‘Vicious attack’ by Black Power gang puts two in hospital

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 2

‘Vicious attack’ by Black Power gang puts two in hospital

PA Auckland Otahuhu detectives arrested two men last evening in connection with what they described as an “unprovoked and vicious attack” on three men waiting at a taxi rank on Thursday evening. Two South Auckland men were charged with assault and will appear in the Magistrate’s Court at Otahuhu today. ‘An Otara freezing worker; Makuiaa Mati, aged 28, was sfill recovering from his injuries in Middlemore Hospital last evening. 'Mr Mati and two of his friends were allegedly □onched, kicked, and beaten with fence palings near the Star Hotel, Otahuhu, by 12 rrfen. Mr Mati suffered a fracr tired skull, and one of his companions required hospital treatment for injuries. Mr Mati was reported to bi in a satisfactory condition. "The police said the two men had been standing at a taxi rank with another man a( 10.15 pun. when one of the three accidentally bumped into a group of gang members walking past, about 12 of the gang turned on the men at the taxi rank. Detective Senior-Sergeant T- O. Tozer said fence pal- ■ rigs, a 1.2 m length of thick timber, fists, and boots were wielded by the attackers. One of the three men is believed to have escaped unharmed while the attackers concentrated on the other two. Mr Mati was knocked to the ground and then beaten

and kicked repeatedly. The police expect to make arrests. Members of the Auckland Head Hunter gang provoked a surprise yesterday by handing in weapons to the police, after Thursday’s walkout from the Ministerial talks in Wellington. The gang’s national president, Mr Wynyard Anaia, said yesterday there would be no peace pact with other gangs. His group had decided voluntarily to hand over weapons under the arms amnesty in a move to be separate from the Wellington “summit” talks. He said he walked out because the meeting did not include all gang leaders, as he was led to believe.

The Mongrel Mob was absent and other gangs brought along wives and advisers. “Today is the starting point,” Mr Anaia said. “Rifles could be going in once a week, but it is up to the members themselves.”

Among the weapons delivered to the Henderson Police Station yesterday were a brand-new .303 rifle and a new double-barrelled shotgun. Other weapons included baseball bats and clubs. In Wellington, the Council for Civil Liberties says it is appalled at gang violence and commiserates with the police. The council’s national secretary (Mr N. B. Dunning) said yesterday that the council believed the community should support the police, not only morally but with equipment and fac-

It believed! the basic cause of the gang problem was a social one Aid agreed with the comments made by the secretary of tfce Police Association (Dr R. A. Moodie), on Thursday. In an interview , Dr Moodie had said that the gang problem was a social one but that if society was content to let it develop into a major law-enforcement problem, it should be warned what type of law enforcement problem it was going to be. The Police Association had called on the Commissioner of Police (Mr R. J. Walton) to evaluate such things as tear-gas, Mace, rubber bullets, and sawn-off shot-guns, Dr Moodie said. Mr Dunning said that unless the community became more aware and more involved in combating the underlying social problems, the problems would increase. There would then be a very real danger that unreasonable and excessive methods would be used against the gangs. Mr Dunning said that one of those possible answers was firearms and that this would only escalate the problem. Mr Dunning said there had to be more money spent. “There is a lot of lip-ser-vice being paid to the problem but very little money is being used to treat the disease,” he said. An American psychiatrist said in Auckland that gangs should trade, in weapons rather than hand them over for nothing to the police. Profeissor Louis West, a psychiatrist who has made special studies of community violence and who is head of the psychiatry department at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that in return for their weapons gang members should be issued with athletics equipment and given suitable meeting places. Professor West is in New Zealand on a lecture tour for several weeks as guest of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of Australia and New Zealand. He said there had been successful transformations in some of the black ghettos of the United States where street violence had been channelled into basketball games.

But athletic gear should not be just “thrown down in a heap” and left for the gangs to make use of, he said. They would need programmes and specially trained community workers to help them with it. Oppressive sanctions against gangs did not work very well. The natural reaction of the community was to “come down hard” and punish them severely.