A tale of two New Zealands II

Yesterday I wrote this:

Two New Zealands came face to face with each other in a Hastings courtroom last week...

One was a woman widowed when her husband was stabbed while trying to assist someone who was being assaulted. The other was the mother of the stabbed child - an angry sickness beneficiary who is now in prison for contempt of court.

It happened again today. Two New Zealands in a court room. One was the sister of a boy who was stabbed to death. The other was a businessman who stabbed the boy after believing he was tagging his garage. Manurewa businessman Bruce Emery claimed he took a knife for self defence and after a 300 metre chase the teenager, Pihema Cameron, was stabbed in the chest and died. The boy's sister said she hated Emery and wanted to rip his eyes out. But what does she do all day? "I just stay home, bum from my dad, get some money, go get stoned, drink alcohol and do whatever," she said.

She's 15, about 18 months younger than her former brother. Does she go to school?

What’s the bet that the young teenager has got no qualifications and was not doing too well at school. What's the bet that Emery has a better job than most of the Cameron whanau, had more qualifications than Camerons mother and father, gets drunk less often and takes less drugs. What's the bet that had the poor kid been encouraged to do well by his parents, instead of his sole parent taking off to Australia on her own, he would still be alive today.

I`m not defending Emery's actions at all. His actions were despicable. Had he not reacted the way he did the boy would also be alive and Emery would not be in prison. But what is our society turning into when people get stabbed to death for helping someone, and killed for petty crime. And why, of late, is it Maori families who are running around courtrooms with the head of their dead offspring plastered on their t-shirts - the same dead offspring they should have cared for a little more when they were alive.

A tale of two New Zealands

A great editorial in the Dominion Post today.

Two New Zealands came face to face with each other in a Hastings courtroom last week.

One was the New Zealand of Paula McCutcheon, the young mother widowed last month when her husband, Mark, was stabbed while trying to help a woman who was being assaulted outside a Hawke's Bay pub. Hers is the New Zealand most inhabit a land in which citizens go to work each morning, take pride in standing on their own feet, abide by the law and teach their children to respect others.

The other was the New Zealand of Victoria Stevens. It is a New Zealand in which adults healthy enough to rob and to steal, and to wrestle with the police, prefer to claim benefits than to go to work and in which mothers show their love for their sons by barking like dogs. To most New Zealanders theirs is a foreign country, but it is a foreign country that coexists alongside mainstream New Zealand.

Stevens is the 43-year-old invalid beneficiary who was jailed for contempt of court last week after barking like a dog a Mongrel Mob gesture of support during her [unemployed] son's court appearance. Her son, Hulio Ataria, is the Mongrel Mob associate who has been charged with Mr McCutcheon's murder.

What’s the bet that Victoria Stevens, a sickness beneficiary, has more of her whanau involved in crime than the McCutcheon whanau. What’s the bet that Stevens is more overweight than McCutcheon. What’s the bet that those in Steven’s whanau drink more alcohol, have more tattoos, take more drugs and left school earlier with fewer qualifications. What’s the bet that had McCutcheon had sons they would have shared the same surname as her, unlike Steven’s kids.

You can read the entire editorial here

Recording crime

Steve Pierson from The Standard really is a disgusting person at times. And I know he won't mind me saying that he is a disgusting person at times as he called David Farrar disgusting for daring to assess crime by looking at violent crime rather than overall crime rate, adding "he’s hardly one to fret about rape when he’s good mates with a pornographer".

The Crimes figures are out and Pierson says crime is down because poverty and the conditions that breed crime have been reduced.

How does he know that? Well, he doesn't, actually.

He said recorded violent crime is up be cause more people are reporting violent crime - but he didn't say that non violent reported crime is going down because fewer are bothering to report rising crime. No, he said it was down because there was less of it recorded, therefore he concludes that there is less of it happening. How does he know that?

He doesn't. How does he know whether some people report crimes without police recording it?

He doesn't.

Anyway to take that to its logical conclusion, hardly anyone is smacking their kids this year, because few have been reported for doing so. But it's a crime.

Then he says this gem:

Recorded property damage offences have climbed in the last three years..... and these rises are attributed (not by me, by the Police) to higher reporting

Well, of course there will be higher recorded crime if police record more reporting. But the deputy police commissioner said on ZB that according to him only 30% of actual crime is reported.

Pierson must have missed that. He also appeared to miss that recorded violent crime has gone up 47% since 1999. But before you state that is to do with a population increase the recorded violent crime rate has gone up 30.2 percent, with nearly a quarter of the increase in the past year alone.

Police in Manakau are in "high spirits" after homicides

Police want everyone to know that crime is not escalating in Manakau.Detective Inspector John Timms said despite the number of homicide investigations in the area police were in high spirits and reassured the public that Counties-Manukau was a safe place.

"If you need assistance then it's important that you ring the police immediately," he said.

But theres one small matter. Most crime in Manakau is ignored by police. Once you have rung them, these high spirited police have to leave the police station and get somewhere in time. That's the issue. Police in Manakau are calling in reinforcements from outside the district to cope with crime because the number of sworn officers per head of population in Counties Manakau is the second-lowest in the country.

I wonder how many are on traffic duty.

Helen and her bottleshop blame game

Helen Clark wants to get rid of some bottle shops. She has had another failing knee-jerk reaction and has made a decision on the grounds of "appearing to do something". She said that she wanted Parliament to revisit liquor laws to cut the number of liquor outlets in poor areas, after the Manurewa bottle store shooting. Fat lot of good that will do. It's not how many outlets there are in an area, but the attitudes of the people in an area to crime and alcohol,and what the people in an area do with the booze when they get it that is more important, and how the police respond to crime. According to John Key, the number of sworn officers per head of population in Counties Manukau is the second-lowest in the country.

Figures from Statistics NZ show that in 2006 Manukau City had one off-licensed premise for every 1778 people compared to one for every 942 in Christchurch. But as Cameron Slater notes, in Manurewa ward there are 33 off licence liquor outlets for a population of 80,000 or one booze outlet for 2400 citizens.Clevedon has 11 off licences for a population of 10,000 citizens or one for every 833 citizens.

Going by Clark’s suggestion, there should be nearly three times as many bodies piling up in the streets of Clevedon than Manurewa.

The PM does not comment as to why the knee jerk reaction is this year. It must be election year. She has refused to comment on the fact that attackers of bottles stores have a certain similarity. Here are some recent attacks and killings over the past few years. Spot the similarity. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

That similarity is a more relevant variable than the number of liquor stores in an area. Richer whiter people are unlikely to attack or kill people in bottle stores.

In Parliament today

Gordon Copeland: Would the Prime Minister agree with the comment of a former High Court judge that family breakdown is the major driver of violent crime in South Auckland and elsewhere; if so, would she support a royal commission to understand and address that issue, as called for in the petition of Larry Baldock and 296,000 others recently delivered to the Office of the Clerk?

Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I do not have any evidence to suggest that family breakdown would be the predominant cause, but I do think that those who grow up in homes without love and who experience violence are certainly more likely to have a predisposition to it. We need to break that cycle of violence, which is what a great deal of our Government’s activity has been devoted to.

Helen Clark thinks bottle stores are a driver of violent crime. A High Court judge says it is family breakdown. Labour is doing nothing about the latter and has done nothing about the former despite a review of liquor outlets in 2006.