Garth George: South Auckland's problem is everyone's problem

Community youth workers speak of a generation lost to gangs and drugs ... said a subheading in this newspaper on Tuesday in the wake of an outbreak of violence in South Auckland on Labour Day which left one man dead, two young men seriously injured in hospital and two cars mindlessly smashed.

If this is true, it is a tragedy of enormous proportions and a damning indictment of all of us who live in this sprawling metropolis and, indeed, in New Zealand as a whole.

But those of us who don't live in South Auckland read the Herald, murmur "tut tut" or "how awful", and go on eating our breakfasts, a pleasure, incidentally, denied to many of those who live in fear of the street gangs and their turf wars.

If we give the matter a second thought, we might tell ourselves that the police aren't doing their job and we need more of them; that the Government ought to do something; that Child, Youth and Family social workers are not doing their jobs (again) and nor are the churches; or even that it serves South Aucklanders right for living among so many of the poor and disadvantaged.

And many of us are the same people who applauded when one policeman, who had these young thugs taped and who wasn't averse to banging a few heads and, probably, kicking some arse, was hauled before the court for assault, convicted, and subsequently packed in his job.

And the milk-and-water judge who sentenced him had the temerity to talk about a "sick culture" in the police force when it's not the police culture that's sick, it's the law culture.

It's the law that gives many of these antisocial young morons the right to offend and then reoffend.

They might not be able to spell "the" or count above 10, but they know that the law as it stands makes the police powerless to deal with them; that even if they are run in they will be free in no time because they're under age.

They can recite the law chapter and verse, coached as they are by dim-witted state social workers and lawyers who blather on about the rights of the child and jump up and down at so much as a mention of anyone taking a firmer line with those who are likely to become long-term future clients.

These little horrors know, too, that the hands of the police are tied - once again by the law - and that the police officers are not allowed to administer summary justice with the judicial use of a truncheon or a steel-capped boot. It's a wonder the cops haven't started wearing their own handcuffs.

It seems to me that the treatment meted out so unjustly to Senior Sergeant Anthony Solomona could well be one of the triggers of this latest escalation in gang warfare and street crime in general.

Why wouldn't it? It was merely confirmation, if any were needed, that if young people get into trouble, it's the police who will be punished and not the smart-arsed young criminals.

As usual, the reaction of most of the rest of us is to go hell for leather and at great expense to treat the symptoms while studiously ignoring the causes.

We won't have a bar of it when some of us point out that the root of these problems is in things such as vicious, vulgar and violent rap music; video games in which the only aim is to kill and destroy; hours and hours of violence and sex on television and at the movies; schools in which teachers are as constrained as police when it comes to dealing with misbehaviour (although many wouldn't know how to discipline a child even if they could).

We don't, or won't, understand that many of these children have been brought up in homes in which they are considered just a nuisance and an expense, who get in the way of their parents' inclination to smoke pot or get pissed, or, in some cases, to scrabble for a dollar for as many hours of as many days as work is available.

Is it any wonder these youngsters join or form gangs?

Their yearning for acceptance, for fellowship with others, must be so desperate that it's painful. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they are human beings to whom loneliness is as abhorrent as a vacuum is to nature.

There are those who say that we need to start from the bottom up and get at these children through kindergartens, primary and secondary schools.

Good idea on the surface, but how do you get through to children whose understanding of language, be it English or their native tongue, is so poor as to severely limit their ability to comprehend?

And who, by the same token, are so inarticulate that they are unable to express in words their needs, their desires, their concerns or anything else that might help us to understand them and who instinctively resort to violence to get their point across.

I go along with the respected community youth worker Sully Paea, who avers that the solution has to come from the community.

It's not just the South Auckland community either, because these youth problems are simmering one way or another in just about every Auckland street and suburb.

Mr Paea challenged community leaders, including churches, to stop simply talking about the problems and start acting. Not good enough. If the answer is down to the community, then that's all of us - including you and me.