Doing the gangster rap in Rotorua

Mongrel Mob member Tai Nuttall. Picture / Alan Gibson

Tai Nuttall's pet bulldogs don't look much like the one snarling away on the Mongrel Mob flag.

Javelin and Misla tumble out of the car wagging their tails. They look more interested in licking you to death than biting. Bulldogs may look ugly but they have a reputation for being gentle, not savage.

What's a Mob boss doing with them instead of pitbulls? The tattooed - but not particularly evil-looking - leader of the Mongrel Mob's Rotorua chapter gives a sideways look.

He has bulldogs obviously because bulldogs are the gang's insignia. They're on the patches on official jackets and the posters on Nuttall's garage wall.

"I just call her Jabby Girl, don't I, girl?" he says affectionately to one of the dogs. In the early days the breed was chosen as the Mob's symbol "probably for the vicious look".

Nuttall poses patiently for the photographer under the flag set up in his tidy lounge, his more agreeable side obscured by the weight of gang symbolism.

Rotorua police say we shouldn't be fooled by gang PR. The Mongrel Mob, they say, are the scum of the scum.

The "pigs", as Nuttall calls the police, have declared war on the Mongrel Mob.

In a new campaign of prolonged harassment the police are out to jail "key personalities" or drive them out of town.

Wanganui may be debating whether to ban gang patches in public places, but the war for control of Rotorua has already begun.

The police have had enough. They have had a gutsful of the armed robberies, burglaries, violence, weapons hauls, methamphetamine laboratories and other drug offences that they have traced back to the Mob.

Other gangs are being watched, but the Mob have been put on notice.

This is a reclaiming of the town. Police say crime has risen since the release of several prominent Mongrel Mob members over the past few years.

They have created themselves a business plan and are trying to rebuild their structure, busy recruiting young people.

At any one time the police have around six Mob names on a list.

As one member is arrested, another is targeted. If one is released from prison he goes back on the list.

The Weekend Herald is aware of some of the mob members police are watching.

Tai Nuttall is one. He has served time for armed robbery and two of his sons are known to the police.

Then there is Sam Cameron, one of nine Mongrel Mob members who went down for gang rape in 1992. And Malcolm Corbett, another of the gang rapists. In fact, all the rapists who are back in the area are being watched.

The list would include George Perham, if he was not already in Waikeria Prison.

But even in prison, the police keep watch on a man with Mob links who is said to be able to exert influence on criminals on the outside.

Late last year Perham allegedly assaulted three police officers and was considered so dangerous a special court hearing was held at the police cells.

Perham has been in and out of jail over the years and like many, "he really is doing life imprisonment by instalments", said one officer.

Police pull Mob members over for anything from minor traffic infringements to bail breaches, and drop around to their homes unannounced.

If a suspected methamphetamine lab is found or the police believe guns are involved, they call in the armed offenders squad. They say the Mob are not so brave face down in the dirt with a gun in the back of the head.

But this is not a quick crackdown. Police plan to wage this war indefinitely until the Mob stop offending.

Tai Nuttall calls it harassment. The police call it a stake in the ground.

In a town with a reputation of being ruled by the Mongrel Mob, its members are surprisingly hard to find. And when some are found, they do not want to talk.

Gone is the day of the big gang pad.

That burnt down after the gang rape and the Mob is scattered throughout Rotorua's low-decile suburbs while the tourists peel off into the nice motels and hotels and eat tourist-style hangi.

Nuttall does talk though, after an unscheduled visit to his modest rental home, where he is under the bonnet trying to fix his car. He can do without the police harassment, he says. He has had to leave two houses because of the police and his car is pulled over two or three times a day. "At the moment I'm having a hard enough problem trying to live a daily life, going through every day being judged."

Nuttall says he is not the leader of the Rotorua chapter, he is just a member. The group is run by committee.

He says it is not true that the Mongrel Mob is the worst, most violent gang, but the police don't like them because they cannot control them.

He works hard and says every time the police come around he is working on his car.

"I've worked all my life; forestry, logging. That's not an easy job."

