(This post is former Sydney police
detective Tim Priest’s article “The Rise of Middle Eastern Crime in Australia” from The Mackenzie Institute’s WWW site. Lebanese-Christians have been immigrating to Australia for a very long time now
and they have assimilated extremely well into Australian society. Present governor of the
State of NSW is a distinguished Lebanese-Christian woman. The trouble in Sydney with vicious middle-eastern
criminal-gangs only started back when the Hawke-Keating Labor Government let the
Lebanese-Muslims - many of them really are displaced Palestinians - from Lebanon’s Hezbollah-controlled Bekkah Valley come into Australia about 30-40 years ago.)
First,
there is the combination of willful political negligence which leads to police
inaction that lets gangs develop and prosper in the first place. Canadians are
becoming increasingly aware (Finally!) of the growing severity of gang problems
in our major cities.
Unlike
Australia or many European states, we (in America) have yet to see the full start of Middle
Eastern crime, with its added dimension of Islamic militancy to compound the
normal agenda of street thugs… but there are signs that this will come. Let’s
take Tim Priest’s warning to heart.
Introduction
I believe
that the rise of Middle Eastern organised crime in Sydney will have an impact
on society unlike anything we have ever seen.
In the
early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at the old
CIB (Criminal Intelligence Bureau). I remember executing a search warrant at
Croydon, where we found nearly a pound of heroin. I know that now sounds very
familiar; however, what set this heroin apart was that it was Bekkah Valley
heroin, markedly different from any heroin I had seen. Number Four heroin from
the golden triangle of South East Asia is nearly always off white, almost pure
diamorphine. This heroin was almost brown.
But more remarkable were the Muslim occupants of the house.
They were very recent arrivals from Lebanon, and from the moment we entered the
premises, we wrestled and fought with the male occupants, were abused and spat
at by the women and children, and our search took five times longer because of
the impediments placed before us by the occupants, including the women hiding
heroin in baby nappies and on themselves and refusing to be searched by
policewomen because of their religious beliefs.
 |
| Lebanese-Muslim Drug Dealer and Killer arrested. |
As was
the case in those days, we arrested every adult and teenager who had hampered
our search. When it came to court, they were represented by Legal Aid, of
course, who claimed that these people were innocent of the minor charges of
public disorder and hindering police, because they were recent arrivals from a
country where people have an historical hatred towards police, and that they
also had poor communications skills and that the police had not executed the
warrant in a manner that was acceptable to the Muslim occupants.
The
magistrate, well known to police as one who convicted fewer than one in ten
offenders brought before him during his term at Burwood local court, threw the
matter out, siding with the occupants and condemning the police. I remember
thinking; thank heavens we don't run into many Lebanese drug dealers.
Lebanese Family Terrorises Neighbourhood
 |
| Redfern Police Station in Sydney. |
Despite the misgivings of the young police, I eventually saw this family and the presence they had in the immediate area. As we drove away in our marked police car, a half brick bounced on the roof of the vehicle. The driver kept going.
I said, 'What are you doing, they've
just hit the car with a house brick!" The young constable said, "Oh,
they always do that when we drive past."
The police were either too scared or
too lazy to do anything about it. The damage bill on police cars became costly
and these street terrorists grew stronger and the police became purely
defensive. You see, the Police Royal Commission was about to start and the
police retreated inside themselves knowing that the judicial system considered
them easy targets. [1]
The police did not want to get hurt or
attract Internal Affairs complaints.
Call me stupid, call me a dinosaur, but
I made sure that day that at least one person in the group that threw the brick
was arrested. I began by approaching the group just as a magistrate had
lectured me and other police involved in the Croydon search warrant. I simply
asked who threw the brick. I was greeted with abuse and threats.
I then reverted to the old ways of
policing. I grabbed the nearest male and convinced him that it was he who had
thrown the brick. His brave mates did nothing. By the time we arrived at the
police station, this young fool had become compliant, apologetic and so afraid
that he kept crying. You may not agree with what I did, but I paraded this
goose around the police station for all the young police to see what they had
become frightened of.
 |
| A Lebanese-Muslim Gang in Sydney. |
In effect, this family had taken
control of Redfern. Senior police did their best to limit police action against
them, fearing an avalanche of IA complaints that would count against the
Commander at Peter Ryan's next Operational Crime Review.
