"A hearse drove past with 50 full cars behind it and patched gang members hanging out the cars to gangster music in Te Atatu Peninsula and Henderson."
She added: "There is no way this virus is containable."
Smoke from gang members' burnouts filled the street at the funeral procession in West Auckland.
Police confirmed to the Herald they had responded to reports from members of the public about people gathering at a Henderson funeral home on Paramount Drive.
"Those gathered were spoken to and reminded about the rules at alert level 3," police said.
Those gathered were "compliant" with police and moved on to another location.
"However, police now understand there are some groups that are gathering in various locations in West Auckland.
"Police will be monitoring this situation and will be responding to any reports of gatherings.
"As part of this, members of the public are asked to report any instances of gatherings or traffic offending complaints to police to be investigated.
A member of the public said the incident started late this morning.
"We just think it's a bit of a joke."
The funeral took place at Waikumete Cemetery, where security guards were based at 4.30pm. The police Eagle helicopter has been continuing to circle the area.
Tipene Funerals company director Kai Tipene admitted the hearse was surrounded by bikes when it departed their Henderson funeral home for Waikumete Cemetery.
"We transported the loved one from our Henderson branch. So no other family members accompanied the hearse inside the Waikumete Cemetery grounds," Tipene said.
"There were definitely a lot of bikes. I'm not going to lie about that."
"We get given access to go in and whatever happens outside is out of our control.
"I'm not sure about disruption, that's not what we witnessed. We were transporting the loved one, there were two bikes in front of us [the hearse] whatever happened behind us I can't tell you."
Tipene said only immediate family were inside the funeral home prior to the transportation.
"This is not the first gathering. There's been many families that have wanted to be present with their loved one inside the funeral home but they can't and that's just unfortunate for a lot of families at this time," Tipene said.
"We can't control what happens outside our funeral home," she said.
"Whether they're inside their car, all we know is when we're travelling to the cemetery there's a lot of people who simply want to say goodbye to their loved one."
A member of the public said this possibly gang-related gathering today seemed a flagrant breach of alert level rules. Photo / Supplied
A witness to the procession said: "They have been on a one-and-a-half hour procession around Te Atatu Peninsula, cars full of gang members in each car, obviously through Henderson and now the cemetery.
"Would you mind asking the Prime Minister what the deal is, as she keeps protecting the gangs, they are the ones blatantly not sticking to the rules and spreading the virus.
"Time for some tough love?"
A worker at a petrol station across the road from Waikumete Cemetery said the gang members on bikes arrived around 1pm.
"They were outside on the road, because they were not allowed [to go in the cemetery]. There were not that many people, maybe around 30. I saw a funeral car go inside. They just came, say farewell and everybody leave," the worker said.
The petrol station worker said the people congregating did not block Great North Rd and were only congregating outside the cemetery off their bikes for around five minutes.
"They were outside on the road, men with bikes on the road and people standing behind the road. Yes [they were gang members]," the worker said. "They didn't block the traffic."
The highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 is "seated" in Auckland's gang communities and among rough sleepers, MPs were told on Wednesday.
"If we think about the current outbreak, how it seems to have seated itself in a gang environment and the homeless, these are people that are less likely to be trusting of the health system," Pacific health director Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone said at a select committee briefing.
Last week it was revealed a Hells Angels prospect had contracted Covid-19, the third gang in Auckland affected by the virus.
The positive test followed a patched member of Black Power becoming infected and spreading it to children living in his home just outside Kaiaua on the Hauraki Plains.
The tiny settlement was subject to a Section 70 order imposed by director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, which forced residents into a snap lockdown.
Health officials earlier revealed several members of the Mongrel Mob had also caught the virus and those living at a South Auckland gang pad had been forced into isolation.
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