While in Christchurch for Christmas, Luke and I stayed at a cousin’s place in Addington. Addington is conveniently located close to the center of town, and has a fairly good shopping area. It also has a high crime rate, evidenced by the barbed wire surrounding many Addington businesses. The suburb was home to one of the main Christchurch prisons until 1999 – the prison has since been converted into the Jailhouse backpackers/youth hostel.
In the middle of Addington, the Epitaph Riders Motorcycle Club had their headquarters. The empty shell of their compound still stands, a testament to the darker side of Christchurch history, and the bad old days of gang warfare. Lets have a closer look:
Note the walls which conceal the main doorway from the street, the reinforcing on the door, and the bullet-resistant laminated glass window.
The 2.3 metre wall attracted controversy more than once – originally when the Police spoke out against an application by the ERMC to raise it from 2 to 2.3 metres, and the City Council granted permission anyway, and then when the Council widened the road. Finally the Police saw the wall demolished, something they had been seeking for years every time they carried out a raid.
But then, to add insult to injury, the Council rebuilt the wall, exactly as before but slightly further in, all at ratepayers expense! A controversial decision, but one that was legally required.
The heavy chain which secured the main gate.
A view over the rubble and weeds to the side fence, topped by barbed wire.
A concealed sentry platform, complete with bulletproof armour plate. These guys were pretty serious about preventing incursions from the back wall!
Beneath the sentry position is a concealed back door. It opens onto a bank on the side of a motorway, so quite a good escape route. Well-reinforced with a solid lock.
The back door again. Further along the back wall is another sentry position, which does not have armour plating, but it could have been removed during demolition.
For sale. Its a large plot of land, ideal for a motel, block of flats or perhaps a small residential subdivision.
With the gang gone, property values in the area must surely be rising, although some people we spoke to believed that the Riders actually kept crime down and were good neighbors.
I bet no-one dared to tag these walls while the gang was in residence! You can barely see the door beside Luke.
And a view from the side of the motorway, showing the large area of the property.
The gang actually suffered major financial trouble in the 1990s, particularly after several teenage members were convicted of a brutal pack rape, and after a war with the Road Knights brought unwelcome police attention as well as a series of drive-by shootings. In one incident, a woman driver was shot in the chest with a .45 when she was caught in the crossfire while waiting at the intersection just down the road.
Trouble with the IRD culminated in the gang being sold to an ex-member for $1 in 1999, and finally liquidated in 2005.
The story of the Epitaph Riders illustrates the evolution of gangs from the first to the second generation – the first generation of protecting turf, providing members with an identity and an outlet for aggression, giving way to the second generation of gangs involved in lucrative international drug trafficking, with higher standards of discipline and a less confrontational attitude to rival gangs and law enforcement. Realizing that the gang shootings of 1990s Christchurch were bad for business, the ERMC and seven other gangs formed the “Federation”, calling a truce and cooperating in their various enterprises. The Federation was renamed the A-Team, apparently by Epitaph members, before the gang’s liquidation.
This is all assumption based media injected dribble. My question is why were you on someone elses property without prior approval?
Left by nessie leggings on September 8th, 2008