The World's Most Evil Gangs

by Nigel Blundell

  According to a 2012 police report: ‘These gangs have been involved in serious violence, selling and distributing drugs, possessing firearms and offensive weapons, and using intimidation and threatening tactics in pursuit of their criminal activities’. The problem in NZ’s largest city, Auckland, has become so serious that some politicians have called for all gangs to be banned.

  The gangs are mainly made up of Maori, Pacific and Polynesian communities who moved in the late 1950s from the countryside into the newly prospering towns hoping to find jobs and wealth. Instead, many of them claim, they found themselves socially excluded and deprived of the economic growth enjoyed by their white neighbours.

  The result was the rise of ethnic-minority gangs that are now linked to drugs, theft, assault, rape and murder. Increasingly, they model themselves on Los Angeles street ‘gangstas’ and adopt the violent, drug-fuelled culture that goes with them.

  Largest of the rival Maori-dominated gangs are the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, the Nomads, the Tribesmen and the Stormtroopers. They have similar hierarchical structures, with a president and a sergeant-at-arms leading so-called ‘patched’ members and ‘unpatched’ recruits.

  To earn a ‘patch’ (a tattoo or a symbol sewn onto a jacket) a recruit must pass initiation tests ranging from drinking urine from a gumboot to committing a serious crime or even doing another member’s time in jail. This explains the high percentage of gang members behind bars. Forty per cent of inmates at Auckland’s Springhill prison are in a gang. Although only 15 per cent of NZ’s population is Maori, they make up 50 per cent of the prison population.

  One of the most violent gangs, the Mongrel Mob, was formed in Hawkes Bay in the late 1960s. Its name originated from comments made by a district judge who described a group of men up in front of him as ‘nothing but a pack of mongrels.’ Their territory is now nationwide, with a network of more than 30 chapters. There is even a branch in Auckland Maximum Security Prison.

  Members wear principally red and are recognised by the bandanas they tie around their heavily tattooed faces. The tattoos and matching ‘patches’ often depict a swastika and their logo is a British Bulldog wearing a German army helmet. They greet each other with a shouted ‘Sieg Heil!’ Indeed, the Mongrel Mob’s ditty runs:

  Born in a brothel

  Raised in a jail

  Proud to be a Mongrel

  Sieg f****** Heil

  Pitched battles are a weekly occurrence between the Mongrel Mob and their deadly rivals, Black Power, which formed in the capital, Wellington, in the early Seventies. Their ‘patch’ of a closed black fist and the identifying blue scarves are now seen nationwide.

  Attacks in recent years have included a gang member shot in the face – the retaliatory assault leaving a man stabbed in the face and another in the spine. Drive-by shooting victims have included a man blasted with a shotgun and a two-year-old child killed in crossfire. Gang sex, termed ‘blocking’, is a particularly vile practice. A teenager was murdered for refusing to have sex with a Mongrel member in 1987. The following year, a young woman was raped by 15 Mongrel Mobsters at one of their conventions.

  The growth in drug use is now the most worrying trend, say police. The rituals of gang membership disguise the manufacture of illegal stimulants – particularly smokable methamphetamine (known as ‘P’ or ‘Pure’). Three-quarters of raided laboratories making ‘P’ have been under the control of the gangs. Money from this illegal trade is laundered through legitimate tax-paying businesses such as nightclubs, massage parlours and sports fishing.

  Now the growing threat is from Pacific Islands youth gangs as new generations of young islanders distant from home cultures have grouped together. They particularly model themselves on US style ‘gangstas’ and favour rap music, flashy jewellery and expensive cars, paid for by aggravated robbery, drug dealing and intimidation. By 2010 there were reckoned to be more than 50 such gangs with around 1,000 members in South Auckland alone, although many have nebulous memberships and exist for only short periods. In addition to these are the street gangs who mark their neighbourhood presence with graffiti. As their names often form three-letter acronyms, they are referred to by the police as ‘ABC gangs’ – such as Respect Samoan Pride (RSP), Killer Beez (KBZ) and Bud Smoking Thugs (BSTs).

