DOPE HOUSES LOW ON POLICE HIT-LIST

Tinny houses like the one where Michael Heremaia was stabbed more than
20 times are not a high priority for the police.

But they are bread and butter for the gangs, which can make thousands
of dollars a day from them. The houses run themselves using gang
prospects, or the gangs demand "tax" from independent operators, who
face the prospect of violence if they don't pay.

No one believes Heremaia's murder will be a wake-up call. Another
house will be found and more gang wannabes put to work.

The one in which Heremaia was killed operated for about a year from a
prefabricated 1960s house at the bottom of Appleby Place.

It was run by the King Cobra gang, which recruits from the Pacific
Islands communities. The gang emerged about 30 years ago in Ponsonby,
before gentrification pushed up prices and forced members to suburbs
in the south and west of Auckland.

Heremaia lived at the Appleby Place house. He is described by police
as a King Cobra prospect, and as loveable but unmanageable by his family.

He may have seen the tinny house as his entree to the gang.

A King Cobra source confirmed that Heremaia lived at the house but
said the gang was more interested in a 19-year-old relative as a
prospective member. It was the relative - who was not there during the
knife fight which killed Heremaia and left a 26-year-old injured - who
ran the tinny shop.

The gang source told the Weekend Herald the house, rented by King
Cobra members, was in the process of being dropped and another found,
but Heremaia and his relative were allowed to stay on.

"They had girlfriends and didn't feel comfortable about going home.
The house was offered for them to live in and the rent continued to be
paid."

A day after the murder, the landlord got a call from one of the men
who rented the property telling him they no longer wanted it.

"It's a high-risk business," says the King Cobra source, "you have to
keep on the move."

He says the gang has five tinny houses across its patch, which he
identified as Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, Mt Roskill and Papatoetoe, Mangere
Bridge and Onehunga. He says Papakura is a Mongrel Mob area, and Black
Power has about 20 tinny houses across the city.

Ounces of cannabis are sold for $250 to $350, and busy operations can
sell six ounces, producing a daily income of $1500 to $2100. An
average weekly "tax", according to the source, is $500.

The busiest and one of the longest-running tinny houses is in Otahuhu
and referred to by those in the scene as "the marae".

Detective Sergeant Pete Jones, who headed a recent raid on it, says
people connected to it had told police it brought in up to $15,000 a
day.

This tinny house demonstrates the problem of stamping them out. It had
been running for at least five years. Police knew about it and had
raided it several times.

"It's the old story," says Jones. "It was making so much money they
would accept losing a couple of guys, some drugs and some money and
just open up again within days with someone else in there."

The Otahuhu drug shop was unique in terms of the money it took and its
operation. Two houses were used. One, which faced the street, was
owned by the gang. Drugs and money were kept there but the house
behind it, rented by the gang, was the known tinny house where the
deals were done. Close to motorway access, it was easily reached by
people from a wide area of the city. "It got to the stage there was
traffic backed up and blocking the road, they were selling that much,"
says Jones.

The clientele was broad: truck drivers, labourers, schoolgirls.

"Some of my guys tipped out a bunch of girls from Dio [Diocesan School
for Girls]," says Jones.

Tinny houses traditionally sell small amounts of cannabis - enough for
a few joints - wrapped in tinfoil, hence their name. But police
believe a variety of drugs may be available through them.

Jones suspects they take orders for drugs such as P (pure
methamphetamine) and Ecstasy and arrange to deliver them elsewhere.
That was because drug dealers knew police would make the houses a
higher priority if they were outlets for harder drugs.

The King Cobra source agrees. "Our gang policy is that we do not sell
meth. That is why the cops leave us alone." But he says the rapid
growth in the use of P - a drug associated with some of the most
violent crimes - is denting demand for cannabis.

Burglary and car thefts take precedence for police. This is dictated
by Parliament, reacting to the concerns of voters.

"We've been ignoring drugs for years," a police source told the
Weekend Herald. Police had been receiving information constantly about
gangs' drug activities but other work was given higher priority.

The Auckland drug squad does not police tinny houses, instead
concentrating on drug importation and manufacture. The focus is on
volume crimes such as burglaries, property theft, fraud, areas where
clearance statistics are not good, the police source says. What isn't
appreciated, he says, is that such crimes are connected.

"Guys are stealing property and anything they can get their hands on
from cars, and a lot of that property is going to tinny houses to buy
drugs."

Police spokesman Jon Neilson said that although tinny houses were not
targeted, they were dealt with as police became aware of them.

The officer heading the inquiry into the murder of Heremaia, Detective
Senior Sergeant Neil Hallett, said police had not been aware of the
tinny house where he was murdered.

The King Cobra member has no doubt young people like Heremaia will
continue to do the gang's dirty work, lured by the prospect of membership.

Most of the kids in tinny houses can't read or write, he says.

"They join because they have no other hope. They can't fit into
society. Being in a gang means you can be in a $10 million company."