KEY POINTS:
Otara youth workers are appealing for help with a drug-fuelled gang problem which they say is too big for them to handle alone.
The Otara Youth Action Group, which was given $600,000 a year in last year's Budget to employ eight youth workers for four years, is seeking support for a declaration that the whole community is united to stop young people getting involved in street gangs and drug dealing.
"The wellspring of the gangs, graffiti, prostitution and crime is the massive increase in drugs use," the group said yesterday.
"Drugs are killing our young, destroying their minds and stealing their innocence. This problem is getting worse and is fuelling escalating gang activity. At the centre of a growing gang battle over distribution rights is the worst drug of all, 'P'."
Manukau mayoral candidate Len Brown, who chairs the group, said gangs offered youngsters the temptation of quick wealth through selling drugs.
He said a 22-year-old man in Weymouth told him other young men were joining the gangs for "the nice cars and clothes and hats and shoes".
"The gangs are offering it to them now," he said. "They say we want you to stay here and sell some of these drugs, and we'll give you a lot of money. So it's easy, you don't have to work hard."
He said local people knew the gangs and drug dealers, and where the homes "tinnie houses" or P labs were.
"We know because they are part of us, our family, our neighbours, our friends, our fellow church members, our classmates, our workmates," he said.
"We are asking the police to stand up with us and say, if we are wanting people to come forward with information on family members, neighbours, workmates and church mates, it's critical for that trust be placed in the police for them to act on that information."
Veteran youth worker Sully Paea, co-manager of the youth workers who call themselves 274 after the prefix of the local phone numbers, said the gangs were now "a group of youth who are way different from others I have worked with", using texting and fast cars.
"I see more and more youths driving round the place in flash cars in larger packs," he said.
Another member of the action group, former Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs manager Frank Stowers, said many gang teenagers were "quite intelligent".
"They are achieving academic achievement awards," he said. "They are achieving sporting awards. They may be from high deprivation areas but they are no longer the kids with attitude and behavioural problems.
"A lot of these kids are also going to church. So they have another life."
The action group has called a "Community Leaders' Congress" at the Otara Music and Arts Centre on March 8 to bring church leaders, schools, police, business and community leaders together to discuss the problem.
