“While I won’t comment directly on police intelligence or prevention activity, changes in gang numbers, location or visibility are always of interest to us.”
The re-emergence is the latest chapter in a long history of the Devils Henchmen MC.
In the mid-1970s, the fledgling collective of young men was involved in a deadly beef with the Epitaph Riders in Christchurch that led to stabbings, guns, beatings, pad raids, and Molotov cocktails.
A violent, long-running enmity with rivals the Road Knights MC sparked up in the early 90s, with car and firebombs, armed home invasions, shootings and drive-bys. It was gang warfare once described by cops as “wild west stuff”.
Over recent decades, the feared gang had been based at a fortified, spacious two-storey gang pad on the outskirts of Timaru in South Canterbury.
But in May last year, armed members of the Rebels MC gang stormed into the rival Devils Henchmen’s renowned clubhouse and booted them out.
The Henchmen were forced to leave behind several motorbikes and a Rebels flag — a Confederate flag with a grinning skull and 1% symbol — was draped from the top-floor balcony.
The Rebels painted over logos, ripped out all Devils Henchmen insignia and memorabilia, even, it’s understood, chiselling out the gang’s name from tailor-made wooden bar leaners.
But a week later, after reports of high tension, even gunshots, police raided the gang pad and found several stashed firearms.
And then in a shock move, Timaru District Council, which had been outspoken against gangs in the past, saying they simply weren’t welcome in the district, revealed it had bought the 8766sq m property at 90 Meadows Rd, Washdyke.
The Devils Henchmen MC's old Timaru gang clubhouse was demolished after the property was bought by the local council last year. Photo / Supplied
The Devils Henchmen MC had been quiet since then — until they started popping up in the streets of Christchurch in the past weeks.
Last year, a new gang formed behind bars reportedly muscled into the Christchurch underworld scene.
Comprising former and loosely associated existing gang members, including Tribesmen MC, Killer Bees, and Mongrel Mob, the new gang, calling themselves The Pirates, had also cropped up on the police radar.
But the Pirates have been quiet ever since — in what has been a quiet period for the Christchurch gang scene.
Over the past decade, Australian bikie gangs like the Mongols MC and Rebels MC had shaken up the city’s established underworld hierarchy.
In 2020, Mongols MC members, including national president Jim David “JD” Thacker, himself a 501 deportee, established a chapter in the city after patching over ex-members of the notorious Hells Angels international bikie group, including Jason Ross, who would be made the local president.
A 2019 New Zealand Police organised crime governance group insights report found the New Zealand adult gang population is “growing rapidly”, and violent and drug-related crime was proportionally rising.
Police launched Operation Cobalt in July 2022 to respond to a spike in intimidating behaviour and violence by gangs in the first half of the year.
Since then, the police have seized hundreds of firearms and laid thousands of charges in court, as well as confiscating commercial quantities of drugs and large sums of cash.
