A Far North District councillor is calling on the Government and police to provide better resources to tackle gang violence in the region.
It comes after the Far North is battling a spate of violent gang-related incidents leaving locals crying out for more support.
Kaikohe, which is an hour north of Whangārei, is bearing the brunt of it with violent clashes between the Killer Beez and Tribesman gangs.
Tensions boiled over in March in brutal gang bashing, followed by a series of shootings and beatings.
Far North District councillor Moko Tepania told AM on Wednesday the two gangs needed to show some personal accountability.
"I mean this is a community of 5000 people and it would be a huge disservice for me to just sit here and talk about the 50 members of this community who had violent gang struggles, gun shootouts and knife stabbings in our streets to the detriment of the other 4950 people who live in this town who are amazing members of this community," he said.
He said the town has held several hui events to try to ease the tensions but the lack of police and government resources in the community is stifling progress.
"There is also social accountability and central and local government agency accountability that we need to ensure that we follow up on to ensure our town is safe for all of us," he told AM.
"When we look at our town, we have central Government agencies who we are not seeing on the ground, they definitely need more resourcing throughout the whole country but especially here in Northland and especially here in the mid-North here in Kaikohe."
Tepania told AM when gang violence happens they sometimes have to wait for 30-minutes for police to arrive from neighbouring towns.
He believes this shouldn't be the case and more resourcing is required to keep his community safe.
"So there are things we need to see reactively happen right now but there are also proactive solutions for our community to ensure our boys don't see the gang life as an avenue to follow through on," he said.
"We saw the arrest that was made following this conflict, they were from the ages between 15 to 40-years-old.
"It breaks my heart to know there are 15-year-olds in our town that the system has failed, which has led them to go through with this.
Tepania said he would like to see more funding to ensure kids in his community aren't forced into gang life.
"What we want is more resourcing, more officers on the ground to ensure they are here when the crime does happen," he told AM.
"We want to ensure that we've got funding for better programs to ensure that our tamariki (children) don't follow this avenue."
Watch the full interview above.
