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Stuart Nash claims Labour Cabinet softened its gang asset seizure policy (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 9 months ago by Ilovethebomb to c/politics

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This was a fascinating read, it sounds like he disagreed with his colleagues on a number of issues. And given the election result, I'd say he was right, as law and order was something Labour was perceived as being very weak on.

Also, there's this, about Kiri Allan

"She believed it was anti-Māori and I thought that was absolute rubbish, because this was not targeting Māori in any way, it was targeting gangs.

"It doesn't matter what ethnicity a gang member is, they need to be held to account by society," Nash said.

Isn't assuming gang members are Maori kinda racist?

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[–] Xcf456 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Well there seem to be two main ways from what I've read:

throwing a disportionate amount of policing attention and resourcing at gangs, because in the public image they're scary brown people and highly visible, relative to other crimes like tax evasion, domestic violence etc
racial profiling, because the proposed definitions of what constitutes a 'gang' have to be so subjective that it's rife for abuse in its enforcement. The govt is apparently considering the colours red and blue, and the letter M for the purposes of the patch ban, for example. Police will inevitably use more signifiers than that when determine where and who to enforce it on.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

throwing a disportionate amount of policing attention and resourcing at gangs, because in the public image they're scary brown people

Do you have any experience with gangsters? They're not the type of people you want in your community. It doesn't matter if they're white, yellow, red, brown, black, or green. Gangsters typically engage in all of the behaviors that you want to eliminate in a healthy society. Gangs make money and obtain power through illegal activities such as drug dealing and trafficking, human trafficking, prostitution, extortion, and racketeering. They control their territories through violence, murder, and intimidation. We're on a truly terrible path as a society if we're willing to tolerate those activities from a group just because we're afraid of appearing racist.

[–] Ilovethebomb 2 points 9 months ago

because in the public image they're scary brown people and highly visible,

You do understand gangs make a concerted effort to be scary and highly visible, right? The nail that sticks up gets hammered.