Word: violent
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...small population and favorable international reputation, New 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...
...Mongrel Mob convention in Auckland, where she was raped by at least 15 men, beaten, urinated on, covered in petrol and photographed over a nine-hour period before she escaped. In 1996, police witness Christopher Crean, who had testified against Black Power members who'd taken part in a violent brawl, was murdered in front of his wife and children when a shotgun was fired through his front door as he answered it. These and similar crimes prompted governments to pass laws allowing witnesses to testify in secret and giving police greater power to seize the proceeds of crime...
...gangs set a new low in their violent history when tit-for-tat drive-by shootings between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power claimed the life of a toddler in Wanganui, about 330 km south of Auckland. Jhia Te Tua, 2, was asleep on a couch in her Black Power father's home when a bullet was fired into the house, killing her instantly. Police have charged 12 men over her murder and arrested several more in connection with the ongoing violence between the local chapters...
...strategy. The New Zealand Police Union has called for a Royal Commission to inquire into the gangs, and recommended a national, rather than divisional, strategy to control them. Police Minister Annette King, however, believes the incident was an anomaly-a death at a time when gangs are becoming less violent. "The killing of innocent people by gangs is very rare," she says. "Looking back over time, the only other [such case involving] an innocent bystander was in Christchurch in the 1990s. But having said that, violence between gang members probably does go on every day, and it's unreported...
...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...