Former Rebels MC Christchurch gang member Jarrad Singer has patched over to the Comancheros and is seen wearing his new gang colours in this picture. Photo / Supplied
Former Rebels MC Christchurch gang member Jarrad Singer has patched over to the Comancheros and is seen wearing his new gang colours in this picture. Photo / Supplied
The Quake city gang scene rumbled with a seismic shift at the weekend, when an entire chapter of the Rebels MC “patched over” to the notorious Comancheros.
The move has sent shockwaves through the underworld, the Herald understands, and led to fears of new gang tensions.
It will be seenas a humiliation for the Rebels, an outlaw motorcycle club that originated across the ditch and is among the biggest in Australia.
The Rebels and Comancheros have always had close links in New Zealand, particularly Rebels MC Christchurch president Luke Mathers and former Comancheros national acting commander Seiana Fakaosilea.
The relationship between Fakaosilea and Mathers dates back to when they both lived in Queensland. Police Operation Cincinnati revealed Fakaosilea was delivering large quantities of methamphetamine to Mathers.
The Herald has obtained a recent photograph of former patched Christchurch Rebels member Jarrad Singer in Comancheros colours, taking a selfie in a mirror.
Former Rebels MC Christchurch gang member Jarrad Singer wears his new gang colours after he patched over to the Comancheros.
The Rebels MC has had its fortified headquarters in an industrial cul-de-sac in the eastern suburb of Woolston in recent times.
But today, the large “Rebels MC Christchurch” sign, with the gang’s Confederate flag, grinning skull and 1% symbol, has been removed from the heavily secured, high-fenced building.
Armed with shotguns, it’s understood they took over the gang pad and kicked out their southern rivals.
Within hours, a Rebels flag was draped from the top-floor balcony sparking days of tense activity in the South Canterbury town, with police on high alert.
The Rebels v Devils Henchmen saga played out in Timaru last month.
However, over the next few days, the Henchmen brokered a deal to sell the property to the council for more than $1 million, which resulted in the red-faced Rebels being booted out and the buildings being demolished by bulldozers.
The Pirates, which reportedly use the classic pirate phrase “Argh” as a signature calling, were believed to comprise former and loosely associated existing gang members, including Tribesmen MC, Killer Bees and Mongrel Mob.
Sources told the Herald at the time the gang had attracted serious and dangerous criminal elements, including well-known gangsters with a history of violence and drug offending, and were high on the police radar.
It was understood they had come together in prison – and it wasn’t clear how formal the arrangement was, or whether they were a freelancing collective - to push into the lucrative drug-dealing scene.
Some of its members had been kicked out of other gangs, sources said.
There have been major power moves in Christchurch’s gang landscape in recent years.
In have come Australian bikie gangs like the Mongols MC and Rebels MC, shaking up the city’s established underworld hierarchy.
In 2020, Mongols MC members, including national president Jim David “JD” Thacker, 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.
The Mongols - marked by their distinctive symbol of Genghis Khan riding a motorcycle – set up a South Island headquarters at a rural property near Burnham south of Christchurch, just off State Highway 1. They had already established a major presence in the Bay of Plenty before the move south and been targeted by police in Operation Silk, which resulted in guns seized and dozens of charges.
A 2019 New Zealand Police-organised crime governance group insights report found that the New Zealand adult gang population is “growing rapidly”, and violent and drug-related crime was proportionally rising.
New Zealand police launched Operation Cobalt last July 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.
Kurt Bayer is a South Island correspondent based in Christchurch. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2011.
George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.