  ‘These gangs could be much worse than those we’ve seen in the past,’ says sociologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert of the University of Canterbury. ‘They want the trappings of success, the bling, the cars and fancy clothes – but their means to achieve that legitimately are blocked, and that leads inevitably to more profit-driven crime.’

  Back in the 1970s, a government initiative had aimed to reduce youth gang recruitment by helping underachieving students make the move from education to employment and by providing recreational activities outside of school. The money pumped into the schemes may or may not have reduced anti-social offending but it ironically raised the standing of some gangs and made them more attractive to young prospects. The Prime Minister of the time, Robert Muldoon, was a strong advocate of these schemes and took a personal interest in the gangs, giving them a status they had not previously enjoyed. Negative publicity resulted in a sudden decision to close the gang support schemes in 1987 but at Muldoon’s funeral in 1992 the regard for the premier from those quarters was revealed when Black Power members performed a haka in his honour.

  Throwing taxpayers’ money at the problem did not seem to work, as seems to have been proved by the growing power of the oldest established of these gangs, the King Cobras, who are heavily armed and were linked to eight murders over a two-year period during the early 2000s. The Cobras are a Central Auckland based gang who originated from an earlier group, the Polynesian Panthers, in the 1970s. Although mainly of island backgrounds, their ranks are not exclusive of other races. The Cobras’ turf stretches from Auckland’s Downtown area to the southern suburbs of Mangere and Papatoetoe.

  A mainstay of their business surrounded the New Zealand peculiarity of so-called ‘tinnie’ houses which traditionally sell small amounts of cannabis wrapped in tinfoil, hence their name. Nowadays, however, a variety of other drugs may also be available through them. The houses are frequently run by gangs, using young prospects hoping for membership. If independently run, the ‘tinnies’ are hit with protection-money demands from the gangs. Busy operations are said to produce a daily income of up to $(NZ) 2,000.

  In South Auckland in 2003 a notoriously brutal slaying took place at a ‘tinnie’ at Mangere, where a 15-year-old youth, Michael Heremaia, helped run the drugs den, hoping to work his way up to becoming a patched member one day. The teenager is believed to have blown the whistle on some of the senior gang members who had been stealing from the kitty – which is why a group of them visited the house with murder in mind. They were going to teach the boy a lesson – ‘you don’t nark on patched gang members,’ said the state prosecutor in the subsequent trial at Auckland’s High Court.

  The vengeful King Cobras, one of whom had already vowed that he was going to kill someone that night, burst into the house, where they found a man sleeping on a couch, held him down and stabbed him in the chest. When young Michael Heremaia emerged from a bedroom, they turned on him, allowing the first victim to flee. One of the gang then held the boy against a wall while two others stabbed him more than 30 times. The knife went into his neck, his head, his chest and at times plunged right through his body. One of the Cobras, Ofisa Andrew Kopelani, who said he had waited outside in a getaway car until the very end of the slaying, told police that Michael’s last words were: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’

  The sale of joints traded from ‘tinnie’ houses was on a small scale compared with the major narcotics business that has made the King Cobras so powerful. In 2009 members of the gang were involved in a multi-million dollar methamphetamine drug ring organised within Auckland maximum-security prison at Paremoremo. According to the summary of a police investigation, the drug trade, which involved both importing and manufacturing, was ca
rried out under the noses of – and sometimes with the assistance of – prison officers, allowing some inmates to make fortunes and at least one allegedly to have become a millionaire.

  In July 2010 police intelligence revealed that the King Cobras were tooling up with Tasers and specially silenced pistols in what threatened to become all-out war for control of the drug trade on Auckland’s streets. This new threat brought in the Armed Offenders Squad, who used tear gas in dawn raids on two homes in their hunt for gang member Daniel Vae, wanted on three arrest warrants. He evaded them but the police uncovered Vae’s patch, his methamphetamine gear, a Chinese-made Taser, a bulletproof vest and a specially adapted semi-automatic handgun. Vae was arrested a month later and pleaded guilty to possession of the Taser and firearm.

