Word: older
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...Zealand is regarded as a pleasant and peaceful place to live. Yet this island nation harbors a small, unique and brutal street-gang culture that has defied authorities for more than 30 years and now appears to be nurturing a new, more violent mutation. Last month, the country's older ethnic gangs were involved in a series of tit-for-tat drive-by shootings that left a toddler dead; meanwhile the country's juvenile gangs have emerged as a new force in crime, linked to eight killings and many hundreds of other violent crimes in the past two years. Sully...
...mayor of Wanganui sees it very differently. "That's bullshit," says Michael Laws, who wants gangs banned from public areas. "You might have the older ones doing less crime, but they are still recruiting. And you get the younger ones who need to do crime to become patched. We've got all the police statistics for our area. The number of gang-on-gang incidents tripled in 2006, and would be even worse...
...Zealand government, says the shooting into a gang member's house was highly unusual, and that attacks on family go against tradition. Claude Kahika, president of the Mongrel Mob's foundation Hastings chapter, admits "sporadic gang violence flares up now and again. But because of the network of older guys, a dialogue and communication is there now." He says he has been negotiating with the gangs in Wanganui, and claims to exercise a benign influence on gang affairs, despite having once been told, he claims, that police thought he was the largest amphetamines dealer in New Zealand...
...While debate continues about how to deal with the problems posed by older gangs, it's the new wave that is costing the government sleep. Police statistics suggest that about 70 teenage gangs, with more than 1,000 members, are prowling the depressed suburbs of southern Auckland. Inspired by violent rap, hip-hop music and L.A. gang culture, they seem destined either to swell the ranks of the more established ethnic or motorcycle gangs, or, perhaps more alarmingly, to create their own equally ruthless organizations. Dubbed the ABC gangs by police, who shorten their two- or three-word names...
...with troubled children in the Manukau area. "When I'm here to observe my school [where he is a counselor] there's a Killer Bee standing at the corner shop selling drugs, and a lot of kids see them stoned," he says. The youths show no respect even to older gangs: several months earlier Paea tried to break up a territorial dispute between the Killer Beez and the local Black Power chapter. "It was like something out of the movies," he says. "I heard they were all down at this park and when I got there it sounded like...