The simple act of crossing the road landed gang member Calen Morris in more trouble with the police.
He had been wearing his leather patch – depicting a horned skull engulfed in red flames, and the gang’s name “Head Hunters” spelled in giant gothic lettering – at a private party at the group’s clubhouse in late October. He left the event, walked across the road to his car and drove off.
Then, Morris said, his house was raided by the police, who he says seized his patch, arrested him and told his partner to flee with their children. They also raided the clubhouse.
Morris, 40, is accused of wearing his patch while crossing a public road – a breach of a recent law banning displays of gang insignia in New Zealand. But the bike mechanic, from the west of the country’s most populous city Auckland, claims his patch was folded under his arms and therefore not on display.
“It meant a lot to me,” said Morris.
His was one of 192 patches seized by police in the first 12 months of the law being in effect.
The legislation was the conservative coalition government’s response to growing public concern over a surge in gang membership over the past decade, which brought the country’s reported gang population close to outstripping its number of sworn police officers.
A year on, more than 850 charges have been laid for breaches of the prohibition order, and the government is touting the law change as a roaring success – claiming a decrease in serious violent crime.
The patches have all but disappeared from the streets. But the gangs have not.
According to gang members, the banishment of the patches is just optics – they’re recruiting new members just as fast as before. And even the police admit the most sinister gang activities are still happening.
Despite tourism campaigns marketing a pristine paradise in the South Pacific, New Zealand has a menacing criminal underbelly. The country’s 37 “identified” gangs and their more than 10,000 known members are credited with running the drug trade – primarily dealing methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine – and driving violent crime.
“It’s about a quarter of a percent of our adult population… (committing) about 18% of our serious violent crime,” said Corrie Parnell, an acting assistant commissioner with New Zealand Police.
Between October 2024, just before the insignia ban came into effect, and August this year, the number of victims of violent offending dropped by 23%, figures from a regular justice ministry crime survey showed.
The government and police both chalked that up as a win for the patch ban and associated anti-gang measures that were introduced, but the data doesn’t actually spell out what offending is gang-related.
Parnell did admit it was hard to “draw the nexus” between the seizing of a patch and any change in drug crime or other serious offending like child abuse and sexual assault.
Ask a gang member if anything has changed and they will likely just laugh.
“Everyone’s still there, nobody’s scared of anything. Nobody gives a f**k,” said Morris.
“Serious crime has never been done with a patch on,” said Bronson Edwards, 34, a chapter captain of the Mongrel Mob – one of New Zealand’s most storied gangs, whose mostly indigenous Māori members often seek to shock and provoke by bearing Nazi swastikas, and shouting the rallying cry “Sieg Heil.”
While the gangs say it’s business as usual, they have generally complied with the patch ban.
That’s because it’s no small thing for a gang member to lose their patch –– under the lore of the subculture, the patch never really belongs to the individual; it belongs to the gang.
“It’s so special and sacred to us,” said Edwards. “If you lose your patch there are consequences: you lose a life with us, you get your head kicked in and go back to normal life.”
Patches, bandanas and even just specific colors are used by gangs globally to state their presence, protect territory and, when conflict erupts, identify who is who. But patches have an elevated status because they’re usually earned by new recruits – known as “prospects” – for doing certain, often nefarious, tasks.
The law covers insignia in broad terms – defining them as any sign, symbol or representation commonly associated with a gang – and it applies to anything it is displayed on, be that clothing, cars, or even rings. But the legislation does not outlaw gang colors entirely, as lawmakers could not ban plain-colored clothing.
The punishment for breaching the ban is up to six months in prison, or a maximum fine of $5,000 New Zealand dollars ($2,870). In the first six months of the law being in effect, 22 people were jailed, according to authorities.
Outlaw motorcycle clubs and patched street gangs began to spread their roots into New Zealand society in the 1960s, with the opening of local chapters of overseas gangs, like the US-founded Hells Angels, and the establishment of homegrown gangs like the Mongrel Mob, the Nomads, Black Power (which has no connection to the US civil rights movement), and others.