  Following the raid, Detective Sergeant Callum McNeill, of Auckland Central’s Organised Crime Unit, warned that the Cobras were increasingly arming themselves, their favoured weapon being a compact semi-automatic. He said: ‘They can be concealed in a normal laptop bag so you could carry them around in the streets of Auckland and no one would know they are there. We are seeing them more and more on the streets. These are .22 rifles bought legally with licences. The crooks are getting their hands on them, taking off the stocks, putting on pistol grips, putting on bigger magazines, and cutting down the barrel and putting on a silencer.’ Detective-sergeant McNeill said the gangsters were also increasingly tooling up with illegal Tasers that had been smuggled into the country from China, adding: ‘We are concerned these guys are armed and ready for action.’

  Just how pervasively lawless the New Zealand gangland scene has become was revealed in an Auckland court case in 2012. It ended with four King Cobra members and associates being jailed for kidnapping and assaulting two Asian men after a business arrangement turned sour. During the three-week trial, a jury heard how the underworld saga had begun two years earlier when a Chinese man, known as Han, engaged the King Cobras to track down a debtor, named as Johnson, who owed him $70,000. Han agreed to pay the gang $10,000 for their services.

  The Cobras did indeed find their man but Johnson could not pay Han, so he in turn was unable to pay the Cobras. Han was kidnapped and taken to a house in the Auckland inner suburb of Kingsland, where four of the gang were waiting: Joe Tie, Robert Logo, Ross Romana and Ofisa Andrew Kopelani, the driver in the ‘tinnie’ house slaying of 2003.

  Fearing he was going to be tortured, Han rang a friend pretending he was raising the money but, speaking to him in Chinese, he was really calling for help. The friend, Jack Wu, sought out another senior Cobra to act as an intermediary and the pair turned up at the kidnap house. This enraged the gangsters, who punched and kicked Wu and Han. Ross Romana ordered them to pay half of the money the next day while Robert Logo, armed with a knife, threatened to cut off their fingers.

  Again pretending to be raising funds from friends, the pair once more managed to raise the alarm. A Chinese speaking police officer called their mobile phones and they were able to explain their predicament and give their location. Police then arrested the men. In a subsequent court case, they were found guilty on multiple charges including kidnapping, blackmail and wounding. Romano, described as the ‘leader of the pack’, received the longest sentence, of six years. Kopelani, whose role in the group was said to be ‘at the lowest end of the spectrum’, was jailed for three.

  Despite the involvement of Asians in that last case, Asian gangs have had a relatively small presence in New Zealand. But simply by their ethnic closeness and secretive nature, the full extent of their growth has probably been overlooked. By the late 1980s, police had identified Triad-type gangs – Hong Kong’s Wo Group, Sun Yee On and Malaysia’s Ah Kong – with involvement in drugs, prostitution, fraud, counterfeiting and extortion. A more recent arrival was the Big Circle Gang from China, who brought with them expertise in protection rackets, extortion, gambling, counterfeiting, kidnapping and drug trading.

  Recently law enforcement agencies have detected alliances between the Asian gangs and home-grown gangs offering their services as ‘enforcers’. But it is the introduction of international bikie cults that is likely to prove a more obvious cause of criminal behaviour, mainly inter-gang warfare. In 2011 Rebels Motorcycle Club patches were first sighted on bikies around the North island and the following year the Bandidos formed a chapter in Auckland.

  It is this prominent display of gang membership that is often blamed for the public perception of the country as being in the grip of a crime wave. Since the turn of the century, the number of reported crimes has actually dropped, but visible and seemingly unchecked gangsterism has persuaded many New Zealanders to continue to believe that violent crime is out of control. Ministry of Justice statistics claim that the total number of offences in 2012 was the lowest since 1989, and gave the lowest crime rate per head of population since before electronic records were maintained.

