How police plan to enforce the gang patch ban
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Gang members who don’t take their patches off in public after the patch ban comes into force can expect to be visited at their homes by police.
Police officers will have a search warrant and could find other items such as guns and drugs, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says.
‘We don’t always have to win at the time, but we will win in the end,’ Coster says.
Gang members who refuse to remove their patch in public when told to by a police officer could have their houses searched.
Legislation going through Parliament now would ban the wearing of gang patches in public places.
The policy, announced before the 2023 election, has raised questions about how gang members will respond when told to remove their patches, and how police will enforce it.
At a media conference this week, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster and Police Minister Mark Mitchell were asked how the ban would be enforced in the case of an event such as the tangi on Monday of Ponsonby Rd shooter Hone Kay-Selwyn.
A reporter said about 300 people at the event had been wearing patches.
“My expectation is if there’s 300 gang members with 300 patches, and the police tell them to remove those patches and they refuse to do it, then the police will have follow up action and they will take those patches, and it will mean searching their homes,” Mitchell said.
“Gang members hate having their houses searched… There’s normally drugs and all sorts of stuff in there they don’t want to be discovered.”
“We certainly will be seeking search warrants in that kind of situation,” Coster said.
“As soon as we get the opportunity to go and intervene in that way in somebody’s home we find guns, we find drugs, we find other evidence of criminal offending.
“And so, if people choose to breach this ban, they will open themselves up to police intervention in a way that will lead to a whole lot of other issues for them,” Coster said.
“I’m not saying for all situations exactly what will happen. But what I’m saying is, as a general principle, if people breach this legislation, they can expect police to follow up, and we will use the tools available to us.”
Police had discretion about how and when they carried out enforcement action.
“We don’t always have to win at the time, but we will win in the end,” Coster said.
“If people come and breach the gang patch ban, and we can’t deal with it in the moment, then they can expect that we’ll be knocking on their door with a search warrant to recover that patch in due course.
“That’s the kind of tactic that we can use.”
Asked if the law would make police work more dangerous, Mitchell said he didn’t think that would be the case.
Police would base decisions on how the gang patch ban was implemented around staff safety.