Front-line witnesses to our tide of violence

Is New Zealand becoming a more violent society? Yes, says one group of people - and they should know. They are ambulance officers.

They will be first on the scene when a party-goer has been bashed almost to death with a plank of wood, when a teenager has been struck deadly blows with a baseball bat, when a man has been dragged more than 2km under a car.

The frontline staff say the violence they are seeing is worse than ever.

Between 80 and 90 per cent of assaults now involve a weapon - usually a knife, metal piping or wood.

"In the past we've always been to people who have been smacked over, but it's the level of violence we're seeing - the extreme nature of it where people are beaten until they're dead rather than punched and left to it," says Murray Holt, an ambulance team manager at Mt Wellington.

Most of the injuries on a 20-year-old man at West Auckland party last weekend were caused while he was unconscious, police said.

Ambulance staff believe the people inflicting the horrific injuries cannot comprehend what they are doing, or simply do not care.

"They just don't understand what they're doing," says Carey Dobbs, team leader of the St John Ambulance Specialist Emergency Response Team.

"They'll beat someone to death and . ... they don't appear to care, which is quite frightening."

Mr Dobbs, who covers the South Auckland area, says that attitude exists in the youth gang culture.

"My personal feeling is it's a culture of 'Let's blame someone else', 'It's my upbringing', 'It's a lack of money', 'I've got no education'.

"But I don't think people are taking personal responsibility for themselves so they get into this gang culture where this sort of thing is accepted, and it's an easy way out. You don't have to have any standards."

The violence is also being aimed at ambulance staff, who are now likely to wait for a police escort before going into a private house where someone has been injured.

Paramedics who went to a bashing at a party in Otara about three months ago were so frightened that they "threw" the patient into an ambulance and treated him down the road, says Mr Dobbs.

"He was critically injured. He was dying, and he did die, and the crew who went there would have liked to have done a little bit more for him at the scene, but for their own safety they got out of it, and rightly so."

Mr Holt: "There's a very real risk someone may deteriorate while we wait for a scene to be safe, but it's pointless having ambulance staff in there for them to become victims also."

Leslie Ashwood, an advanced paramedic at St John's central Auckland station in Pitt St, said he would often treat assault victims aged 13 and 14 over a weekend.

And during a weekend, he attends at least four assaults a night.

"We took two away the other night who were both 14 and had been attacked with timber."

Mr Ashwood was confronted by a 14-year-old with a knife in the Panmure shopping centre about 18 months ago.

"A young boy came running across to the ambulance to say he'd been attacked. The next minute my partner and I and the young boy who had been attacked were confronted by eight to 10 teenagers with weapons.

"If it wasn't for two taxi drivers who stopped to help us, I think the outcome could have been quite nasty."

Ambulance team manager John Take has covered South Auckland for 18 years.

"When I started people got punched up a bit, but now about 90 per cent of assaults we go to involve weapons of some sort, whether it's a piece of wood, baseball bat or someone's got a knife.

"I probably average four to five assaults a night shift and, of those, three to four involve weapons.

"Eighteen years ago, generally once people were on the ground they left them; now, they just keep going."

The paramedics who spoke to the Weekend Herald all believed alcohol and drugs were a major factor in the level of violence.

"Alcohol is the forgotten enemy," says Mr Dobbs. "Everyone talks about P and how bad it is, but alcohol causes huge problems."

VIOLENT STREETS

* September 23: A 20-year-old man is bashed at a party in Massey, suffering head fractures and a severely broken jaw that required a plate.

* September 17: Gheorghe Simion, 39, a Romanian-born Mangere resident, is beaten with fists at the Mangere Town Centre as he waited for a supermarket to open. He dies in hospital from head injuries.

* September 2: Riki Mafi, 17, is attacked with a metal baseball bat while walking through the Otara Town Centre. He dies several days later from head injuries.

* July 16: Haruru Pekepo, 19, is shot dead during a fight between two groups of young men on a street in Otahuhu.

* July 9: Kelly Lawrence, 18, is stabbed in the chest as he walks past a group of people gathered on the street after being at a party in Mangere.

* August 18: Faatetai Lafolua, 24, is run down and dragged under a car in Otahuhu.