I hope the examples I have just used
don't give the impression that I am a racist or a bully. The point I want to
make from the start is that policing has never been rocket science. It is about
human dynamics, street psychology, experience, a little bit of theatre and a
substantial quantity of common sense. Sure, forensics and the advances of DNA,
rapid fingerprint identification and electronic eavesdropping have taken
policing to a new level of sophistication, but ultimately, when an offender is
identified by whatever means, scientific or otherwise, it all comes down to the
interaction between the investigator and the offender during the arrest and
interview process.
Violent and abusive offenders do not
respect the law or those who enforce it. But they do respect the old style cop
who doesn't take a backward step and can't be intimidated. When they encounter
cops like that, they fold quickly as there is rarely much behind the veneer of
bravado.
In 1996 with the arrival of Peter Ryan,
and the continued public humiliation of the New South Wales Police through the
Wood Royal Commission, a chain of events began that have affected the police so
deeply and so completely that, as far as ensuring community safety is
concerned, I fear it will take at least a generation to regain the lost ground.
The Rise of Middle
Eastern Crime Groups in New South Wales
It was about 1995 and 1996 that the
emergence of Middle Eastern crime groups was first observed in New South Wales.
Before then they had been largely known for individual acts of antisocial
behaviour and loose family structures involved in heroin importation and supply
as well as motor vehicle theft and conversion. The crimes that did appear to be
organised before this period were insurance fraud, -- usually motor vehicle
accidents -- and arson.
Because these crimes were largely
victimless, they were dealt with by insurance companies and police involvement
was limited. But from these insurance scams, a generation of young criminals
emerged to become engaged in more sophisticated crimes, such as extortion,
armed robbery, organised narcotics importation and supply, gunrunning,
organised factory and warehouse break ins, car theft and conversion on a
massive scale including the exporting of stolen luxury vehicles to Lebanon and
other Middle Eastern countries.
As the police began to gather and act
on intelligence on these emerging Middle Eastern gangs, the first of a series
of events took place. The New South Wales Police were restructured under Peter
Ryan.
Crime Intelligence,
the eyes and ears of all police forces throughout the world, was dismantled
overnight and a British style intelligence unit was created. The formation of
this unit and its factions has been best described by Dr Richard Basham as a
library stocking outdated books. [3]
The new Crime Intelligence and
Information Section became completely reactive. It received crime intelligence
from the field and stored it. Almost no relevant intelligence was ever
dispensed to operational police from 1997 until I left in 2002. It was a
disgrace.
One of the fundamental problems that
arose out of the new intelligence structure was that it no longer had a field
capacity or a target development capacity. With the old CIB there were field
teams that were assigned to look into emerging trends. Vietnamese, Romanian and
Hong Kong Chinese groups were all targeted after intelligence grew on their
activities. When the alarm bells went off over growing intelligence concerns
about a new or current crime group, covert operations were mounted.
Lebanese Gangs
Intimidate Police
When the Middle Eastern crime groups
emerged in the mid to late 1990s no alarms were set off. The Crime Intelligence
unit was asleep. I know personally that operational police in south west Sydney
compiled enormous amounts of good intelligence on the formation of Lebanese
groups such as the Telopea Street Boys and others in the Campsie, Lakemba,
Fairfield and Punchbowl areas.
The inactivity could not have been
because the intelligence reports weren't interesting, because I have read many
of them and from a policing perspective they were damning. Many of the
offenders that you now see in major criminal trials or serving lengthy
sentences in prison were identified back then.
 |
| A shooting scene between two Lebanese-Muslim gangs. |
As these crime groups encountered less
resistance in terms of police operations and enforcement, their power grew not
only within their own communities, but also all around Sydney except in
Cabramatta, where their fear of the South East Asian crime groups limited their
forays. But the rest of Sydney became easy pickings.
The second in the series of events
began to take shape with Peter Ryan's executive leadership team. Under Ryan's
nose they began to carve up the New South Wales Police and form little kingdoms
where senior police officers ruled almost untouched by outside influence.
Ryan’s team then appointed their own
commanders in the police stations. Almost all of them had little or no street
experience; but they in turn brought along their friends as duty officers,
similarly inexperienced. Some of the experience these police listed on their
resumes included stints at Human Resources, the Academy, the Police Band in one
case, the various cubbyholes in Police Headquarters, and almost no operational
policing experience -- yet they were tasked to lead. Never has the expression
"the blind leading the blind" been more appropriate.
The impact that this leadership team
had on day-to-day operational policing was disastrous. In many of the key areas
that were experiencing rapid rises in Middle Eastern crime, these new leaders
became more concerned with relations between the police and ethnic minorities
than with emerging violent crime.
