'We'll be back tonight' say taggers

Tough new anti-tagging laws will not stop South Auckland's "night crawlers" seeking the fame that comes with having their signature written across the city.

"If we had a job, it would be different," said a 15-year-old, who did not want to be identified. "We haven't got anything else to do."

For now, he says, the best the future has to offer him is being accepted into the Killer Beez gang when he turns 16, and selling drugs for them. "You make more money doing that. Every time you want money, you've got it."

Tagging helps to give him the street cred he needs to join the gang - as did the hammer bashing of a teenager in South Auckland two months ago. "I got lots of fame for that," he said. "I don't feel bad about it, I don't feel nothing."

The tagger's words came minutes after they had watched Prime Minister Helen Clark officially announce the Government's crackdown on taggers during a visit to Clendon skate park in Manurewa.

The park is near where businessman Bruce Emery allegedly stabbed teenage tagger Pihema Cameron after chasing him from his property. Emery received an anonymous message on his lawyer's phone yesterday, saying he would be killed if let out on bail.

But taggers said the stabbing had made them nervous and they now walked the streets at night in groups. Some carried knives and hammers.

"Every tagger feels unsafe now," 15-year-old Gest said.

The boys blame their life of crime on the "hard" environment in which they grew up. Their parents, they say, are not concerned that they tag, just that they do not get brought home in a police car - or worse, end up in the gutter.

But neither the stabbing nor tough new anti-tagging laws would keep them from the practice, the boys say.

"It's like going to work," Gest said.

"We're night crawlers, that's what we do," the hammer basher said.

The boys are taking part in a Whanau Support Service programme for troublesome youths. Tutor Johnny Seve was disappointed Miss Clark did not talk to them. Tagging was their only vehicle for expression, their only way of telling people what their issues were.

Gangs manipulated them by giving them the only sense of identity they had ever known. Gangs would also make a lot of money selling them spraypaint once the new laws came into effect.

Meanwhile, the park had emptied, the officials had been whisked off and the television cameras had gone. Periodic detention workers set to work cleaning up the tag-ridden park.

"We'll be back tonight," called out one of the taggers.

- © Fairfax NZ News