For two groups of blokes with so much in common the Mongrel Mob and Black Power sure do seem to scrap a lot.

The country's two biggest gangs consist almost exclusively of Māori men. Typically, but not always, they're disadvantaged, uneducated, disengaged, anti-social and lead similar ways of life. They are often of the same hapū or even whānau.

Their disdain for one another doesn't make sense.

JOEL MAXWELL/STUFF A fight between Black Power and Mongrel Mob members saw shots fired on Taradale's main street last Sunday.

But, then, nothing much about the gangs makes a lot of sense.

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They're referred to as "organised crime", yet they seem entirely disorganised. They're apparently involved in sophisticated criminal activity, yet they behave in incredibly dumb ways. They're disobedient and rebellious, yet they band together in analogous groups and supposedly adhere to a set of rules.

STUFF Dealing with the gangs, especially of late, occupies a huge amount of resources, Police say. (File photo)

You don't need to be a particularly close follower of the news to know that every now and then tensions flare between the two. Now is one of those times, with numerous clashes taking place across Hawke's Bay over the past few months.

The gangs have been around for more than 50 years. A few things seem clear; they're not going away (in fact they're growing at quite a rate), and whatever we, society, is doing now isn't doing anything to discourage young men from signing up for a patch.

Dr Jarrod Gilbert, a sociologist and author of Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand, says while data on gang member numbers is unreliable, there is no question their ranks are increasing.

Chris McKeen There's been a 58 per cent increase in gang members in Eastern District since 2016. (File photo)

​"It's been happening for a while, probably since about 2008. In the 70s and 80s gangs were a younger man's game. As time went on and the gangs aged the generation barriers developed. Gangs weren't attractive to younger people. They didn't want to hang out with dad and grand-dad and listen to AC/DC or heavy metal. They wanted to listen to rap and hiphop and wear Nike sneakers, not hobnail boots.

"For a long time we had LA-style street gangs like the Killer Beez. So the gangs reinvented themselves through new chapters run by younger people. The traditional gangs had to adapt in order to grow."

The current tensions are a consequence of that growth, Gilbert says.

John Cowpland "If there's been a bleeding sore in the social periphery of New Zealand, it's the gangs," says Denis O'Reilly.

"Not that long ago the territories were pretty cleanly divided up and the older heads made sure that's the way it stayed. But you get new members in who aren't as tethered to the old rules. The younger members have always been more difficult. We've just got more of them now and that's creating more problems."

Shots fired in a town's main street, as occurred in Taradale last Sunday, is serious. But it's far from unique, and it's easy to forget how rough things were in the 1970s and 1980s, Gilbert says.

So, how do you stop young men wanting to join a gang?

John Cowpland "We have relatively frank discussions. But we know there are times when they will only tell us what they want us to know," says Eastern District Police investigations manager Rob Jones.

Well, that's not easy, he says, "and it's certainly not going to be fixed through chest-beating on the political hustings".

"The reason we know that doesn't work is because we've had it for decades. Big statements from politicians. Always the Opposition. What we do know from evidence is that police have an important role to bring those to justice swiftly, and at times severely. But we have to balance that with the indisputable fact that gangs are the outcome of certain social conditions. We need to tackle them with those types of policies.

"We're on a hiding to nothing if we say this is a police problem. It's a community problem and unless we deal with it as a community we will not get anywhere."

IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF Current gang tensions are a consequence of the rapid growth in members, sayd University of Canterbury director of criminal justice Dr Jarrod Gilbert.

There's no silver bullet, Gilbert says. "But working with gang leaders has shown some promise.

"We talk about gangs as this big generic thing, but the reality is there will be people in a chapter who might be highly criminal and others who are no more criminal than your average citizen. To treat all gang members as the same is one of the massive failings of policy.

"As soon as you're labelled a gang member, anything else about you disappears. The fact you may have been raised in a family that kicked the living daylights out of you dawn to dusk, that you got nothing but an elementary primary school education and that you've got no teeth and no job. The gang membership is a symptom of wider social problems.

STUFF Honorary life-member of the Mongrel Mob's Notorious chapter Harry Tam says those who look at the gangs from the outside expect them to be like us, to have our same values. (File photo)

"These guys garner no sympathy and in many instances deserve no sympathy, and working with them is very tricky. They're just as likely to bite the hand that feeds them. But ... we can't be put off just because something is hard to do. We need to be smarter and work harder." ".

Black Power life member Denis O'Reilly lives just down the road from Taradale, and was on the scene of Sunday's shooting soon after it occurred.

The 67-year-old grandfather has been a member of the gang since 1972, but actively advises anyone against becoming a gang member.

"I'm in the gang because I find it a moral responsibility. When people come to me and say they're thinking of joining a gang I say 'I think that's a very bad idea'," he says.

He has been called on to make peace between the gangs many times over the years.

In 2011 he gathered together 30 Black Power fathers and sons and 30 Mongrel Mob fathers and sons with police, and held a three-day wananga with international leadership consultant John Wareham.

It culminated in the Ōtātara Accord, signed by both gangs, who collectively agreed:

To improve our parenting skills.

To support whānau ora.

To strive for understanding of each other's issues as a step towards peace on the streets and in the jails.

"And that stayed good until very recently, pretty much. There have been very few occasions when it got out of hand. We made real headway. We had huge anti-P meetings, we had talent quests, all sorts. We had a policy of being colour blind. It didn't matter what patch you wore. Older members from gangs would hongi each other. Younger members followed suit. People would relax, families would get together. It was bloody good," he says.

"But sometimes you just can't control it. Shit happens."

It's the growth in numbers, especially in the Mob and the new younger membership has made for the current volatility, he says.

But it's no worse than it was decades ago. "I'd say there were more weapons and there was more street violence then than there is now, frankly. In the main it's improved."