The power and influence of the local
religious and minority leaders cannot be overstated. Police began to use
selective law enforcement. They selected targets that were unlikely to use
their ethnic background and cultural beliefs to hinder police investigations or
arrests. It was mostly Anglo Saxons and Asians who were targets, because they
were underrepresented by religious leaders and the media. They were soft
targets.
An example of the confrontations police
nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the
most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn.
Two uniformed officers stopped a motor
vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on
credible information via the police radio indicating that the occupants of the
vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during
the next few hours can only be described as frightening.
When searching the vehicle and finding
stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened
by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where
the officers lived, killing them and "fucking your girlfriends". The
two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car
and calling for urgent assistance.
When police backup arrived, the three
occupants called their associates via their mobile phones -- which incidentally
is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within
minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from
the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the
Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police,
pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and
damaging police vehicles.
When the duty officer arrived, he
immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from
the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for
assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.
But the humiliation did not end there.
The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they
intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban
police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police
not to confront the offenders but to call for back up from nearby stations.
Eventually the offenders left of their own volition.
No action was taken against them. In
the minds of the local population, the police were cowards and the message was
“Lebs rule the streets.” [4]
For a number of days, nothing was done
to rectify this total breakdown of law and order. To the senior police in the
area, it was more important to give the impression that local ethnic relations
were never better.
It was also important to Peter Ryan
that no bad news stories appeared which might have given the impression that
crime in any area was out of control. Had these hoodlums been arrested they
would have filed IA complaints immediately via their Legal Aid lawyers and community
leaders. To senior police, this was a cause for concern at the next Operational
Crime Review.
So the incident was covered up until a
few local veteran detectives found out about it and decided to act. They went
quietly to the addresses of the three main offenders early one morning and took
them away with a minimum of fuss and charged them. Some order was restored, but
not nearly enough.
By avoiding confrontations with these Muslim
thugs, the police gave away the streets in many areas of south-western Sydney.
By putting command in the hands of inexperienced senior police who had never
copped the odd punch in the mouth or received a broken nose in the line of
duty, the police force hung the community and the local police out to dry.
 |
| Clash between Lebanese Sunis and Iraqi Shia Muslims in Auburn, Sydney. |
When I say that this type of policing
was condoned and encouraged across wide areas of New South Wales, I am not
exaggerating. The problems in south-western Sydney are a direct result of
covering up criminality because it went against the script that Peter Ryan and
his executive had continually pushed in the media, day after day after day -
that crime was on the decrease and Peter Ryan was the world's best police
commissioner.
In hundreds upon hundreds of incidents
police have backed down to Middle Eastern thugs and taken no action and allowed
incidents to go unpunished. Again I stress the unbelievable influence that
local politicians and religious leaders played in covering up the real state of
play in the south-west.
Spread of criminal
gangs aided by incompetent police leadership
 |
| NSW Police Commissioner Peter James Ryan. |
Ryan once boasted
that by the time he finished retraining the New South Wales Police, constables
could investigate a traffic accident in the morning and a homicide in the
afternoon, a statement that summed up his Alice-in-Wonderland policing
theories. All the expertise and experience evaporated overnight.
It was as if the public hospitals had
suddenly lost every surgeon and had GPs perform major surgery. No matter how
bright and dedicated these GPs were, they would simply not have the expertise,
the training and the experience to take over. It would be a disaster. Well,
that is what happened to criminal investigation in this New South Wales. Crime
Agencies was an unmitigated disaster. Yet those who designed and ran this farce
have gone on to highly paid government jobs.
The final straw for the New South Wales
Police was the OCR – Operational Crime Review – which Peter Ryan and his
executive team came up with. It was loosely based on the groundbreaking
Compstat program of the New York Police Department, the brainchild of
Commissioner William Bratton. The difference between Ryan's OCR and the NYPD
Compstat was that the NYPD model covered everything on the criminal waterfront.
[5]
The Ryan-inspired OCR had just six
crimes. And those six included domestic violence, random breath testing, theft,
robbery, assaults and motor vehicle theft - no drugs, organised crime,
firearms, shootings, attempted murders or homicides. The crimes that instill
fear into the average citizen were ignored, and with plenty of innovative
answers as to why. The OCR focused police attention on a limited number of
crimes and allowed far more serious and deadly crimes to get out of control.
So with a police force on the verge of
bankruptcy, the Middle Eastern crime problem was an explosion waiting to go
off. I had observed the beginnings of Asian organised crime whilst at the Drug
Squad and later at the National Crime Authority where I worked on two task
forces, one of which was on Chinese organised crime.
