CLAWS OUT ON GANGS
Deportations have added fuel to simmering bike gang scene
It’s a somewhat bitter irony. Some of Australia’s most notorious criminals were deported to New Zealand because of a sickening brawl in an airport 10 years ago.
At Terminal 3 inside Sydney Airport on March 22, 2009, passengers watched in horror as Anthony Zervas, the younger brother of a Hells Angel member, was clubbed to death with a 12kg bollard in front of them.
The Hells Angels and the Comancheros, another outlaw motorcycle club, were in the middle of a turf war.
On that particular day, some members of the rival gangs just happened to be on the same flight.
The secret, brutal world of bikies — where violence is suffered in silence but given back in harsh retribution — had spilled into the public in the most horrifying way. They had gone a step too far. “Most people don’t interact with gangs, not on a day-to-day basis,” observed Detective Superintendent Deb Wallace of the New South Wales police.
“But this was a total disregard for public safety — violence and selfishness and arrogance perhaps — where they thought they could cause havoc in a very busy public space. And kill somebody.
“That was the catalyst to say the community won’t tolerate that.”
Within days, Strike Force Raptor was born. And while police had always investigated crimes allegedly committed by gang members, Raptor was proactive in its approach.
Creating a ‘hostile’ environment
Nothing was too big or too small.
If someone was punched outside a Kings Cross nightclub by a gang member, officers from Raptor would take over the case.
Tips were followed up assiduously by Raptor, houses and motorcycles raided for firearms and drugs.
If gang members didn’t pay their traffic fines, Raptor would ensure their driver licences were taken away.
Raptor would check gang clubhouses and use council rules to shut them down for shoddy workmanship or unconsented work.
If alcohol was being served at the pad, Raptor invoked archaic legislation so the gangs needed to have a liquor licence.
Raptor officers checked benefit payments and tax records, revealing hundreds of bikies claiming taxpayer assistance they weren’t entitled to.
A “consorting law” was introduced in February 2012 where anyone who ignores an official warning to not associate with criminals can be jailed for up to three years.
The consequences for gang members were far-reaching — unable to meet at clubhouses, ride together, or even hang out in the same room.
“Our aim was to create a hostile environment. We call it consequencebased policing,” Wallace said.
Encouraged by the success of Strike Force Raptor in New South Wales, police officers from other Australian states called them for advice.
The unofficial sharing of ideas soon evolved into a formal council — Morpheus National Taskforce — with officials from different police forces and government agencies.
One of those “opportunities” mentioned by Wallace, who sits on Morpheus, was the powerful ability of the Australian Border Force to cancel anyone’s visa, or have someone deported.
It’s a tough measure based on the “character grounds” test of Australia’s immigration laws — section 501.
It gave Strike Force Raptor another “hostile” tool to target specific gang members.
Alex Vella, the national president of the Rebels gang, had his visa revoked while on holiday in Malta.
One of his Rebels lieutenants, Shane “Kiwi” Martin was deported to New Zealand, where he was born, on the basis of secret evidence — none of which was strong enough to press criminal charges.
Last month, Martin could only watch television through tears as his son Dustin won the ultimate individual accolade in one of Australian’s biggest sporting events, the AFL grand final.
Regardless of whether the deportation of an individual is fair or not, the deliberate tactic to deport hundreds of “501s” changed the criminal landscape of New Zealand forever.
Perhaps the most visible of these is the establishment of the Comancheros in New Zealand.
The name of Pasilika Naufahu, a senior figure in the gang’s Sydney chapter, was raised as a top priority in a Morpheus meeting and he was deported in February 2016.
Within 24 hours of landing in Auckland, Naufahu was embroiled in a street fight outside a bar.
He warned that others deported from Australia under the tough immigration law could be forced into a life of crime if they had no support in New Zealand.
Wallace described Naufahu as a “larger than life character” and part of the new breed of the Comanchero bikies. “The Comancheros were an old school bikie gang dating back to 1966; bearded, scruffy, Anglo-Saxon ethnicity,” says Wallace.
“In recent years, there has been a significant change in the make-up of the gang, with deliberate recruitment of members of Middle Eastern and Pacific Island ethnicity.
“They wear lots of jewellery, heavily tattooed, gym bunnies, with attractive girlfriends hanging off their arms . . . it looks like a very glamorous life.”
It wasn’t long until the Comancheros announced their arrival here.