If there's been a bleeding sore in the social periphery of New Zealand, it's the gangs, he says.

"We saw gang numbers go down in the late 80s. When the fourth Labour Government came in gang numbers were dropping. But then along came neo-liberalism and the theory that the market would prevail. That's when gangs became seriously criminalised. 'Tinny' shops started, the prison population rose, and so on. Prison is a recruitment ground for gangs."

Among O'Reilly's many roles these days is writing cultural reports for offenders being sentenced of serious crime. He writes them for members of all gangs.

The stories are remarkably similar. Young, angry men, often abused, certainly disadvantaged and uneducated, gravitating to a way of life they see as offering some kind of identity.

Like Gilbert, he says the solutions are by no means simple, and we're unlikely to see the end of gangs, but looking to police for answers is a forlorn hope.

O'Reilly says change will come through programmes like the E Tu Whānau and the sort of social housing development he's been instrumental with at Waiohiki marae, near Taradale.

"It's the papakāinga approach, where aunties keep an eye out and intervene in family violence, everyone makes sure the kids go to school, that they're healthy, that there's order and happiness. These sorts of things are part of the solution. We're starting to relearn these collective ways of mitigating the social issues."

Honorary life-member of the Mongrel Mob Notorious chapter Harry Tam has, like O'Reilly, been called on to make peace between the gangs several times over the years.

A Mob member from the age of 16, the 62-year-old Tam was heading to Hawke's Bay to see what help he could offer in this latest situation.

"It's not a problem New Zealand and the world doesn't know about. Gangs have been around for a long time.

"Since 1989 New Zealand has adopted what is known as a suppression approach, where it's treated as organised crime and your main management tool is law enforcement. We're now getting into the fourth generation of gangs and numbers are growing. It should be clear to everyone that whatever we're doing isn't working," Tam says.

"What we have is not a gang issue. It's a poverty issue, a growth of disparities. The gangs were started by men who were byproducts of being in state care who were angry and violent when they came out. When you have the third or fourth generation of that you have some pretty bloody angry people."

"I don't encourage anyone to be a gang member but what I do know from my own experience of living and working with gangs is that ... once they get themselves established and other means of support they begin severing gang ties of their own accord.

"But when you try to do it on an artificial basis, well, it's like a weed. You can't kill it. It keeps coming back. So let's not deal with the affiliation as a policy response. Let's deal with the behaviours."

"The first thing, I always say, is changing the conversation around the dinner table. If you have dinner with one of our families, what's the conversation? It's likely to be 'where's the next score?', 'who we going to rob?', 'who we going to beat up?'. As long as you have those discussions you're going nowhere. We've got to somehow change that discussion to one that is pro-social, and that comes from developing hope. I see my role as providing hope to people, which is why they keep me there. I've tried to leave the gang 3-4 times and I keep getting pulled back in, because I provide hope".

Tam says those who look at the gangs from the outside expect them to be like us, to have our same values.

"But those on the outside don't see the trauma they've had all their lives. You're left scratching you're head because you're dumbfounded at why they do such incredibly stupid things.

"Yes, these young men join gangs for the family. But also, what drives that? It's the same people, inter-generationally. You can go back to colonisation and all the rest of it, and the reforms of the 80s. We've had a trajectory of growing disparity for 30-40 years and who's at the bottom of the pit? Well, take a guess."

Refusing to acknowledge or engage with the gangs will only see them remain as strong as they are, or strengthen them.

"Forget the affiliation and focus on the behaviours you want to change. Ever since the Department of Corrections has been in existence, their predominant policy towards gangs has been one of breaking gang affiliation. Well, here we are in 2020 with more gang members than ever. Those polices do not work.

"You have to recognise that gangs will dissipate of their own accord, when they've got better options. Don't focus on their membership. It's most probably all that person has."

Eastern District investigations manager Rob Jones and four senior officers gather in a small meeting room in Hastings Police HQ to discuss how they work with gangs.

The police relationship with gang leaders can obviously be difficult at times and is based on trust. But both see the value in keeping lines of communication open.

"We have relatively frank discussions," Jones says. "But we know there are times when they will only tell us what they want us to know. At the moment the relationship is integral to how things are being managed. We're talking to them on a daily basis."

The officers give examples where communication before events such as tangi or gatherings has averted any incidents.

Dealing with the gangs, especially of late, occupies a huge amount of police resource.

"Understanding what the gangs are doing is paramount to keeping our communities safe," Jones says.

During times of increased tension, and during incidents like that in Taradale and Ruatoria last weekend, police see an increase in gang members and associates behaving outside the law. When that occurs the police response changes accordingly.

Any suggestion the gangs were not involved in serious, organised and sophisticated drug crime is given short shrift by these officers.

"They may not appear organised at times, but there is definitely a level of organisation now that we haven't seen for a long time," another officer says.

"The members are getting much younger. We see fully-patched members at 17-18 years old. There's been a 58 per cent increase in gang members in Eastern since 2016. It's unmissable.".

Also unmissable is the impact resulting from the rise in deportees, commonly referred to as "501s", from Australia, and the influence of methamphetamine.

The new, younger members appear not to listen to their leaders as they once did. There could be myriad reasons for this, not least of which is the Hollywood treatment of gang life by the likes of Sons of Anarchy.

Another bugbear of the police is the reference to "turf" by gangs.

"We know that's how they view things," Jones says. "But it's not how we view things. Communities aren't built around 'turf' and we will never accept the wearing of patches and the intimidation it causes on other members of the community. That's one thing we do not see eye to eye about,"

"The harm caused by the gangs and the drugs they peddle is huge. We're as keen as anyone to find some way of preventing people from getting into the cycle. It won't happen quickly."