Three Mongrel Mob members were pulled from a submerged car at the bottom of a gorge recently, following what Hawke’s Bay Police are calling, “a suspicious incident”.
The three men were on their way to a 50th Anniversary gang celebration, where members were said to have spent the day drinking beer, visiting cemeteries, and taking part in further festivities.
The car in question was travelling a road between Wairoa and Napier, apparently passing through ‘known Black Power territory’, adding to Police suspicions…
Seemingly the cost of keeping their bikes road-legal had become too much for these supposed motorcycle enthusiasts, who would ordinarily have never been seen dead in a Japanese car.
…This is a curious revelation, particularly after TV Three’s Samantha Hayes shot an expose` for her Third Degree current affairs show in which these gang members were not only heard to be denouncing violence and drug use, they were talking implicitly about a future of peace and harmony for their families, among these rival gangs.
The show was clearly a put-on in what I perceived as an ignorant attempt to throw authorities off their illicit trails or even, to draw their rivals into thinking they had become weak.
As I see it gang membership/rivalry/warfare in New Zealand is a puerile exercise: these men pick fights with one another, hold grudges then carry out vendettas against those who have wronged them – following the death of Headhunters prospect, Conor Morris, his gang buddies all swore vengeance on the man who had killed him – this despite no one else in New Zealand having the right to throw down vendettas, and in fact if we did we’d likely be locked up for making idle threats; no, while we regular folk have to be satisfied that the New Zealand judicial system will prevail, not so if you’re a gang member…
Gangs in New Zealand run by a different set of rules and generally, people seem to be accepting of that; even affording the cretins sympathy when their members are killed for reasons which have only ever come about due to the gang’s unholy presence.
…If you’re a gang member in New Zealand people will fear and respect you, even though you’re a gutless piece of irreverent scum; if you’re a gang member in New Zealand you don’t need to contribute to the nation as such, all you have to do is take what you want from it and expect other good, hard-working people to take up your slack.
Motorcycle clubs these gangs are not; murderous criminals they most assuredly are, and now there’s three fewer.
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Moe Sykill/N Suzi-Ast
Photography by Mhur Drus Krumnal