Wearing the black and gold colours, six members gathered around gold-plated motorcycles in a series of photographs posted on social media.
The display was a powerful statement — to the police and other gangs in New Zealand — which came a week after the ex-president of the Comancheros, Mahmoud “Mick” Hawi, was fatally gunned down in a Sydney gym carpark.
Hawi was one of the Comancheros convicted of manslaughter following the Sydney airport brawl.
A New Zealand arm of the gang was “inevitable” following the deportation of 14 Comancheros, Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, the head of the National Organised Crime Group, told the Herald on Sunday at the time.
“It’s concerning. Like the other Australian gangs, the Rebels and the Bandidos, we expect the Comancheros will attempt to establish themselves in the drug market within New Zealand.”
‘Green light to kill’
Just a few weeks later, a husband and wife were shot point-blank in the head in an “execution-style” slaying in Auckland.
Victim Epalahame Tu’uheava, was a patched member of another gang in Australia, the Nomads, but sought to build ties to the Comancheros on his return to New Zealand. Somehow his wife Yolanda (Mele) Tu’uheava survived and gave evidence at the trial.
Her husband was selling methamphetamine and his drug dealing led him to a meeting with associates of the Comancheros.
Epalahame Tu’uheava took $63,000 to a meeting with a patched member, Viliami Taani, and two associates Fisilau Tapaevalu and Mesui Tufui. It was a set-up.
The trio had been given the “green light to kill” by Comancheros leadership, the Crown alleged at trial. The 28-year-old Epahalame was shot seven times: Twice in the arm, three times in the head, and twice in the back.
His wife was cowering on her knees, begging forgiveness. She was shot twice in the arm, then twice in the head.
“It is frankly a miracle she survived,” said Justice Anne Hinton in sentencing Taani to serve a minimum of 17 years 6 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder.
Tapaevalu and Tufui were convicted of the same crimes by a jury after pleading not guilty.
‘The perfect storm’
The ruthlessness of the slaying over a perceived slight to the reputation of the Australian interlopers was shocking.
The emergence of hardened gang members among the 501s, of which the Comancheros are the most visible so far, has led to an escalating evolution in the “quality and quantity” of those mixing in the criminal underworld in New Zealand.
Many of the gang members targeted by Morpheus for deportation are “office holders” in their respective clubs in Australia — presidents, vicepresidents, treasurers and sergeantsat-arms.
“These are influential positions,” says Williams. “They have bought their tradecraft, their international connections, use of encrypted devices with them. I think that’s why we’ve seen quite a change in the gang scene in the last four to five years.”
In April this year, around a dozen patched Comancheros and associates — including a media personality, lawyer and accountant — were arrested following a covert police investigation. Among those arrested was New Zealand chapter president Pasilika Naufahu
Serious methamphetamine and money laundering charges were laid in Operation Nova, with around $4 million of assets restrained under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act. All of the accused have pleaded not guilty and are due to stand trial next September.
Gold-plated motorcycles, several late-model Range Rovers, a RollsRoyce Wraith — which has a price tag of at least $500,000 — and two homes were among the assets seized.
There’s now around 6500 gang members, according to police.
Williams believes there are two reasons for the surge — to tap into New Zealand’s lucrative, burgeoning meth market, and then strength in numbers to protect their turf from the Australian invaders. Or take someone else’s territory.
The arrival of the Australian gangs, or other deportees who “patched over” to existing New Zealand gangs, has “unquestionably” changed the local landscape says researcher Dr Jarrod Gilbert.
“If you want a Petri dish to understand what’s at the core of those issues, and what that means, it’s the Comancheros,” says Gilbert, who has written books about the history of New Zealand gangs.
“They are bold, a different culture, and seemingly not afraid of anybody. Without question, it’s creating issues.”
By the early 2000s, Gilbert says gangs were “moribund” with dropping membership and meth addiction “ripping apart” some groups.
Then the Rebels, Australia’s largest motorcycle club, turned up around 2010 which Gilbert says “breathed new life” into the scene.
Shortly after, the Bandidos and the Outlaws, two other international gangs, arrived to jostle for position. Some local gang members switched allegiances to new colours.
This period of dramatic growth coincided with the advent of the “501” deportees.
“It’s the perfect storm in some ways. In a crowded room, someone invariably gets elbowed. When that happens in the gang scene, an elbow tends to escalate,” says Gilbert.
“We’ve seen that before in the 70s and 80s. And we’re seeing that now. The question is how far it goes.”