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Offender Databases Pelesauma Olamoe

Pelesauma Olamoe

Alias

Pelesauma Leififi
Pelesauma Johnson
"Pels"

Offences

Extensive record of serious violent offending and robbery in Wellington from 1996 to recently
Other convictions for illegal possession of undersize paua, unlawful pessesion of excess paua, multiple paua related offences etc

Victims

.

Offender Affiliations

Tasi Olamoe

Gang affiliations

Bloods

Age

Born 1980

Current Location

Was at large in Newtown, Wellington

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 200 hours community work in July 2004
Currently on remand

Background
From a Dominion article 05/10/2000
TASI LEIFIFI, 15, fiddles nervously with his delicate shell beads as he quietly explains his violent criminal history. "I used to drink a lot. I used to just beat people up for money to buy drinks." The Newtown teenager isn't old enough to buy a Lotto ticket yet he already has a criminal record that includes a string of assaults and robbery. With three older brothers who had all settled for a life of crime his life seemed destined for court appearances and prison dinners. "I wasn't allowed to hang out with my brothers because my parents didn't trust any of them," he says. The Leififi brothers were seen by Wellington police as some of the most serious youth offenders.

Fed up with the constant stream of assaults by youth offenders, including the brutal beating of a petrol station attendant, the local residents' association called a community meeting with police. The meeting determined the youth offenders were Samoan but there was a lack of resources available to help them. As a result, Wellington police youth aid, and Child, Youth and Family Services rounded up the 15 worst offenders in Newtown and created a scheme for for them called Lomaita O Apa'ula or Tears of the Mother. The poetically named year-long intensive programme was set up using $75,000 from the Crime Prevention Unit. Now the 15 Samoan youths spend their days undergoing anger management, driver education, English lessons, cultural studies and playing chess, among other skills.

Wellington police youth aid officer Sila Su'a says the idea of the programme is to target the older core youth offenders who are influencing the younger teenagers in the area. Since the programme began there has been virtually no youth crime in the area. The 15 serial offenders were all friends who belonged to an unofficial gang which hung around local parks, drinking and smoking, and generally causing trouble for police. Unlike the traditional approach of removing problem kids from their problem friends the scheme believes in keeping at-risk kids and their troublemaking friends together to target the "entire package". Mr Su'a says the key to success with the programme is keeping all the kids together to ensure that once the scheme is finished, the teens have the support of their friends to stay out of trouble.

Poni Tanuvasa, 18, is one of the 15 kids who spills over with pride when he talks of the programme. "This programme's all right, eh. I reckon it's done really well for me. It's made me feel comfortable about speaking up for myself and it's given me confidence that I didn't have." Before joining the scheme Poni and his friends would just "hang out, get drunk and smoke weed". He says he had a perpetual dislike of police, who would constantly pick on him. Yet when he finishes the scheme next year he wants to join the police force. "I want to have a successful career so I think I'd like to be a police officer." Mr Su'a says many of these kids come from violent family backgrounds, where they've been left to their own devices. "By targeting these guys we could stop the offending because they had the potential to rope in the younger kids - it helps them to stay out of trouble instead of going around looking for it. We are extremely optimistic that it will work. It has a sound structure and all the right ingredients for success."

ONE of those ingredients is the programme's multi-agency approach. Mr Su'a says that unlike other youth programmes Tears of the Mother involves a crossover of government agencies. The Samoan success story is not a one-off case. Youth reoffending in Wellington has dropped by 93 per cent since 1996. This dramatic drop has been aided by the introduction of "working in collaboration with communities", a youth scheme set up by Wellington police youth aid and Child, Youth and Family. The Government intends cracking down on growing youth crime by giving police increased power and imposing tougher sentences. Wellington seems to be bucking the nationwide trends. Last year only 176 family group conferences were held for youth offenders, down from 554 in 1996. The number of serial reoffenders has dropped from 30 to just two last year. However, nationwide statistics are not as positive: 44,925 youths aged under 17 committed offences from June 1999 to June 2000, up from 42,925 in the same period last year.

Wellington police and Child, Youth and Family recently won a national innovations award for the project. The head of Wellington Youth Aid, Tony Moore, and Wellington Youth Justice coordinator Allan McRae say the idea for the scheme grew from the numerous patterns they kept finding within youth crime. These included 58 per cent of court appearances that resulted from gang affiliations, 60 per cent of youngsters up before the courts who regularly used drugs, suffered school suspensions, cultural isolation and a lack of adult role models. The project's schemes include Tu Rangitahi, which targets youth offenders with gang affiliations, and Alternative to Mainstream Education, a project that looks at the needs of students who have been difficult to keep at school.

Tasi had already been expelled from his school and was described by police as one of the leaders among the younger members of the Newtown gang. A keen boxer, he had all the attributes to qualify as a tough guy. He says that when he first heard that one of his brothers, Pele, 20, had started going to the scheme he thought he was "soft". "I just thought it was stupid. I mean, why would you want to come and hang out with the same old boys you see everyday? "With the passion and fervour of a born-again Christian Tasi says: "It's changed me - I just want to stay here. I wouldn't do that sort of thing (assault) again because I have heaps of support here."

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Corrections and Additional Information
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