  A study undertaken for the Justice Ministry back in 2003 found that 83 per cent of New Zealanders held ‘inaccurate and negative views about crime levels in society and wrongly believed’ that crime was increasing. A more recent study in 2009 by Dr Michael Rowe, from Victoria University, found an overwhelming public belief that crime has got worse despite New Zealand’s murder rate dropping by almost half in the previous 20 years. Reflecting the depth of this perception, only 57 per cent of citizens reported feeling ‘safe’. This means that despite New Zealand’s international standing as a peaceful country with a high level of human development, its inhabitants feel no more secure than citizens of countries like Iran (55 per cent) and Lebanon (56 per cent) and not much safer than those in African countries such as Nigeria and Uganda (both 51 per cent).

  In the knowledge that it is the high-visibility of gang crime that has fuelled this public feeling of insecurity, attempts to suppress the gangs had been stepped up since the Nineties, with the strengthening of laws specifically aimed at them. In 2008 a special police unit, the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand, was established to disrupt their activities. The following year, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act gave police greater powers to seize the proceeds of crime and use the money to fund further policing efforts. At a local level, Wanganui District Council in 2009 passed a controversial bylaw banning gang patches in public places throughout the city, a move studied closely by other towns. It opened a debate about the wider ban on patches – and the potential for action from gangs against the law, like that taken against Wanganui councillors.

  Moves for a national ban on patches on public premises were stepped up in late 2012 following an outcry about gang intimidation following the killing of a Rotorua schoolboy whose uniform was a colour associated with a rival gang. The death was in the constituency of National Party MP Todd McClay, who launched a campaign for the prohibition of patches from schools, hospitals and other government and local government buildings.

  The MP sponsored the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill with the aim, he said, of ‘focussing on the harm and significant misery that gangs cause throughout all communities and all parts of New Zealand’. He told Parliament: ‘People feel intimidated by what they stand for and they feel intimidated every time they see them in their WINZ office [Work and Income centre], in council offices and in schools and hospitals around this country. I believe this bill is one step towards banning gangs in New Zealand. To gang members I say this: if you go to government premises with a patch, your government will not serve you. Instead, a policeman will and he will want to talk to you about all the nasty things you and your criminal mates have been involved in.’

  Another MP, Richard Prosser of the NZ First party, was even more forthright, describing gang members as ‘weak, sick, fat, unfit, drug-addled retards’.

  The bill specified gangs that would be covered by the ban – including the Hells Angels, Mongrel Mob and Killer Beez – and said others that emerged with ‘a common name or common identifying signs’ that ‘collectively promote, encourage, or engage in crim
inal activity’ could be added.

  In ensuing parliamentary hearings, the police union gave official backing for the ban. Police Association president Greg O’Connor said that in many places around the country the gang presence is ‘real on the most vulnerable people’. He added: ‘This bill, while no panacea, does give another tool to show that those who are vulnerable, those who are likely to be intimidated, will see gang members scuttling, [or] taking their patches off before they go into buildings.’ However, the legislation was still being argued about a year later, with claims that it was inconsistent with the country’s Bill of Rights.

  How does New Zealand’s gang culture look to an outsider – perhaps someone who has grown up with the notion of this beautiful land being the epitome of rural tranquility and peaceability? A BBC journalist, Rebecca Kesby, presented a shock report on the NZ phenomenon in 2012. She says: ‘It’s not just the swastika tattoos, the missing teeth and scars that make these men – and some women – frightening. The list of serious crimes many of them have been convicted of is also terrifying. And those are just the crimes the police know about.’

  It is ironic that the Maoris, the indigenous people of New Zealand before the white man arrived two centuries ago, were persuaded to end their warlike ways and become settled and peaceful. The British governor, signing a treaty with their traditionally tattooed leaders in 1840, promised: ‘We are one people.’ Sadly, that can no longer be taken for granted.

  CHAPTER 17

  BLATANT PUBLIC FACE OF JAPAN’S UNDERWORLD

  In Japan today there are two principal types of gang that make up the nation’s criminal underworld: the old and the new, the Yakuza and the motorbikers.