Jail term a warning to triads

By TONY STICKLEY

A fight between Taiwanese and Chinese groups over karaoke singing in an Auckland restaurant has led to a triad gang enforcer being jailed for six years as a warning to Asian crime syndicates.

In the High Court at Auckland, Justice Robert Fisher said that the gang's tactics would not work in this country and deterrent sentences would be handed down.

Ah Yam Tam, aged 33, had previously been found guilty of attacking two Taiwanese men with a meat cleaver at the Heaven Paradise karaoke restaurant in Auckland's Albert St in August last year.

Justice Fisher said that a group of Cantonese-speaking Chinese were unhappy at the karaoke singing and behaviour of the Taiwanese visitors.

There was an argument and a restaurant worker asked Tam to come and sort out the problem.

The judge said that when Tam arrived, he took a meat cleaver from the kitchen and told the Taiwanese to get out.

When one of them made a remark, Tam struck Yuan Chang on the side of the face with the flat of the cleaver, splitting the skin of his cheek.

The Taiwanese men then scrambled to get out of the bar.

Tam ran after them with the meat cleaver and attacked Yu Shan Cheng, slashing the left side of his face, the wound later needing 27 stitches.

When Mr Chang tried to help his friend, Tam chased him down the street brandishing the meat cleaver over his head.

Mr Chang picked up a rubbish bin and confronted Tam, who then backed off.

Based on evidence from Detective Sergeant George Koria, the officer in charge of the Auckland Asian Crime Squad, and Detective Malcolm Spence, Justice Fisher concluded that Tam was an "enforcer for the 14K gang".

"I do not accept that this should be treated as a spur of the moment act of violence," the judge said.

"You were brought to the restaurant to sort out a group that was there and you deliberately armed yourself with a meat cleaver."

With the "minimum of preliminaries", Tam attacked the Taiwanese who did not represent any real physical threat to him or others.

"The conclusion I draw from the evidence is that you were out to make a point, both to the group and others in the restaurant and to the Asian community generally that you were a man not to be trifled with."

Justice Fisher said that over nine years Tam had accumulated five convictions for violence involving six people and had previously been jailed for three years.

His violence was either premeditated or because he saw himself as the person appropriate to sort out conflict.

In the last few years, the judge said, Auckland had experienced a growth in sophisticated Asian crime syndicates.

"These syndicates rely heavily for their success upon the climate of fear in sections of the community on whom they prey."

That in turn made it difficult for the police to detect and investigate crime and for witnesses to give evidence in such cases.

Tam, the judge said, had done everything to avoid capture - he was found in Dunedin - and to avoid conviction.

"It is important for you and your sympathisers to realise that New Zealand has a highly efficient police system, that at least in this country your methods will not work and that when convicted, the sentence imposed will be a deterrent to others."