Vortex of gang violence is widening

First a double homicide, then a bullet-riddled police chase that has children running for cover before the fleeing, firing driver is fatally shot.

At the cinema, such things are the stuff of tedious gangster-movie cliche. New Zealand life is alarmingly imitating B-grade cinema. And nobody is about to call ‘‘Cut!’’ any time soon.

Many’s the time that citizens have bitterly voiced the wish that rival gangs would just take themselves away to some private setting, have it out, and whatever the outcome of the isolated carnage the rest of society will be left feeling untroubled.

Now that really is pure fantasy. It does not work like that at all. The violence happens in our communities, around innocents.

And it feeds itself, recruiting as it goes. It is always easier to picture the rapacious gang overlords than the families of those on the periphery of gangland activity, and their own families.

Outside the traumatic incidents, large numbers of adults and children who are just trying to live their lives have to do so with a sense of mounting unease and menace. It is oppressive and horribly destabilising for those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And New Zealand has increasing numbers of wrong places, in these increasingly wrong times.

The double homicide in Omanawa on February 11, followed two days later by the police shooting dead a fleeing and firing driver in nearby Tauranga, have made this an inglorious week, perhaps mitigated by the following day’s arrest of a Bay of Plenty man in Christchurch.

Police hope the public will find the arrest reassuring. Well, it is a significant development in terms of this particular spasm but the matrix of gang violence is far from confined to a few individual players.

Australia’s ‘‘Section 501’’ deportations have been linked to the Mongols gang setting up chapters in Bay of Plenty and Christchurch.

Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell has described a climate of fear and anger resulting.

He adds, tellingly: ‘‘Until we cut the head off the meth monster, gang money will continue to be as big as it is.’’

It is hardly as though the rest of the country can, should, or does feel isolated from these troubles.

It is, as Powell describes it, a national issue.

It is going to be a real issue in the upcoming election and National, in particular, has been hammering the message that the Government is soft on crime – highlighting ministerial opposition to its proposed firearms prohibition orders, intended to give police greater powers to get guns out of the hands of gangs.

How effective such measures would be is a matter for legitimate debate but there can be little doubt that given the deeply worrying rise in gang-specific problems there is increasing public appetite for gangspecific legislation.

Most of the solutions have more to do with resourcing police to enforce existing law, rather than artfully creating new ones.

However, many voters are so used to announced increases in police funding that they may regard any further measures along those lines as just the same-old, same-old.

As things stand, you will be looking far and wide to find someone who really believes we are getting on top of the gang problem.

Real electoral rewards await the party that convinces the public it can turn this around.