Patched by Jarrod Gilbert

Author:Jarrod Gilbert [Gilbert, Jarrod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Damon had many similarities to Shovel, but the nature of the beast, so to speak, that was being policed – Damon was one gang: the Nomads – it wasn’t inter-gang issues [like in Timaru]. It was one gang who, to a large extent, had the community cowered down … [so it was] a different situation, but addressed in a very similar way. You had the same goals … to ensure that overt offending ceased and the public regained confidence.164

Operation Damon led to arrests for extortion and numerous other crimes. During one trial in April 1996, nine Nomad gang members and associates were facing 43 different charges including robbery, drugs offences and threatening to kill.165 All nine were imprisoned for up to five years, and in one fell swoop a large portion of the Foxton Nomads were behind bars, including Hines who received two years.166 As in Timaru, police pressure was exerted at even basic levels. On one day, police arrested one patched member and two of the gang’s prospects for driving offences,167 and during one trial a gang member left court to find his car had been wheel-clamped and was about to be towed for unpaid fines.168

Despite a senior Nomads member, Skull Williams, suggesting that the crackdown just increased the gang’s publicity and mana,169 the resulting convictions largely wiped out its street presence, as its membership went to ground. Hines had to issue a statement from prison denying reports that his Wairarapa chapter had closed down after 26 arrests were made in that area.170 Operation Damon, like Shovel before it, had shown that strong, targeted and deliberate police action can severely dent a gang’s strength and curtail its activities by stifling the lives of and incarcerating its members. And again, the operation highlighted to the gang the likely consequences if their activities went beyond what the community was prepared to tolerate.

On face value, the techniques employed during Operations Shovel and Damon may not appear new, and some similarities can be seen with the controversial Police Task Force techniques of the 1970s, noted earlier. It would be inaccurate, however, to say the two approaches are comparable. Unlike the Task Force techniques, this new approach was shorter in duration, more sophisticated and less reliant on physical confrontation, specifically targeted toward individual groups, and, perhaps most critically, involved a specific reason for the police operations – rather than an arbitrary crackdown – so that the gangs knew why they were being targeted. In Foxton, Lammas met with the Nomads leaders and told them the reason for the operation and what they could expect. This was based on what occurred in Timaru, as Bill Gregory explains:

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