Podcast

Gangs outnumber police in New Zealand - But That's Not All

Gang profits doubled, international organised crime strengthened, NZ has lost experienced cops, retail crime up and often ignored, drug use full blown crisis, domestic violence record highs

In 2024, under questioning about why police were culling the gang membership list on National’s watch, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon snapped.

“It’s not about the friggin’ targets” he lashed out angrily.

Not his first time and it wouldn’t be his last.

In July 2025, when Labour leader Chris Hipkins pointed out that National’s signature Family Boost policy had been a “flop”, with 25% of money spent on administration, and fewer than 50 families getting the promised package, Luxon snapped at “frickin’” Chris Hipkins too.

Yesterday, Luxon set out to enjoy his moment in the sun, to shine and boast about falling violent crime incidents in quarterly results of what used to be an annual survey.

Under National, Paul Goldsmith, Mark Mitchell and Luxon have been keen to use it regularly to “drum in” a message that law and order has purportedly improved under their government.

But has it really?

Police have been instructed to pull back from mental health incidents (which saw health professionals quit in response), and most domestic/family violence incidents too
As domestic violence advocates state, this could, and likely, reverses “decades of progress in encouraging victims to seek help”

Police are also overstretched. In 2025, brass told police to ignore some retail crime incidents, resulting in 5000 retail crime complaints ignored, and investigations halved. It was only overturned when media got wind of this and Richard Chambers stepped in to stem the embarrassment.
These factors all result in violent crime incident survey numbers falling. Less victims willing to come forward, less police to take notice.

About those gangs

When National were in power, they used increasing gang numbers as “evidence” that Labour were soft on crime and soft on gangs.
Yesterday’s report that gang numbers have surged 13% - hitting never before seen records - contrasts sharply with National’s old narrative.

Source: Police Association and Police National Gang List

Experts roundly agree that gang numbers are likely to be much higher too, given police are no longer able to easily identify them.
In 2024, Mark Mitchell was warned increasing carceration would increase gang numbers - as reported on Mountain Tui in 2024, incarceration was an explicit goal of National and has now been met with record numbers of Kiwis in prison (double the rate of Canada and significantly higher than Australia) and at a cost of $200,000 per prisoner
And with National’s launch of the Waikato PPP $1.9 billion mega prison without a business case, long considered a hard recruitment ground for gangs, we have seen those numbers continue to increase - now surging up 500 plus. a year
And the gang numbers in themselves are not the largest issue, even though realistically, it is still very serious:
National have allocated a majority of police to city centres they care about, such as Auckland. Think of the rural offices and those with a large gang presence. It must be frustrating.
National also can’t recruit the promised 500 frontline police, and has watered down requirements so much, they have recruited 349 police who they don’t know can swim or not. (Once again this has been reversed after media reports got out)
That’s not all - domestic violence has surged to levels not seen since 2018 - perhaps unsurprising given the lack of support, cuts to charities and frontline womens’ services, and increasing disenfranchisement and cost of living pressures.
And categories of serious crime are mainly all up according to MOJ data from October 2025.

The drug crisis also continues unabated, with a 200%-400% increase in meth use on National’s watch in what is being called a methamphetamine crisis across the country.

Cocaine is also up, gang profits have doubled, and extremely worrying is organised crime syndicates are growing - many with international links including from China and Southeast Asia, Latin American cartels, and Australian gangs.

The real and most pervasive issue we face under National, ACT and NZ First is that all three parties persist in prioritising headlines and PR over tackling the deeper root causes and drivers of crime in our country.

That type of rot will not be easy to undo.