Gangs playing ‘Russian roulette’
Gang-related shootings rarely result in the death of innocent bystanders. Police fear that could change as an influx of deported criminals from Australia causes underworld tensions to mount. Blair Ensor reports.
Mongrel Mob prospect Hayden Wallace clutched a loaded rifle inside one of three cars approaching the home of Black Power rival Josh Te Tua.
It was after dark on May 5, 2007, and the vehicle Wallace was in had turned off its lights.
An hour earlier, amid a day of escalating tensions between the two gangs, three carloads of Mongrel Mob members and associates had driven past the Whanganui house and been pelted with bottles, bricks and other missiles. They were back for revenge.
During the earlier altercation, a brick smashed the windscreen of mobster Karl Check’s fourwheel-drive. Unhappy, Check handed a .303 rifle to Wallace and was overheard telling him to ‘‘shoot him in the head’’.
Outside Te Tua’s home, about 20 Black Power members and supporters had gathered on the lawn.
As the vehicles carrying the Mongrel Mob members passed the property, three gunshots rang out. The Black Power members dived for cover and escaped injury.
But one of the bullets went through a window and ripped through the chest of Te Tua’s 2-year-old daughter, Jhia, who was asleep on the couch.
Wallace, Check and Ranji Forbes, the driver of the car Wallace was in, were later found guilty of murder in one of the few cases in the past two decades in which an innocent bystander has become a victim of warring gangs.
However, amid mounting tensions in the underworld, police say they’re concerned another name could be added to that toll.
According to the Homicide Report, a major Stuff data investigation, 11 people – excluding the victims of the Christchurch terror attack and those killed by police – were shot dead in 2019, reflecting a trend of escalating gun violence in New Zealand in recent years. At least five of those cases have gang links, but most are yet to go to trial so the circumstances are not known.
Every week there are several shootings across the country that don’t result in death.
In the past year, there have been a number of high-profile incidents, not least the very public tit-for-tat exchange between members of the Mongrel Mob and the Mongols MC in Tauranga, where a house in a suburban street was left riddled with bullets in January.
And even with Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in place, shots continue to be fired.
Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald, who was recently appointed as national crime manager, says police are worried another innocent bystander, like Jhia, could be caught in the crossfire of an underworld shooting.
‘‘Firing shots willy-nilly around in public is just Russian roulette – it’s outrageous and that sort of behaviour is very concerning,’’ Fitzgerald says.
Making it even worse is the erratic nature of those pulling the trigger, who are often high on drugs and not thinking rationally.
‘‘Decision-making and common sense unfortunately, when you’re impaired, goes out the window . . . but nobody wants their family put at risk, including those people that are involved in a gang war.’’
The Homicide Report is the country’s first publicly searchable database of homicides. It encompasses 1125 men, women and children killed from 2004 to 2019.
According to Stuff’s data, there have been at least 118 gun homicide incidents, excluding police shootings and hunting deaths, which resulted in the deaths of 175 people – 126 men , 40 women and 9 young people – in the past 16 years. The Christchurch terror attack is counted as a single homicide event.
So far this year, seven people have been killed in six incidents.
When the Homicide Report launched in May last year, we revealed that at least two-thirds of gun-related homicides involved either a .22 rifle or shotgun. Many of those weapons were cut-down or modified. Semi-automatic firearms, like those used in the terror attack, rarely figured. The vast majority of killers were not licensed to own guns.
More than a third of gun homicides involved the killing of a family member, and another third were related to gangs or criminal activity, such as drug dealing or robbery.
Since then, Stuff has obtained a new tranche of police data that reveals the age, gender, ethnicity and violent histories of people charged with homicide offences.
The data has limitations because it excludes murdersuicides. For those cases, we’ve been able to source only the age and gender of the killers.
Nearly all the perpetrators of gun homicide in the past 16 years were men. Their average age was 32. For the cases where the offender’s ethnicity is known, nearly half were Ma¯ ori and 37 per cent were European.
