Coromandel community meeting on gang violence gets heated

A meeting organised by the National Party in the Coromandel quickly turned heated when discussing the rising gang tensions in their community after a weekend of violence.

National’s spokesman for police Mark Mitchell spoke to approximately 100 concerned Coromandel residents this evening regarding the increase in gang violence in their corner of the country.

Locals were left fearful after the Rebels gang spent the weekend attacking and terrorising people in the town centre.

According to the neighbourhood business group, since Friday, there have been attacks on members of the public, intimidation of business owners, and several thefts.

A woman who had been on the scene of one of the violent attacks and helped the victim was petrified of the repercussions.

“I stopped because I wanted to stop, but now I am thinking should I have stopped?,” she asked while worrying about her face and car registration going viral on social media.

The aunty of one of the victims took issue with the community’s lack of action and said if they all banded together they could help prevent the attacks.

She did not trust the political systems and police in New Zealand to stop the influx of gangs.

“The president is from this area, he probably got his patch when national was in last,” she said.

“You know, there’s these few women up here that were actually here and they were too scared to, you know, interfere in what was happening and I get it, it’s fair,” she said.

“But if we all stood up at the same time, [the gangs] would probably would be scared.”

When addressing the crowd, which quickly became quite heated, he said there has allegedly been a 70 per cent increase in patched members over the last six years.

“This is not an isolated incident, this is happening right throughout the whole country,” Mitchell said.

“Over the last five or six years, the gangs have had a very permissive environment to operate in.”

National has plans in place to help prevent gang members with convictions from contacting each other, Mitchell said, similar to laws from our counterparts over the ditch.

He explained that if a patched member had a serious conviction in the last 10 years, their names would be put on a list. Each member of that list would be banned from calling, emailing or meeting with each other.

Mitchell did not go into detail on how this would be monitored by police.

The vice-chair of the business association Anne Louden took issue with the lack of police action in the area.

“We have a police house that is empty over there,” she said.

“We’re all fed up with it and we actually do need to get something sorted.”

Louden told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning the town was “really shocked” by the weekend’s events, with several videos doing the rounds on social media.

One incident on Saturday night at the local hotel had left her “appalled by the brutal violence and lack of humanity these people seem to have”.

The perpetrators seemed to believe there would be no repercussions, she said.

Gangs - not just the Rebels - were a common sight in the town as she believed there was some “nasty distribution business” happening nearby.

“We’re sick to death of it up here.”

Louden blamed the increase in gang violence on people being deported to New Zealand and left without support, which led to them turning to gangs.

Rachel Maher is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. She has worked for the Herald since 2022.