Steve Symon: Advisory Group for Organised Crime Chair on community involvement being needed to tackle crime

The Ministerial Advisory Group believes the community is a vital part of the solution in stomping out organised crime and drug use. 

The group has released its third report which highlights being tough on organised crime means also focusing on drug users. 

Advisory Group for Organised Crime Chair Steve Symon says it requires early intervention and community-based treatment. 

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan it no longer involves just patches and motorbikes - it's about organised crime reaching in as a business and affecting communities. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Got another report out into the organized crime from the
Advisory Group. The last report warned that corruption is getting
worse because officials are being recruited by the organized crime.
The report, the report the time reckons that we can
perhaps tackle us by getting our communities involved. Steve Simon
is the chair of Ministerial Advisory Group for Organized Crime
and with us.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Now, Hi, Steve, good morning. How are you hear that?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
I'm well, thank you. How do we get the communities involved?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
There's there's a number of ways that The first point
is to treat the community as part of the solution.
A big part of that is getting them involved by
giving them some natural information they can they can use.
Our committee thinks it's a really good idea to let
the public, particularly in the local communities, know what the
real problems organized crime are for them and ways that

(00:47):
can identify that organized crime and report that to the
authorities and work as a community to try and support
those who are trying to break free from bank customers
of organized crime.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Steve, do you think people don't understand? I mean, you
see a couple of guys walking down the street. It's
I don't know, three in the morning. They've got hoodies on.
You know that looks dodgy. So you know what dodgy
looks like. You know how to report it. You've got
your one wall one, you've got your five I five
or whatever. What else do people actually need to know?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, head, that's a good point for something like that. Yes,
you would know as clear as the light of day.
That's a problem. But when you go to buy a
fruit from a fruit store at a market and you
see there's a number of vulnerable, potentially migrant workers there,
if you become aware through conversations that perhaps those people

(01:38):
are not in a legitimate employment opportunity, it's those signs
that that might be some migrant exploitation going on. It's
your grandmother reporting that she got the strange text messages
asking her to send money or put in her Wishpang
bank account, that she might be subject to fraud. It's

(02:00):
about how you might help her with being resilient there.
So it's opening our minds and thinking organized crime is
not just guys where are patches driving around on motorbikes.
It's about organized crime reaching in as a business and
infecting our communities.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
So how do you get people to kind of move
away because the immediate reaction is that that's just introducing
a culture of knarking. How do you get people to
kind of move beyond that.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think we need to change our attitude organized crime
is in our country. As we set out in our
Mask report, organized crime is affecting us in a large
number of ways. And the thing that we have in
New Zealand, you know, we've done lots of research lots
of the countries around the world. We've met with and
talked with people in the UK as straining the other

(02:47):
places that are similar to us, they also have a
really bad organized crime problem and it's worse there. The
difference that we have as a community when you talk
to our agencies, when you talk to our private businesses,
when you talk to our community groups, keep this give
us stuff. We really want to do something about getting
rid of organized crime. And so if we can change

(03:08):
our attitude to saying it's not okay to have that here,
it's not okay to have that business going on, run
our families and run our friends, we want to get
rid of it. Then if we take that approach, really
it's not so much a k marketing thing, it's more
saying you're not welcome here. It's an intolerance welcome in
our country, intolerance of it.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, fair enough, Steve, listen, thanks very much, really appreciate it,
and I hope we can turn this thing around. That
Steve Simon, the chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group for
Organized Crime.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
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