At a time when indigenous Māori were being uprooted from their ancestral homes as part of an urbanization push, and amid an immigration crackdown on Polynesian people who had moved to New Zealand from the Pacific Islands in search of work and education, gangs – offering fraternity, status and protection – became a draw card for marginalized people.
Over the decades, the gangs have become what many would consider an unwelcome part of New Zealand life. Drive down the motorway in Auckland, and there’s a chance your vehicle will be swarmed and overtaken by dozens of bikies out on a weekend ride. Or stop off for a bite to eat in a small town and you might find yourself standing next to a leather-clad gang member ordering a sandwich.
Roughly 10 years ago, new gangs began to set up shop – some founded by serious criminals booted out of Australia under a controversial Canberra policy that deported visa holders who failed a “character” test, even if they had lived most of their lives in Australia.
The newly established gangs quickly began to grow and muscle in on the drug trade –– building connections with notorious overseas organized crime syndicates, like Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, co-founded by notorious narco Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Turf wars and renewed rivalries led to gun violence that played out in public, with gang members shot dead in the streets, and the homes of innocent families left riddled with bullet holes after being shot at in the night by gang members who got the wrong address.
Public frustration built and, in 2023, the funeral of a high-profile gang leader became a political flashpoint when two small North Island towns were brought to a standstill, and a state highway closed, as hundreds of patched bikies rolled in to pay their respects.
Assistant commissioner Parnell said reports of communities “feeling overwhelmed by the presence of patched gang members” were not uncommon.
But he said the insignia ban had drawn a line and people were now able to “go about their business and actually feel safe… without being impeded by en masse patched gang members.”
Where farmland meets the Pacific Ocean in the north of Hawke’s Bay, on the eastern coast of the North Island, sits the tiny town of Wairoa. One of the few remaining Māori-majority places in New Zealand, it has a population of just 5,000.
Wairoa has been beset by gang violence for decades, including some high-profile gang murders. The Mongrel Mob and Black Power have a strong presence.
The local mayor Craig Little said there has been “a real big turnaround” since the insignia law took effect. “You’re not seeing gang members walking down your main street or anywhere really.”
The gang patches, Little said, were intimidating for some members of the public, particularly visitors to the town. “People aren’t missing them, that’s for sure.”
The mayor estimated that 80% of the town’s crime was related to gangs. But he wasn’t convinced the patch ban had made any difference to the local crime rate: “I’d say it’s the same, but police are saying it’s less.”
Edwards, captain of the town’s Mongrel Mob chapter, agreed the law has made no real difference to crime. “We’re still out there, out on the street, just less visible –– which, you know, (with) the things that I want to do, that works out quite fine,” he said.
The self-described mobster said conflict between the two gangs in the town was still happening, because “some people still needed to learn some lessons.”
Gang membership in New Zealand is more than just about being part of a club. Often, it’s a family affair.
“I’ve grown up around bikes my whole life. All my uncles are Head Hunters, so it’s just one of those things,” said Morris. “I didn’t think anything of it when I joined the club, I just said: Yo, I’ll join… and I prospected for a whole year.”
And it’s the depth of those family ties – which span generations – that make gang membership in New Zealand distinct; it’s not a phase people just grow out of, but more of a lifetime commitment, often from birth.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is we’ve created our own culture, our own whanau (family), and that aspect is heavy here in the Hawke’s Bay,” said Edwards, who is also part of a multi-generational gang family.
“We’ve got third generation, second generation now,” he said. And because of that, he says he’s trying to focus the attention of members of his gang into things like boxing, rather than fighting on the streets. “We’re all family and the last thing we want is for our families to be doing life (in prison),” Edwards said.
But blood relatives often end up in rival gangs too.
That is “a real sad thing,” said Little, Wairoa’s mayor. “Most of the gang members are related in some way or form, so it seems ridiculous that they are fighting each other.”
