Labour ‘crackdown’ on gangs: Can police confiscate tractors? And is 300 new cops enough?

Labour wants to pass law allowing police to take the vehicles of “gangs”, but there’s concern this policy could be used against protesters and others.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins​ and police spokesperson Ginny Andersen​ announced their law and order policy, on the campaign trail in Hamilton on Thursday.

There were a few parts to their plan. Hipkins said Labour was committed to increasing the police headcount by 300 officers. While that’s a minimum of 300 extra police, the size of that commitment was somewhat surprising given Andersen’s been trumpeting the much larger 1800 extra officers on the force under Labour’s watch.

She also told Stuff of plans to increase a new offence, targetting stalkers and to crack down on harassment.

And to top it off, Hipkins said he would “crack down on gangs”. The crackdown would see a new law targetting “intimidating” convoys, with Andersen saying police would be able to confiscate cars, motorbikes and even tractors used to disrupt members of the public.

Yes, tractors. Andersen confirmed they could be confiscated under this proposed law, when asked if the legislation could be used to target groups that aren’t typically considered to be “gangs”.

Andersen summed up the policy, saying police could confiscate vehicles “if there was an intent to intimidate the public and two or more people were driving along committing some infringement”.

That’s caused concern amongst civil rights groups, who worry this policy would give police power to silence protesters.

Hipkins said this policy was focused on gangs, but asked if it could apply to protests, Andersen said it would be up to police to use their discretion.

She was given the examples of Brian Tamaki’s protests, which often see the Destiny Church leader riding with a group of motorcyclists. Or the Convoy 2022 group, which travelled the North and South Islands ahead of the occupation of Parliament grounds.

And what about the tractor convoys, which saw farmers driving loops around cities last year?

“It is designed for when there are a large scale convoys going through public roads, and they are disrupting people’s daily lives,” Andersen said.

Hipkins jumped in, adding: “Police will of course always have discretion about when they take prosecutions and when they don’t and police will consider things like protest, for example.”

But Thomas Beagle, the chairperson of the Council for Civil Liberties, said he was worried about subjective the term “intimidation” was and how that would be enforced.

“Intimidation is a very subjective term; what if you’ve got some bigot who is upset because they’re being ‘intimidated’ by a group of minorities they don’t like,” he said.

Protest was also often disruptive, and Beagle questioned if this policy could hamper the freedom to protest.

300 extra officers

Hipkins defended the size of his police force commitment.

The 300 police officer boost would come on top of replacement, and growth for population size. Hipkins said it would be a minimum increase of 300 new police officers.

“We’re going to be recruiting extra to keep up with population growth, and we’re going to be recruiting extra to deal with attrition. It means the Police College is still going to be very busy,” he said.

The announcement came as Australia tried to lure Kiwi cops over the Tasman, with the promise $20,000 signing bonuses.

Queensland Police has launched a recruitment campaign, including full page newspaper adverts, targetting Kiwi cops. Australia was also offering relatively large salaries for experienced recruits.

Hipkins said the Labour Party’s commitment to policing was aimed at being “deliverable”.

“It’s a deliverable and affordable increase in commitment to police,” he said.

“1800 was a fixed commitment, we’ve delivered that 1800. Now we’re adding 300 more on top of that.”

But National Party police spokesperson Mark Mitchell said Labour’s law and order plan didn’t go far enough.

“This announcement today is simply not credible,” he said.