The vast majority – 92 per cent – had at least one previous violence conviction.
The number of fatal shootings has increased year on year since about 2014.
The escalation in deadly gun violence coincides with the deportation of hundreds of hardened criminals, known as 501s, to New Zealand after changes to Australian immigration law.
The arrival of the 501s, named after the character section under which their visas were cancelled, has radically changed New Zealand’s gang landscape.
New groups, most notably the Comanchero MC and Mongols, have established and, according to police data, gang membership has increased nearly 50 per cent in the four years to June last year.
At the end of August, the national gang register carried the names of 71 of the 501s.
Police have previously said many of the deported gang members were powerful and influential figures in the Australian underworld, who brought with them professionalism, a new flash image and significant international connections.
The arrival of the new gangs – known for their propensity for violence, particularly their use of guns – has led to clashes as rivals try to protect their turf.
Police at a national level are concerned about the number of gang-related homicides, many of which involve guns, in recent years.
The Mongols, led by national president Jim Thacker, a 501 deportee, established a chapter in the Bay of Plenty last year.
Earlier this year, the gang expanded into Canterbury, creating tension among rival groups, particularly the Tribesmen MC, considered the dominant player in the region’s underworld at the time.
In separate attacks in February, believed to be targeted at the Mongols, a tattoo parlour and a barbershop were rammed by vehicles in Christchurch. The barbershop, which has no apparent link to the gang other than through a man who used to associate with the president, was also firebombed.
The same month, the Mongols’ new headquarters in Burnham, on the outskirts of the city, was shot at by someone wielding a high-calibre rifle.
Days later, police raided the property and found 10 guns – military-style semi-automatics, shotguns, and a pistol – some of which were hidden in the walls and ceiling, dozens of bullets, $50,000 cash, and methamphetamine.
Gang expert Jarrod Gilbert says gang violence the public hears about is only the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ as it’s often done discreetly and complaints are not made to police.
In the past, targeting a gang member’s home was seen as a ‘‘real breach of gang etiquette’’ because of the risk to innocent parties, says Gilbert, the director of criminal justice at the University of Canterbury. ‘‘Clubhouses have historically been the target for tit-for-tat battles.’’
However, some gangs no longer have a headquarters, meaning acts of retribution can be opportunistic and spill over into residential areas, he says.
Many of those new to the scene haven’t been exposed to a tragedy, like the death of Jhia, and ‘‘if you don’t know why those rules are in place you just don’t care about them’’.
Sources say that, despite the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, incidents between rival gangs have continued across the country.
Gilbert says: ‘‘If somebody has a burning desire for retribution, the lockdown isn’t going to stop them. These guys work outside the law so these restrictions won’t confine them.’’
In saying that, he believes they run a much greater risk of being caught because ‘‘their
behaviour will be incredibly conspicuous’’.
‘‘Gang guys can’t go anywhere without getting pulled up at the best of times. That’s only going to increase [in the current environment].’’
Fitzgerald says police will continue to target gangs ‘‘regardless of what else is happening’’.
After the mosque attacks last year, the Government moved quickly to ban a wide range of high-calibre semi-automatics, including those used by the terrorist, which resulted in more than 56,000 firearms being removed from circulation.
Another round of reform – the Arms Legislation Bill – passed its second reading in Parliament in February. The proposed law changes would see a gun register and harsher penalties for those who supply firearms to unlicensed people, designed to prevent the flow of guns to the black market.
The idea of a gun register, which would link gun serial numbers to firearms, has been met with opposition from lobby groups who believe it would be costly, difficult to maintain accurately, and fraught with security issues.
In the meantime, frontline police staff continue to encounter illegal guns regularly. Police estimate there are more than one million guns in New Zealand, but there’s no way of knowing how many are in the hands of criminals.
Fitzgerald says the reforms are a ‘‘great start’’, but ‘‘it will take time to get the majority of the guns that aren’t registered off the streets’’.
‘‘It’s small steps and small battles to win the war.’’