Dave Letele isn’t a big one for secrets. In the first episode of his documentary series Heavyweight, the rugby league player and boxer-turned-community-advocate revealed – to anyone who didn’t know already – that his father had been a Mongrel Mob leader. In the second one-hour instalment, Patched, he goes looking for what that means.
The first episode, Down and Out, screened a year ago and was about addiction. Like that episode, Patched brings in expert commentary but is founded on Letele sitting opposite people with a story to tell. Intriguingly, the sympathetic interviewer chooses to open with his least sympathetic subject.
Headhunters member Calen Morris says joining the gang “actually saved my life … it made me a man, a made man”, but comes across as twitchy and arrogant. “Nobody tells me what to do … and if it’s a crime, get fucked,” he brags, flashing the finger at the camera. You can almost hear the nation taking collective umbrage.
Having warned us that gang membership is “far more complex than the stereotypes the media tell us”, Letele seems to have served up the stereotypical gang member. The rest of the programme holds up the stereotype to the light.
Clinical psychologist Armon Tamatea explains that gangs offer “pre-packaged identities” and that, “There are narratives, there are symbols that go with gang identities in Aotearoa that can be strong and compelling for young people who are going through those volatile changes.”
Former police detective Rob Lemoto agrees. “But when they get inside there, they soon realise that they’re in for a world of hurt.”
Again, it’s the personal stories that ground the expert commentaries. Wairoa Mongrel Mob member Bronson recalls that at school, when “some of the boys wanted to be All Blacks, my vision was this.” Lemeki, a head boy at his school, looked a good prospect for a professional rugby career, but when he couldn’t crack that, turned to the Comancheros as the only other path to success, if success is defined as having money.
Another former Comanchero, Nova, reflects on a violent childhood but says he got seriously involved with the gang only after being shipped to New Zealand as a 501 deportee. “[When] I needed a quick fix, I was lost, I needed someone to help me.” Gang life delivered money and glamour, but also “a lot more anxiety … a lot more looking over your shoulder”.
“Gang members kill themselves at a rate absolutely out of whack with the rest of the population,” says Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. He’s talking about suicide.
There is some peril of the gang members being interpreted here as the primary victims and it’s partially dispelled by the story of Zania, who was trapped for 16 years in a shockingly violent relationship with a local Mob leader. Those most at risk from harm from gang members are actually those closest to them. Around half of the serious violent offences committed by gang members happen in the home, says Letele.
His own father, who was put into state care at the age of 10 and patched when he was 15, sent Letele to Australia to live with his grandparents at the age of 5. “I’m not sure what the outcome would have been had you not gone,” he tells his son.
Patched suggests that the gang problem will persist as long as the social and economic inequity that makes gang life attractive does but can’t itself point to a way there. What it does convey is that very few people who have come through gang life want that for their own.
At the end of the programme, Letele comes back to Calen, the cocky Headhunter, and asks if he’d like his own son to follow his path. “Oh, no,” he says quickly. “He’ll be the prime minister. He’s gonna be the prime minister.”
Heavyweight with Dave Letele: Patched screens on TVNZ 2 at 8.45pm on Thursday, August 1, and on TVNZ+.
