The mayor of Masterton is warning someone will be killed unless authorities get tough on boy racers.
Gary Caffell’s comments follow a meetup in Wairarapa over the weekend where a group allegedly threw fireworks, bottles, and rocks at police.
The mayor told Breakfast this is the first time he is aware of this sort of behaviour happening “close to our backyard”, which has left the community “disappointed”.
“Lives are at stake here. We’re not talking small fry stuff. We’re talking the fact that these are incidents that could be life and death.
“We were lucky on this one on the weekend nobody got killed. The police got attacked, there were spectators there who could have been hurt. This could have been a really bad incident and we’re just really grateful it didn’t turn to that.”
On a potential solution to the behaviour, Caffell said people need to be educated to “do things lawfully” and to understand “this isn’t the way to go”.
He said the police did a magnificent job, but added central government “need to come down really tough on these sort of incidents”.
“I think we need to be cramping down on the whole thing. We’ve just got to stop it.
“It is very easy for us to sit back and say these are just a few people having fun and games, but in actual fact it is very serious. It is becoming life and death … there’s so many people who could get hurt in these incidents and we’ve just got to stop them.”
‘Totally unacceptable’ – Luxon
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Breakfast the behaviour of the group in Wairarapa was “totally unacceptable”.
“I mean these are people who go out actually wanting to cause harm to the community but as you’ve seen in this case to police officers.”
He said it was something Police Minister Mark Mitchell had “actively [been] looking at” over the last few months.
Mitchell wanted to start a process of legislation change by the end of this year, Luxon said.
He said the mayor’s comments around spectators was “quite interesting”.
“But the idea being how do we give police more powers, to sort of actually seize the vehicles, but also if there is anything else to look at, very up for [it].
“Because it’s really important that we do stamp down on antisocial behaviour like this, it’s putting the community at risk and it’s also putting the police at risk.”
