Gangbusters: Three months on from the gang patch ban

Saturday, 22 February 2025

“Out on the streets it’s war, but on this we are standing together,” one Mongrel Mob member warned before the gang patch ban came into effect.

The first arrest came at three minutes past midnight on November 21.

From there a steady trickle of arrests under the new gang legislation began as the wearing of gang insignia in any public place became illegal in Aotearoa for the first time.

But the expected windfall of arrests never eventuated. Instead, fears of mass rebellion and protests proved unfounded and overnight gang patches seemed to mostly disappear from New Zealand’s streets.

Evidently, gang members across the motu were largely complying with the new laws that, if ignored, could see them stripped of their patches.

As sociologist and gang expert Dr Jarrod Gilbert told The Post: “I think the implementation of the patch ban, which had all the potential to be incredibly problematic, has gone about as smoothly as anyone could have hoped.”s

Hundreds gathered in Tauranga for the funeral of Mongrel Mob Notorious Captain Wayne George Kelly - also known as Ned Kelly - and his wife, who died a day after him.

So why has the police response, dubbed Operation Nickel, been such smooth sailing so far?

The importance of coming out of the gates strong

According to Gilbert, it’s important to recognise that the success of Operation Nickel is “no fluke”.

“The police did a remarkable amount of work before the ban came into place, communicating with gang communities to tell them exactly what was going to happen,” Gilbert said.

For some gang members, their patch has come to represent their whānau. (File photo)

“Then when the ban actually did come into effect, police gave no quarter. They acted firmly and without hesitation.”

In the weeks leading up to the ban, police held approximately 500 meetings with gang chapters, iwi groups and media around the country.

The man tasked with leading the police response, Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Basham, was unequivocal from the get-go. The ban would be actively enforced from the outset: no warnings, no reminders, only immediate arrest or as soon as resources allowed it.

“At the end of the day Parliament has passed a law, and officers are required to enforce the law, so that’s what we’re going to do,” Basham said in November.

In the weeks that followed, notable arrests flooded the headlines.

Six members of the King Cobra gang were arrested for posing outside the High Court in Auckland wearing their distinctive serpentine patch after a photo of the group was posted on social media.

A Mongrel Mob member was arrested after brazenly walking straight into the Taumarunui Police Station wearing a hat depicting the gang’s characteristic bull dog.

Significantly, police conducted a search warrant at the Head Hunters West gang pad in Henderson within the first 24-hours of the ban being in effect. A 52-year-old had his patch seized and was arrested during the search, while the president of the chapter also had his patch and motorcycle seized.

One Auckland frontline police officer who was seconded to work on the Operation Nickel task force told The Post he thought those early days were key to the success of the weeks that followed.

According to Dr Jarrod Gilbert, New Zealand’s leading gang expert, the widespread use of gang patches was a fluke of history that came with the fourth chapter of Hell’s Angel in Auckland.

“Police did well and started off doing warrants on high-profile members, which showed no one was immune and that we will come knocking no matter who you are,” the officer, who The Post agreed not to name, said.

But the headlines weren’t necessarily reflective of the reality that gang members were predominantly complying with the new laws.

As Basham said at the end of the first week of enforcement: 'Compliance with the new law is generally good, with the vast majority of gang members making sensible decisions and abiding by the law.”

At the end of January, there had been 203 charges laid under the new legislation and 135 items with gang insignia seized, according to data collected by the Police Association. That would equate to approximately two arrests around the country every day.

“There are certainly different views about whether the gang patch ban was necessary, but I think police need to be congratulated. They worked out a plan and implemented it,” Gilbert said.

Where have all the gang members gone?

Black Power kaumātua Denis O’Reilly acknowledged that the first three months of the ban had certainly been “miraculous”.

“We all anticipated consequences - I personally was afraid of a big clash - but the consequences seem to be that gangs have disappeared.

“For some of the indigenous gangs, it’s been an opportunity to reflect and ask themselves whether patches were what they wanted their gang membership to be characterised by, rather than a sense of whānau,” he said.

But O’Reilly urged caution about equating the disappearance of patches with a decrease in crime rates. Not all gang members were criminals, and not all criminals were gang members, he said.

A social media post showing King Cobra gang members outside the Auckland High Court resulted in action that will see them dealt with inside a courtroom.

“Make no mistakes, those gangs that were a front for organised crime groups are still operating,” he warned.

O’Reilly also said he was noticing what he called a rise in “subtle semiotics” - that is, the evolution of gang insignia.

“I’ve seen quite a few examples of people taking the insignia and developing it slightly so that it’s more subtle, so there’s a bit of a substitution effect going on. The street soon figures out how to talk to itself.”

Gilbert echoed O’Reilly’s sentiments, emphasising the likelihood that gangs substitute patches for another way of identifying themselves.

“That may mean more tattoos, for example. I personally don’t think a person is going to be any less intimidated by a guy with ‘Mongrel Mob’ written across his face than they would a person with a patch on.”

More problematic, perhaps, was the fact patches had been a way of “a large part of the underworld self-identifying itself”, Gilbert said.

“That visibility was aiding police, so while there will be some substitution, it will also just drive others underground.”

Not out of the woods yet

Crucially, however, the high level of compliance with the news laws to date was by no means an indication that police were out of the woods yet, Gilbert said.

“The conversation isn’t over. We’re now going to see these cases coming before the courts, and that’s when we’ll start to see arguments about interpretations of the legislation.

“One of the more obvious things that we might start to see is conversations around what constitutes insignia. Is just having a gang’s name enough? These boundaries will be tested before the courts,” Gilbert said.

He pointed to one of the first people arrested under the localised ban of gang patches in Wanganui in 2009 as an example of the conversations New Zealand’s courts might now start to have.

Brett Beamsley, 45, was pulled over by police while driving near his Aramoho home a day after the by-law came into force.

Beamsley successfully argued his bulldog beanie was a Georgia University logo and not a Mongrel Mob insignia - despite the fact he had the letters “MMM” for Mighty Mongrel Mob tattooed across his face.

Lifetime Mongrel Mob member Harry Tam also warned that the new laws may be leaving a lot of gang members struggling with a loss of a sense of identity.

“When you look at how gangs formed in this country in the first place, a lot of it was driven by oppression and the resultant loss of a sense of identity. This creates a trauma, where people feel alienated.

“This sense of alienation can then lead to all kinds of problems. People might begin self-medicating with drugs or using alcohol, which can then lead to a rise in crime.”

Only with time would the full legacy of the gang patch ban be understood, Tam said.