He does not say much about his boys, but "It's not like I'm telling them how to do it ... Kids will be kids, teenagers will be teenagers. I've told my kids all their life, 'I was in jail, don't go down that road I went down, son'.

"I don't even want them to do crime. I tell you what, they don't have to do crime. I'm trying to teach them how to grow potatoes ... "

I ask if he has any guns inside. "Yeah, water pistol maybe."

Nuttall's philosophy on life and the Mongrel Mob - he is a 20-year veteran - goes like this: "If the brother's over there with all his family having a good day, good on him.

"If the brother's down the road beating someone up, good on him. What goes around comes around.

"It's up to each individual how they want to live their life. Why mock people? Life to me is about being happy, enjoying it and if the brother over next door wants to be a Christian, that's his priority, that's his life, and if the brother over here wants to be gay, good on him. I don't judge no one."

Asked about his comment that beating someone up is okay, he says that's how it was in the old days.

"That's how we survived as Maori. It's passed on to us through our blood - ancestors, tipuna. I don't judge no one, I keep my shit to myself, I try not to hurt anyone but if someone's going to hurt me, I'm going to stick up for myself."

When one of his boys said he wanted to be in the Mongrel Mob, Nuttall told him to stay in school.

"I said the only way you'll be able to help us will be [as] a lawyer."

Acting Rotorua Area Commander, Inspector Steve Bullock sits behind his desk in his lavender-coloured office at the Rotorua Police Station.

He feels pretty good about Operation Monkey because it seems to be working.

He didn't pick the lavender colour - he's only been in Rotorua a year - but isn't lavender supposed to be a soothing colour? he asks.

"They say if you go along the spectrum of the rainbow red is the most aggressive colour and violet is the most passive."

The Mongrel Mob favours red, the colour of aggression. Just look out for people wearing red in the city and surrounding suburbs and you will spot the Mob, he says.

But there is not much red and no sign of patches this week. This is because Operation Monkey has been going for several weeks and the Mob are lying low.

"It's about ownership," Bullock says. "When gang members feel confident enough to wear patches and to move around the town freely, well for me it's a pretty good signal they're feeling in control."

In February police found the Mob were responsible for 50 per cent of all burglaries in Rotorua.

It's not a huge number of people - Bullock reckons of three or four groups, about 15 or 20 people are the main offenders - but they commit a huge amount of crime.

In the first week of Operation Monkey 14 Mob members were arrested and burglary and vehicle crime halved, a good start. But there is another point to Operation Monkey. It is to remove what Bullock calls the Robin Hood syndrome where young people look at patched members as folk heroes.

"They look up and they say, 'Hey, he's cool, he's always got beer or drugs or cars or this and that', so by taking those people out and making their life uncomfortable we hope to take away the romance of being a gang member."

It may take a long time, but Bullock says police will give it a long time.

He makes no apology if the gang feels it is being harassed. It is being harassed.

"My staff won't be breaking any laws in pursuing these people. Stop committing crime and we won't harass you."

Senior Sergeant Dennis Murphy comes into the lavender office for a chat and takes the boss's chair.

Murphy co-ordinates who the patrols will visit each day. Police have no fear of gangs, he says.

Some are unpredictable but others are "gutless wimps". Besides, the police have the armed offenders squad.

"We're dealing with big, armed, organised criminals and they don't respond to bloody afternoon tea and crumpets. They respond to firm and hard policing and there's plenty of that to go around.

"You know, if gang members are the scum of the earth then as far as I'm concerned the Mongrel Mob are the scum of the scum. They're just vicious thugs."

Like many New Zealand towns, Rotorua has had a gang culture for decades and Murphy does have some sympathy for young members who want to get out but cannot.

He says the police have relocated some people, and anyone wanting out can contact them at any time.

Many of the young men coming up have seen extreme violence in and outside the home. They have been reared on drug use and alcohol abuse, they have been educated through video games and violent and pornographic movies and that is all they know.

"As a result of that we're dealing with 14- and 15-year-olds that are carrying guns. They want to be associated with the Mob, their role models are Mongrel Mob members and they want to be part of that gang culture.

