Editorial: Forfeiting their right to freedom

Events  of the past week suggest Hawke's Bay has a problem rapidly moving beyond our capacity to control.

Mindless acts of thuggery and other lawlessness by youths claiming gang affiliations have made headlines since New Year's Day when a 24-year-old man was stabbed in Napier for having the audacity to be wearing a red T-shirt.

The attack at the intersection of Kennedy Rd and McDonald St in the early hours of New Year's Day was, police suspect, committed by young men whose skewed allegiance is to the Black Power colour of blue. Fuelled by booze, they are quite prepared to stab an innocent person for wearing red, the colour of the rival Mongrel Mob.

On the same day in Gisborne, a 27-year-old woman was stabbed in a similar unprovoked attack by youths shouting gang slogans.

We did not have to wait long for the next instalment. On Wednesday afternoon, nine youths wearing gang colours surrounded a 21-year-old woman in Wairoa and menaced her for money and cigarettes. Some of her attackers were as young as 12.

So much for a New Year of hope. What we have is a New Year of more of the same - the same shameful violence committed by spineless young thugs who we have the misfortune to live with.

Hawke's Bay citizens are not without sympathy and understanding and they have launched all manner of community initiatives in the name of a safer and more inclusive society.

But crime after crime has shown that no amount of community patrols, youth aid, marae programmes, police intervention, council committees or sausage sizzles are ever going to change a sector of our population.

Anyone who is prepared to stab or assault an innocent person for walking along the road wearing a T-shirt of a particular colour has, in our view, forfeited their right to live amongst us.

The judiciary, including the Youth Court, needs to lock these people away.