When I look back on the influence of
Chinese organised crime in Australia, I see a gradual but sustained trend, not
one of high peaks in terms of activity or incidents, but one of a well planned
criminal enterprise that attracts little attention. It's there but you can't
always see it.
It probably took twenty years for the
Chinese to become a dominant force in crime in this city. But Middle Eastern
crime has taken less than ten years. So pervasive is their influence on
organised crime that rival ethnic groups, with the exception of the Asian
gangs, have been squeezed out or made extinct.
The only other crime group to have
survived intact are the bikies [Biker Gangs as North Americans call them – ed],
although the bikies these days have legitimised many of their operations and
now make as much money from legal means as they do illegally. In many ways they
have adopted US Mafia methods of using legitimate businesses to shroud their
illegal operations.
With no organised crime function and no
gang unit except for the South-East Asian Strike Force, the New South Wales
Police turned against every convention known to Western policing in dealing
with organised crime groups. In effect the Lebanese crime gangs were handed the
keys to Sydney.
Extortion and attacks
on Australians
The most influential of the Middle
Eastern crime groups are the Muslim males of Telopea Street, and Bankstown -
known as the Telopea Street Boys. They and their associates have been involved
in numerous murders over the past five years, many of them unprovoked fatal
attacks on young Australian men for no other reason than that they are
"Skips", as they call Australians. (Something to do with popular "Skippy the Kangaroo" TV series.)
They have been involved in all manner
of crime on a scale we have never seen before. Ram-raids on expensive stores in
the city are epidemic. [6]
The theft of expensive motor vehicles
known as car-jacking is increasing at an alarming rate. This crime involves
gangs finding a luxury motor vehicle parked outside a restaurant or hotel and
watching until the occupants return to drive home. The car is followed, the
victims assaulted at gunpoint, and the vehicle stolen. The vehicles are always
around or above the $100,000 mark and are believed to be taken to warehouses
before being shipped interstate or to the Middle East.
 |
| Sydney's notorious redlight-district Kings' Cross is now completely controlled by Lebanese-Muslims. |
However, I believe that after many
violent threats the owner sold up and now lives inter-state [Outside of New
South Wales – ed]. He once had a thriving business that for a nightclub ran a
reputable service, keeping out drugs, maintaining safety for patrons and
co-operating with the police.
The tactics used by the gang were
simple. A large number of Middle Eastern males would enter the club, upwards of
twenty at a time. They would outnumber the security staff and begin assaulting
Australian male patrons, sometimes stabbing them. The incident would be over in
minutes and the gang members would be long gone before police arrived.
A few days later, senior members of the
gang, well dressed and business-like, would approach the club owners and offer
to provide protection from similar incidents for around $2000 to $3000 a week.
Many of the owners paid up and considered it a necessary expense in keeping
their business viable. If they didn't pay up, or contacted the police, the
gangs would wait some weeks, even months, before returning to the nightclub and
extracting a terrible revenge on the owners, who would pay up or leave.
There is compelling intelligence that
in one well-known entertainment precinct in the city, nearly all the bars,
nightclubs and hotels pay protection money to Middle Eastern crime gangs.
What sets the Middle Eastern gangs
apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time and
for any reason. I thought I would never see the level and type of violence that
I saw with the South-East Asian gangs in Cabramatta, particularly the 5T, the
Four Aces and Madonna's Mob, which were a breakaway from the old 5T. But the
violence, although horrific, was almost always local, that is within the
Cabramatta area and almost always against fellow Asians.
As a result of that locally based
violent crime it was relatively easy to identify the culprits and break them up
once we were given the resources after the police revolt of 1999-2000. [7]
Racial Attacks against
Young Australians
 |
| Lebanese-Muslim Gang of pack-rapists. |
And even more alarming is that the
violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. There is a
clear and definite link between violent attacks on our young men and women as
being racially motivated as well as criminal.
Quite often when taking statements from
young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common
theme has been the racially motivated violence against the victims simply
because they are Australian.
I wonder whether the inventors of the
racial hatred laws introduced during the golden years of multiculturalism ever
took into account that we, the silent majority, would be the target of racial
violence and hatred.
