Police raided the Magog Motorcycle gang's New Plymouth headquarters yesterday as part of an operation targeting the Hells Angels. The Centennial Dr gang pad was one of two addresses searched locally while simultaneous warrants were carried out at Auckland properties, including the headquarters of the Hells Angels and other properties linked with the gang, by police and the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (Ofcanz). A 56-year-old New Plymouth man, believed to be a member of the Magogs, was arrested and charged with conspiring to defeat the course of justice. He appeared in the New Plymouth District Court yesterday and was remanded on bail to reappear in the Manukau District Court on November 24. Nine men, five members of the Hells Angels and four associates were arrested and six firearms were seized in the Auckland raids. The men have been charged with intentional damage, commission of a crime while in possession of a firearm and possession of a firearm except for some lawful, proper and sufficient purpose. The charges relate to alleged illegal hunting activities, without permits and without firearms licences over the past year. Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Coward of New Plymouth said 16 officers, including two from Ofcanz, were involved in the raids. Mr Coward said the charge the New Plymouth man faced was not connected to the charges in Auckland. "The offending relating to the New Plymouth man is isolated from the illegal hunting." Police believed there was a link between the gangs, but Mr Coward wouldn't elaborate. "We would be naive in thinking there wasn't," he said. No drugs or firearms were found in New Plymouth. Detective Inspector Grant Wormald, of Ofcanz said it was hoped the operation would disrupt a wide range of criminal activities the Hells Angels were involved in. "A number of Hells Angels gang members from around New Zealand have been prosecuted or are now on active charges ranging from possession and supply of methamphetamine to robbery, burglary and extortion," he said. "We have made arrests in Auckland, Napier, Tauranga and Nelson, where an undercover operation early this year put an end to offshoot gang the Red Devils. "Our goal is to investigate the crimes they are committing and disrupt their activities to the extent that it's very hard for them to operate at all.
''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an...
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