ROTORUA - Gangs are influencing courts and the community, a Rotorua District Court judge believes.
Judge Chris McGuire said, in sentencing a Black Power member to two years' jail, that he viewed with growing unease the influence of gangs on the lives and freedoms of ordinary people.
Their influence extended to the detection of crime and even the judicial process.
He was sentencing Michael Phillip Graham Yorke, aged 41, of Tauranga, for threatening to kill.
The court was told the threat was made about another gang member who happened to be a relative.
Judge McGuire said Yorke went to his cousin Adam Yorke's house in Rotorua with three other gang members, all wearing patches, in early August 1998.
He was told by his cousin to leave the property, and to leave his family alone. Yorke told his cousin he would never see his son again if he (the son) did not go back to the Black Power gang and that he was going to get "national Black Power to come and do away with the son."
The son was a Black Power member in Tauranga and wanted to get out of the gang. He was hiding from the gang at the time, in a nearby flat.
Judge McGuire said it took Yorke's cousin a year to make a statement about the incident.
Yorke had risen to sergeant in the Army and his criminal career did not begin until he left the service about nine years ago.
Judge McGuire said Yorke's threat "struck at the heart of another family."
- NZPA
Judge worried by influence of gangs
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