years, being the collection tin for Auckland’s overflow of young, urban professionals looking to get on the property ladder.
It’s also now home to the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, Bloods, Crips, relatively new Australian imports Bandidos, the Headhunters, as well as the homegrown Filthy Few and Greasy Dogs.
‘‘It’s the port, that’s why they’ve all set up here,’’ Bridges says, in a clear reference to the drug trade.
Swinging his SUV around to pull up opposite the Filthy Few headquarters, he points out its proximity to the Headhunters just around the corner.
The HQs are often behind legit-enough gyms – fronts for recruiting and money laundering as well as being places people go to genuinely work out.
Patched members saunter slowly outside. It’s intimidating and intentionally so. There is screeds of academic research that shows stigmatisation, inequality, a lack of the educational opportunities and other forms of discrimination all play a role in creating the environment in which gangs thrive.
And it would be naive to think that, generally, gang business is not organised crime – the most lucrative trade being in drugs. Bridges says he can trace in his old trial diary the rough time when methamphetamine came on the scene.
Ain’t no ‘two-bit slick’ lawyer
Those old court diaries also provide insights into Bridges himself.
His handwriting is atrocious, the chicken-scratch scrawl of a time-pressed, intermediate-through-to-senior prosecutor. But one with the fastidiousness to keep a consistent diary for more than five years from 2002.
Case names, charges, types of hearings and the role Bridges played in each – it’s a stack of pages that show the trajectory of a career of a young Oxford-educated lawyer who would be trying the cases against some of New Zealand’s most notorious criminals.
And it also illustrates a marked escalation in the types of crimes Bridges would go on to lead the prosecution for. Fairly stock standard charges of male assaults female, cultivation of cannabis and assault with a weapon give way to grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, attempt to pervert the course of justice, rape, murder.
But it was a case of kidnapping that would leave an imprint on Bridges for the rest of his life. ‘‘I believe to this day he is one of New Zealand’s worst criminals,’’ Bridges says of Tony Robertson. ‘‘I’ve done many cases but I just remember that and I remember him, because he was quite scary actually. You could just tell.’’ Robertson had abducted a young girl, sparking a city-wide hunt. On the intuition of hero-cop Sergeant Dave Thompson, Robertson and the girl were found at a remote waterfall.
He was on top of the 6-year-old, and was stopped just in time.
‘‘I can always remember her on that day in trial, to this day,’’ Bridges says. ‘‘She told me that: that man stole me.’’ Bridges argued for preventive detention – a sentence that could keep a prisoner in jail indefinitely, if it was required. The judge would not write off a 19-year-old offender as a lost cause, and so Robertson was sentenced to eight years.
When he was eventually released, and while on parole, he would go on to kill Auckland woman Blessie Gotingco.
In the case of Reihana, Bridges describes it as a ‘‘crime of passion’’, indicating Reihana is not in the same class of offender as Robertson.
But the details of the case are no less chilling. A man, enraged that his ex had moved on with another man, drove for hours armed with three knives and a murderous intent. He invaded their house in such a rage that the terrified victims tried to flee by jumping through a closed second-storey window but died of their stab wounds.
‘‘I remember being in and around the house with the police. I remember the detail they were getting into – the blood, the pictures. I can still see the faces of the victims and what they had gone through.’’
Bridges says he can also remember the photos showing their torn skin on the broken window they jumped through.
Reihana was sentenced to 21 years, non-parole.
But it was perhaps one particularly seedy case, which never made it to trial, that Bridges draws on to explain why tough bail laws are important to him.
It’s the seemingly underbelly killing of a man nicknamed ‘‘Granite’’.
The meth cook, who apparently became a bit too demanding, is alleged to have been executed by his boss at pointblank range. Shortly after the killing, allegedly by Tauranga businessman Brett Ashby, he and an associate drove the body of Grant Adams to a Taupo work site, dug a deep grave and burnt the body inside before burying him.
It was a crime that was uncovered by ‘‘outstanding’’ police work, and by a key witness who came forward, Bridges says.
‘‘That’s a case that shows quite clearly the need for strong rules, strong bail laws.
‘‘Because methamphetamine cases – if the accused gets bail, quite often you find you no longer have witnesses and people disappear and they’re not prepared to give evidence,’’ he says. ‘‘Because they know they’re dealing with an underworld, a world where bad things are done to those who speak up.’’
Frustrated by law
In that national discussion about law and order, Bridges comes from a unique place.
He spent years immersed in the hard end of crime.
But eventually, the parameters of his role began to wear him down. ‘‘There’s no question when I look back, I was frustrated by law,’’ Bridges says.
‘‘I’m driven to do the right thing and achieve justice. But I saw in those cases I could do justice for an individual victim or a wha¯ nau, maybe even a bit broader than that.
‘‘But I couldn’t affect the rules of the game, if you like. The rules of criminal evidence and what is and isn’t admissible, the bail rules and so on.
‘‘And I did a lot of sexual abuse cases and I felt very strongly then, that justice wasn’t being done for victims.’’
It was a big push for Bridges to stand for Parliament in 2008. ‘‘Originally, I wanted to be the justice minister, so I could really achieve more justice across the criminal justice system.
‘‘Now that’s an ambition I never fulfilled. John Key had other ideas and put me more in an economic and infrastructure portfolio.’’
It’s about more than politics
It might be hard to claim Bridges doesn’t come from a genuine place when he talks tough on crime.
But he’s also a politician, and an astute one – surprising to those who might be guided by that ‘‘slow! staccato’’ courtroom cadence. ‘‘I want people to be really clear, this isn’t about politics. This is something I feel I have real experience in and there are clear right answers that keep people safe,’’ he says.
But the desire of successive governments to be seen to be tough on crime has been the main driver of the increasing prison population.
More sentences, longer sentences and more remand prisoners have all added up to a burgeoning prison muster.
Perhaps one of the biggest single changes occurred under the last government, of which Bridges was a part, when bail laws were toughened in 2013 and the muster shot up.
Now, as the Government looks at possible areas for major reform, Labour and National are locked in a battle over how to reduce prisoner numbers and the potential outcome of building a new prison that most official forecasts suggest doesn’t come close to being big enough.
‘‘What my experience in cases like Robertson, Reihana and others shows me is that if you have softer bail laws, sentencing laws and parole laws like some of those proposed, what you’ll effectively do is make the system work less well and you’ll see more crime, more victims,’’ he says.
But the ‘‘easy option’’ was no option. ‘‘That doesn’t work for me, and I don’t think it works for most New Zealanders because it may mean fewer people in jails, but ultimately mean more crime on the streets.’’