Gisborne-based social advocate Tuta Ngarimu says local agencies need to collaborate more. Photo / RNZ
By Tom Kitchin of RNZ
Community members in Gisborne are kicking off a grassroots movement to try and stop a spate of gang warfare.
There have been gunshots, house fires and extra police on guard in the city over recent weeks.
The group is demanding social services work better together to try and stop desperation leading to crime.
On a busy suburban street in Turangānui-a-Kiwa, a group is hunkered down in a small shop in the suburb of Elgin.
It takes about a minute or two to drive to the places where women were killed earlier this year and where children were shot just weeks ago.
This group is a true cross-section of the community - police, staff from agencies such as Kāinga Ora and Ministry of Social Development (MSD), gang whānau, and church pastors.
It is the brainchild of local social advocate Tuta Ngarimu, who became highly concerned at this year’s surge in violence.
Since 11 October, police said they had attended at least 12 serious gang-related incidents, including a Molotov cocktail being thrown through a window in Te Hapara, pursuits, family harm, threatening to kill a member of the public and also a police staff member.
“We’re losing people with getting shot - people are dying here ... what’s happened is someone’s got shot, someone’s got arrested, a family’s left in trauma, life carries on. Then someone else gets shot, someone goes to jail, family in trauma again.”
Ngarimu was worried about the escalation in recent weeks.
“All this shooting, shooting whānau, shooting kids. And I thought, ‘we’ve got to make a stand here, otherwise the pattern’s heading towards normalising this kind of behaviour in our community’.”
He brought this group together after a recent rally.
There was a lot of discontent around social service providers, he said.
“Every kind of organisation that we’ve brought to the table now, they’re all working in silos. They’ve all got their 25-year strategic plan on how they’re going to beautify this and that, but there’s been no collaboration so that’s why services fall over.”
Hope Jones, who used to live in emergency housing, was at the hui because she was afraid for her tamariki.
“I’ve got kids and at this rate, my kids will never be allowed to walk to the shop, my kids will never be allowed to walk to school, if they’re even still allowed to go to school.”
Tairāwhiti police area commander inspector Sam Aberahama was at the hui too and jotted down ideas while those around the room talked.
One overarching term came up - a community pathway for whānau, Aberahama said.
“We need to break that down and work out what that means and we’ll do that over the next week. There’ll be some actions in there around housing, around system barriers, there’ll be some issues around employment.”
Recently re-elected mayor Rehette Stoltz sits on the governance board of Manaaki Tairāwhiti - a group of local iwi and social service leaders tasked with changing how they work together.
Service providers were forced to talk together because of Gisborne’s “splendid isolation”, Stoltz said.
“The cavalry ain’t coming - we are it,” she said.
“Unfortunately, as is with any government organisation, sometimes information isn’t shared in a timely way and there could be miscommunication there. But I think in the Tairāwhiti, there’s good communication between our iwi partners, council and other government organisations.”
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.