Organised crime gaining foothold in NZ -
police
15 February 2005
By COLIN MARSHALL
The Police Association warned today that organised crime is gaining
a foothold in New Zealand, largely due to the production of
methamphetamine, P and ice.
But even stamping those out won't be enough to get rid of the
problem, association president Greg O'Connor said.
He told NZPA the association wanted a commission of inquiry to try
and determine the scale of the organised crime problem.
Traditional enemy gangs were working alongside each other for
profit, people were becoming multi-millionaires from crime and worse
was to come when the market began to fill up and gangs began to
fight for territory, Mr O'Connor warned.
The problem had started when biker gangs had jumped into an
organised crime vacuum to produce and deal in methamphetamine, then
pure methamphetamine (P) or its more concentrated form ice.
"The biker gangs have become heavily involved in the methamphetamine
trade right around the world - in the United States, Australia and
Europe. However it has caused problems over there because you've
always had existing organised crime," he said.
"In New Zealand we've never had organised crime so these guys are
filling a vacuum. So we've now got organised crime where none
existed before."
He said a side effect had been a lowering in street violence between
gangs because it was bad for business. "There's nothing attracts
police attention like violence and street violence. Plus there's
been plenty (of business) for everybody."
Mr O'Connor said the white motorcycle gangs and the other gangs had
put aside there traditionally enmity only to do business. "There's
plenty of evidence that, for example, the Mongrel Mob are dealing
with the white motorcycle gangs throughout the country ...
(including) the Hell's Angels and the Headhunters in Auckland. And
you've got the new thing which are the Chinese gangs."
Although the gangs were now working alongside each other, Mr
O'Connor warned that as business was squeezed, competition would
begin to be dealt with in the "traditional" methods of organised
crime.
He said the biker gangs in New Zealand had historically been
involved in drugs but that was mostly cannabis.
"Because of the nature of New Zealand it's so easy for anyone to go
out and grow cannabis and get hold of it - the gangs never had a
hold on (the entire market). It's a very different thing with
methamphetamine."
He said gang members had never been allowed to use heroin because
they knew how dangerous it was but the same had not been true for
methamphetamine.
The Police Association had been warning since the mid-1990s that
methamphetamine would become a major problem.
"The most important commodity in the early days was cooks. The gangs
used to kidnap each others cooks and hold them to ransom to get the
cooking," Mr O'Connor said.
"The ingredients were quite easy to come by. The big difference
between methamphetamine and every other drug is that it doesn't
require anything to be grown.
"You compare that with cannabis, cocaine, heroin - they all require
crops. Methamphetamine doesn't. Methamphetamine is `grown' from what
were, particularly in the 1990s, legal substances. It's a matter of
turning a whole pile of legal substances into an illegal substance."
Now that there had been a clamp down on the ingredients like
pseudoephedrine from flu drugs things were changing.
"The gangs have now gone to another stage of organisation by
importing not only the core ingredients but latterly importing the
actual made up drug."