For those without family ties, being in a gang is primarily about having a community of “like-minded bros” to ride bikes and have a drink with, according to Morris. Very few gang members get caught up in real crime, he said.
“We’ve got 300 members and, like, only 5% is in jail for dumb s**t. You know, the majority of us are business owners.”
Morris himself has a prior conviction for unlawful gun possession, but claims he is not involved in the organized crime side of gang life.
Family, community and the claimed sanctity of the patch are not much of a consideration for the government’s Police Minister Mark Mitchell, who appears confident he has taught the gangs a lesson.
“They can no longer behave as if they’re above the law by taking over our streets, intimidating the public, and making a mockery of our criminal justice system,” he said on the anniversary of the law change.
State agencies in New Zealand keep a national list of patched gang members and prospects, which experts say is easy to get on, but hard to get off.
In early November 2025, there were 10,242 people on the list. That is a large number for a country of just 5.3 million people, and is proportionally higher than previously reported estimates of gang members in Australia and Britain.
The tally has been weaponized by political figures, including Mitchell while he was in opposition, to stoke fear that the country’s number of gang members might overtake the number of sworn police officers. The latter figure stood at 10,368 in early November, according to Mitchell’s response to a written parliamentary question.
Despite the patch ban and other new anti-gang measures that came into effect, the gang list has grown by more than 700 in the past year.
Parnell, the assistant commissioner, said he expects the number of gang members to come down over the next five years. But the gangs doubt that, saying the ban has had no impact on their pulling power.
“Numbers have grown,” said Edwards, speaking about his Mongrel Mob chapter. “They always will.”
Morris, the Head Hunter, said his gang had recruited more people too.
“There’s more of us. Yeah, you can take my patch off me, but it just doesn’t change anything,” he said.
Both men are before the courts for breaching the prohibition order.
Edwards was accused of wearing his Mongrel Mob patch in public at a tangi – a Māori funeral – earlier this year. He claims that when police came to his home to seize his patch they showed him “paparazzi-type photos” taken from “over in the bushes” on the day of the tangi. “Those are the lengths that they’re going to,” he said.
Similarly, Morris said he was filmed by police standing “down the end of the road” when he was accused of breaching the ban.
When asked if this was usual practice, police said they use both “overt and covert techniques” to gather evidence. Rather than confronting gang members on the spot, they will opt to take videos and photographs in situations when police know they’re outnumbered, at events that might become emotionally charged –– like funerals –– or if there is a risk to public safety.
Police now have specialist organized crime teams in most regions, whose officers act like envoys to gangs and hold talks with senior figures, particularly around managing upcoming gang events, like funerals or sports days, that risk becoming a public nuisance. “We will engage a number of weeks out and set out: these are the rules of engagement,” said Parnell. And those rules are pragmatic. Gang members can wear their insignia on private land, but risk arrest as soon as they set foot on public property –– like roads, footpaths or local sports fields.
Some gang members have been arrested for being spotted wearing insignia in public on security camera footage from shops and other videos posted to social media.
With so many members’ patches now being seized, gangs are having to rethink the hardline policy of punishing members who lose them. “You don’t even have a chance to fight for it because you’re not home,” said Edwards, explaining that they’re often seized from the homes of gang members after they have been arrested.
“So… we can’t really hold brothers accountable.”
Even so, the patches and affiliated gang emblems remain “like a code of honor,” said Morris. And new recruits still want to earn them.
Just days before his arrest for allegedly breaching the patch ban, Morris proudly showed off his new tattoo –– the Head Hunters gang insignia permanently brandished across his back.
“I earned it, like I earned my colors,” said Morris, who likened it to having a customary tattoo. “They tell a story about where we come from, what we’ve been through and what we achieved.”
Insignia tattoos are a growing trend among gang members, because the new law doesn’t stretch that far. “I could go walk up and down the street with no shirt on. It’s the same as a patch,” said Morris.
“It’s like: Haha, f**k you, you can’t take this one.”
