Mongrel Mob takes P message to heart

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Cannabis smoke hung in the air after an anti-drug hui aimed at the notorious Mongrel Mob, but gang leaders are considering drawing a line against a far more noxious substance.

P, "pure" methamphetamine, was the undisputed enemy when more than 35 patched gang members responded to a challenge from Hawkes Bay Ngati Kahungungu elder and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples to turn their backs on the drug.

They agreed to hear him out at a Hastings Maori community centre at the weekend after he ranked the gang not far below the Hell's Angels as one of the main sponsors of the P trade.

Hardened gang members sat like attentive schoolchildren among about 100 people at the Taiwhenua o Heretaunga centre as slide after slide of emaciated and self-mutilated P addicts, including a cook who blew himself up in a bathtub explosion, flashed before them.

Heavily tattooed faces - some kept hooded and semi-masked - stared impassively through much of a two-hour barrage in which Dr Sharples and his team from Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland blamed P for tearing apart communities and families.

"We got involved because our whanau got involved [with P] and it broke up our family," he said. "So you get beautiful children growing up in our kohanga reo and kura kaupapa [Maori language schools] prostituting [for] money for their mothers' habits."

Dr Sharples told of the misery of a girl at his marae whose mother was having sex with Mongrel Mob members and anyone else from whom she could get money to repay a P debt.

Another girl, aged 14, tried to hang herself at school out of shame for prostituting herself to feed her mother's habit.

"It is destroying our Maori fabric and will destroy your group and whanau too - we are asking you to stop your involvement in this cash cow."

The mob stalwarts heard him out in silence, broken only by the chatter of their own high-spirited but well-presented children.

They showed no animosity even when one speaker, Andre Morris, admitted well into his presentation that he was a Waitakere police iwi liaison officer who felt "slightly outnumbered - but not uncomfortable among my own Maori people".

Mr Morris said P was being marketed to children as young as 9 in fruit-flavoured tablets and told how a mother on a speed binge failed to change her baby's nappy for two weeks until it had to be removed surgically with the surrounding skin.

Even the toughest-looking exteriors showed signs of anguish as the 17-year-old daughter of one of their own told the gang members of the awful responsibility of struggling to look after younger siblings with both parents behind bars for P-related offences.

"I came here because it hurts," said a sobbing Javelin Ngaronoa. "I never realised how much of a responsibility parents have. It's hard - not for myself, it's the kids."

Hastings Mob spokesman John Nepe-Apatu, who helped to co-ordinate the hui, introduced Javelin as a youngster trying to fill the role of both mother and father to her 15-year-old sister and 10-year-old brother while their parents faced seven years in prison.

"It brings me to tears because she's our niece, and she's not coping - we are losing our families to P," he said.

Mr Nepe-Apatu said Javelin's mother and Mongrel Mob father had been in custody for three months and her despair deepened the night before the hui when her sister was discovered "tampering with P".

The younger girl was now staying with relatives and he told the Herald that the gang's 60-member Hastings chapter would help the family financially.

Hastings gang president Claude Kahika admitted having used P for several years in two stretches until giving it up eight months ago.

But the 44-year-old said he was confident of staying off the substance to keep a "clear mind" to lead the chapter in new directions.

"We have always taken from our culture and never given anything back but I myself am a grandfather and want to give something back which benefits us and the community and our culture as well."

Mr Kahika said he had banned drug dealing from his clubhouse, leaving it to individuals to decide for themselves whether to be involved in the trade, and would consider with other mob leaders whether to take a harder line against P.

He denied that his chapter used drug profits to supplement membership fees, but said he could not speak for others, except to hope Dr Sharples' message rubbed off on them too.

Members of six other Mob chapters from Gisborne to Wellington attended the hui, and a Petone member said he would take the message home as he would not tolerate anyone selling P to his six children.

He said he was unable to bring himself to eat after the hui, remaining too upset by Javelin's predicament. "It touched me there," he said, thumping his chest.

But some others retired to the centre's carpark after lunch to unwind by "spliffing up" on marijuana, just out of sniffing range of Mr Morris and a fellow policeman, although there was no sign of P in the immediate neighbourhood.

Dr Sharples thanked the gang members for taking "a big first step" and urged the wider community and Government agencies to support them in finding alternative incomes to the lucrative P trade.

A national scourge

* A record 200 methamphetamine laboratories were uncovered nationwide last year - 33 times more than were found five years ago.

* New Zealand police were involved in the seizure in Fiji last month of enough chemicals to make $1 billion of the drug.

* The hui heard of children as young as 9 being sold P in fruit-flavoured tablets.