A Thames Coromandel district councillor who was also a police officer in Coromandel township for 27 years, says it is safe, and that incidents of gang violence over the weekend were a one-off.<\/p>\n
Although he declined to give more details, John Morrissey said the assaults reported over the weekend were not a random attack.<\/p>\n
“There is always a background to these things,” he said.<\/p>\n
Police said they were aware a group of approximately 12 gang members and associates travelled through the Coromandel Peninsula over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Inspector Mike Henwood said police responded to one formal report of a group of people fighting.<\/p>\n
Three people were later taken to Thames Hospital with various injuries.<\/p>\n
Police have spoken with those involved but no complaints have been made so far and police did not receive any other reports of unlawful activity.<\/p>\n
Morrissey said he checked with the local police to find out what happened over the weekend.<\/p>\n
“Certainly people rang the police to inform them the gang members were in town, but there were no actual reports of intimidation, thefts, or general mayhem.”<\/p>\n
Morrissey said people were aware crime across the country was increasing and he shared their concerns, but he still felt safe walking down the main street.<\/p>\n
The MP for Coromandel, Scott Simpson, is holding a public safety meeting on Wednesday evening in Coromandel to address the weekend’s events.<\/p>\n
National leader Christopher Luxon said the scenes of gang violence in Coromandel township over the weekend were shocking and appalling.<\/p>\n
Luxon said the fight, captured on video and circulating on the internet, was another example of crime being out of control.<\/p>\n
The country had seen a lot of violent crime over the last 48 hours, and National would back the police and tackle the gangs, he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Thames Coromandel district councillor who was also a police officer in Coromandel township for 27 years, says it is safe, and that incidents of gang violence over the weekend were a one-off. Although he declined to give more details, John Morrissey said the assaults reported over the weekend were not a random attack. “There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7952,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949\/revisions\/7952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}