Police to target guncarrying criminals
AUCKLAND: Organised crime and gang members with firearms will be targeted by police over the next six months in response to an apparent escalation in gun violence.
For years, frontline police have warned about the increasing number of illegal firearms being seized in raids, particularly for drug investigations, and the risk those weapons pose to staff.
While New Zealand’s criminals have long carried firearms to intimidate one another, police and underworld sources say criminals are more willing to use them at present.
This apparent escalation is put down to the arrival of motorcycle gangs such as the Comancheros and Mongols, following the deportation of senior members from Australia, where turf wars are far more common.
The establishment of new players has ratcheted up tension with existing gangs, particularly over control of the lucrative methamphetamine and cocaine trade, but those crimes often go unreported unless the violence spills into the public, or the consequences are fatal.
Most notably in the past 12 months, there have been titfortat shootings in suburban Auckland and Christchurch and an episode in Tauranga where 96 rounds were fired into a gang leader’s house.
Five children were inside the house watching television.
“We see that as a very undesirable shift in our criminal landscape,” Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said in announcing Operation Tauwhiro, which will be carried out across all 12 police districts over the next six months.
“While this is predominantly an issue between gangs and organised crime groups, people are dying and that’s not OK. And, understandably, that causes fear in our communities.
‘‘People should not have to live in an environment with this level of violence around them.”
Ten years ago, 1735 people were charged with 2828 firearms offences and 860 firearms were confiscated.
Last year, 2399 people were charged with 4552 offences and 1862 firearms were seized.
The New Zealand Herald also asked for data showing how many of those offences were committed by gang members, or their associates, but this was not supplied before the publishing deadline.
At a practical level, Mr Coster said each of the police districts would be expected to gather intelligence on individuals using firearms and prioritise those investigations.
There would be a particular focus on how firearms were being illegally supplied to gang members and organised crime individuals.
Most illegal firearms in the criminal hands were stolen from legitimate gun owners, but one trend in gun violence was the use of starter pistols, which are readily available for athletic events, modified to fire live ammunition, Mr Coster said.
There were also regular examples of firearms licence holders legitimately buying firearms, then selling them on the black market.
The impending reintroduction of a national firearms register where individual firearms, not just the owner, were recorded in a centralised database would help end this practice, he said.
The register was scrapped in the 1980s, but a new one was announced as part of widespread gun law reform following the Christchurch mosque shootings in which 51 people were murdered on March 15, 2019.
Another loophole closed following the terrorist attack was the ability to legally buy a semiautomatic rifle such as an AR15 with the most basic A category licence type.
All semiautomatic firearms were banned following the terrorist attack and the Government spent $102 million on a buyback scheme, in which more than 60,000 firearms were surrendered.
Most of those firearms would likely have come from legitimate gun owners, not criminals, critics of the gun law changes say.
Mr Coster conceded there was no way of knowing how many weapons were still circulating in the underworld.
While Operation Tauwhiro would be targeting organised crime and gangs, he was also keenly aware of the potential impact on enforcement on families and the wider community, Mr Coster said.
Police staff were expected to work with iwi and partner agencies, such as Oranga Tamariki, as well as NGO social service providers and churches to help address the underlying causes of violence and organised crime, he said. — The New Zealand Herald