S Canty bucks trend of gang membership growing

South Canterbury does not have a great deal of gang-related crime, according to Mid-South Canterbury area commander Inspector Dave Gaskin.

‘‘South Canterbury, like many other places, has a smattering of gang members,’’ he said following the release of figures which show a national increase in patched and prospect gang members.

Figures released by Minister of Police Stuart Nash show the number of patched and prospect gang members in New Zealand is 6735, 480 of which are in Canterbury (an increase of 16.2 per cent from October 2017 to August 2019).

Figures were not available for South Canterbury specifically.

‘‘I have noticed that there have been people from different gangs turn up, their make-up has been changed somewhat, but I haven’t noticed a particular increase,’’ he said.

Gaskin said he couldn’t identify problem areas in South Canterbury and, although they might have problems with particular people at particular times, they didn’t have gang-related trouble on the scale of some North Island towns.

Local crime relating to gangs is mainly around the supply of illicit substances, and violence within a gang or between gangs as a result of drugs, but ‘‘generally, the activities of the gangs do not affect the general community very much’’, he said.

‘‘I think any gang establishment in the community has to be dealt with by the community. It’s not a role for one group or another and it’s certainly not the role of the police.

‘‘We would never prevent gangs coming into Timaru, we will work with them where we can to limit the effect on the community.’’

Total patched and prospect gang members (October 2017August 2019):

Auckland City 230 (18.6 per cent increase)

Bay of Plenty 1380 (30.4 per cent increase)

Canterbury 480 (16.2 per cent increase)

Central 640 (30.1 per cent increase)

Counties/Manukau 760 (21.4 per cent increase)

Eastern 1041 (30 per cent increase)

Northland 376 (-2.3 per cent decrease)

Southern 217 (61.9 per cent increase)

Tasman 124 (82.4 per cent increase)

Waikato 556 (44 per cent increase)

Waitemata¯ 369 (22.6 per cent increase)

Wellington 556 (14.6 per cent increase)