"They think they're living out some sort of video game fantasy, that's all it is, they sit around smoking dope and P and bloody playing video games and that's their distorted view of reality and then they get hold of guns and they think that's all part and parcel of it that they can light up a street with a shooter," says Murphy.

P is not helping them - although it is helping the police. Murphy says P will cause the gang culture to be eroded. P wrecks minds and bodies and police can exploit that.

Gang members who are drug addicts are easier to get information from, are more willing to give up their associates.

"They get loose, they get untidy, they make mistakes and we just pick them off one by one, which is what we're doing."

Are the Mongrel Mob all bad? Slim, blonde Teresa Scally is behind the bar at The Lakehouse, a gang hang-out from way back with fantastic views of Lake Rotorua. We've got to get out of this place by the Animals plays on the jukebox as half a dozen old timers drink Happy Tuesday $5 jugs of beer. It's late afternoon.

Scally thinks about the question and comes up with the surprising answer: "They're lovely." She qualifies it later but says there is another side to the Mob.

They have not been in so much lately but she says they have always supported her in any sort of trouble and she has supported them as human beings.

"I've met the big bosses just by fluke. I didn't know they were the big bosses. I've met the worst of them, the very worst of them and unfortunately that drug P has got most of them.

"They haven't laid a finger on me, they haven't threatened me, they haven't stolen from me and up until about a year ago they were here; this is where they feel safe."

The Green, Green Grass of Home now plays as she says, "Sure, they can be nasty and bad ... "

But in this town, she says, there are so many unwanted children and lost teenagers, they have nothing else to gravitate to.

Another woman who knows Mongrel Mob members says they don't drink in the pubs any more; they drink in their own homes.

They move about town without their patches and you can't tell they are Mob. They hold down jobs, trying to keep it quiet.

"It's hard because they are trying to get on with their lives but their patch will always be there. I know bouncers that work in Rotorua and they're patched members and you wouldn't think so ... I never told you that."

The Mob are lovely people on the inside "but when they've got their patches on and alcohol and drugs inside them they're different, they're not the same people. They're nasty."

If you really want to interview a patched member go to the courthouse, she says.

At the courthouse there are no patches but there are some young men wearing red. One with tattoos who looks a likely candidate says politely he is not a Mob member but thank you for asking.

Outside a bar on Thursday morning a young man comes out for a smoke. Asked if he is Mongrel Mob, he grins and waves his hand in the Mob sign - thumb and little finger up, the middle fingers down. But his brain seems scrambled and he won't talk.

Convicted rapist Sam Cameron is polite on the phone, "Sure, mate." He would be happy to talk face to face but at the moment he's out of town.

Another of the gang rapists tracked down won't talk. He has turned his life around and wants to leave the past in the past.

In Christchurch a 31-year-old sociology student is writing a thesis about gangs in New Zealand. Jarrod Gilbert has hung with gang members, including Mob members, for about four years. He says the Mob is New Zealand's biggest gang, a third bigger than the Black Power. They have a fierce reputation, and yes, they can be incredibly violent.

But they can be hospitable and funny and doting parents too.

"Banning patches won't get rid of gangs, it will just drive them underground, he says.

Gangs form out of communities which are poor and marginalised.

"If we choose not to solve the problems in those communities we can't complain about gangs because they're natural consequences."

Back in Rotorua the police pose for their photograph, arms folded, staunch in front of rows of mugshots of Mongrel Mob targets on the wall behind them.

This is a war neither side wants to lose - the question is, who will win?

Mob Crime

Incidents police blame on the Mongrel Mob.

March

Rifles, sawn-off shotguns and hundreds of AK47 rounds found in raid of a mob house.

Shots fired reportedly by two mob prospects, one aged only 14.

Suspected methamphetamine laboratory discovered, allegedly being run by men with mob connections.

Thousands of dollars worth of stolen goods, including a caravan, found in a raid of a mob house.

This month

Mob prospects suspected in spate of burglaries in Ngongotaha.

Three Branches

Rotorua has three branches of the Mongrel Mob, known as chapters - Rotorua, Aotearoa and Rogue.

Each chapter has a hierarchy of patched members at the top, younger "prospects" wanting to become patched members, and many associates.