Heather du Plessis-Allan: I agree with the Chief Science Advisor's position on gangs

Here’s hoping Police National Headquarters is listening to the Government’s Chief Science Advisor following her report into gangs.

Because by the looks of things... she’s taking a stronger position on gangs than they are.

This might surprise you, because Juliet Gerrard is, after all, the Chief Science Advisor to the Labour Government, who just got endorsed by the Mongrel Mob’s Harry Tam.

And it’s been a while since academia and the general public parted company on how to handle gangs.

But you might be pleasantly surprised to find you agree with her on some things, in particular when she said today: "We definitely need to tackle organised crime”.

To be fair- what she and the report are arguing is that police and authorities shouldn’t target gang members because they’re gang members, they should target them if they’re committing crimes.

Because if they just target the patch on the jacket, they only isolate the gang members more, fuel their distrust of authority, and bolster their numbers. But as the Chief Science Advisor has said, they must target organised crime.

The trouble is, that’s the opposite of what Police National Headquarters appear to be doing right now.  

Instead of cracking down on gangs because they’re gangs, they’re allowing gangs to get away with behaviour none of us would be allowed to get away with- because they’re gangs. 

Case in point: Ōpōtiki three weeks ago.

Where the gangs were committing offences in front of police and were not pulled up for that. The police stood by, taking photos and videos of gang members pulling wheelies and hanging out the car windows and sitting on the car roofs.

And the police will tell you that they are tracking the offenders down after the fact. About last count, they’d only impounded 3 cars and handed out 19 infringement notices.

And given that the crowd of gang members was 500 strong, I'm unimpressed.

I’m 100 percent fine if we take the approach recommended by the Chief Science Advisor. That we don’t target the gang members because they’re wearing a patch, and that we instead target their offending. 

Because that would be marked improvement on what we’ve got right now. Which is apparently letting them get away with the offending because they’ve got a patch on their backs.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.