I don't remember any charges being laid
in conjunction with the gang rapes of south-western Sydney in 2001, where race
was clearly an issue and rape was used to humiliate the victims. But then,
unbelievably, a publicly funded document produced by the Anti Discrimination
Board called "The Race for Headlines" was circulated, and it sought
not only to cover up race as a motive for the rapes, but to criticise any
accurate media reporting on this matter as racially biased. [8]
It worries many operational police that
organisations like the Anti-Discrimination Board, the Privacy Council and the
Civil Liberties Council have become unaccountable and push agendas that don't
represent the values that this great country was built on.
The extent to which Middle Eastern
crime gangs have moved into the drug market is breathtaking. They are now the
main suppliers of cocaine in this city and are now developing markets in south
eastern Queensland and Victoria. They are major suppliers of heroin in and
around the inner city, south-western Sydney and western Sydney.
Many of you would have heard of the
horrific problems in France with the outbreak of unprecedented crimes amongst
an estimated five million Muslim immigrants. Middle Eastern males now make up
45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. There are no-go areas in Paris
for police and citizens alike. The rule of law has broken down so badly that
when police went to one of these areas recently to round up three Islamic
terrorists, they went in armoured vehicles, with heavy weaponry and over 1000
armed officers, just to arrest a few suspects.
Why did they need such numbers? Because
the threat of terrorist reprisal was minimal compared to the anticipated revolt
by thousands of Middle Eastern and North African residents who have no respect
for the rule of law in France and who would consider intrusions by police and
authority to be a declaration of war.
The problems in Paris in Muslim
communities are being replicated here in Sydney at an alarming rate. Paris has
seen an explosion of rapes committed by Middle Eastern males on French women in
the past fifteen years. The rapes are almost identical to those in Sydney.
They are not only committed for sexual
gratification but also with deep racial undertones along with threats of
violence and retribution. What is more alarming is the identical reaction by
some sections of the media and criminologists in France of downplaying the
significance of race as an issue and even ganging up on those people who try to
draw attention to the widening gulf between Middle Eastern youth and the rest
of French society.
That is what we are seeing here. The
usual suspects come out of their institutions and libraries to downplay and
even cover up the growing problem of Middle Eastern crime. Why? My opinion, for
what it's worth is that these same social engineers have attempted to redefine
our society. They have experimented with all manner of institutions, from
prisons to mental institutions and recently to policing.
 |
| Sheik Hilali the spritual leader of Sydney Lebanese Muslims Compared Aussie women to un-covered meat. |
Constantly I would see young police
emerge from the academy with a view that as police officers they were
counsellors, psychologists, marriage guidance experts, social workers and
advocates for social change, but with almost no skills in street policing.
Their training had not only placed them in danger, but also their workmates and
the community.
Policing is about enforcing the rule of
law. It has never been about analysing every offender for the root causes of
crime. That is not our job. The police enforce the law and protect the
community regardless of race, colour or religion. What we have seen in
south-west Sydney are ethnic communities being policed selectively.
 |
| Clash of Women Freedom and Evil Islam on Aussie Beaches. |
In February 2001 when I appeared before
the Cabramatta inquiry, I gave evidence which at the time was controversial and
attracted the usual claque of ratbags and lunatics from the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation and their associates at the Sydney Morning Herald as
well as that fruit loop Mike Carton from 2UE. [9]
I said that this city is going to be
torn apart by gang warfare the likes of which we have never seen before.
In 2003 I was finally proven right, but I take no comfort from that. However, the criticism I received was unprecedented. I was a nutter, a liar, a racist, a disgruntled detective - but I was right.
Ethnic Gangs Aided and
Protected by the Multicultural Industry
 |
| One of many Vicious Muslim Protests in Sydney. |
The amount of money spent on the
multicultural industry beggars belief. It is a lucrative and sustainable
position for many. Governments pay huge money to anything that bears the word
multicultural. Indeed the police department, like other government departments,
spends vast amounts on multicultural issues, multicultural jobs, multicultural
consultancies, education packages, legal advice, public relations and the rest.
Having expended large amounts of money on multiculturalism, they are hardly
likely to criticise it. Those that feed off multiculturalism are not likely to
question it.
When I gave evidence to the Cabramatta
Inquiry, I risked my career and my safety in coming forward. I did it because I
had sworn an oath to protect the community I served. That community was
Cabramatta, which is made up almost entirely of residents born outside this
country, mostly South East Asians, and their children.
But when I went forward and exposed the
shame of Cabramatta, the residents were not Asians in my eyes, but Australians
no matter where they came from. It was my duty to speak up for them and to
protect them.
Race was never an issue. I have received many awards in my police career but the ones I hold dearest are those I received from the Cabramatta community.
One old man who had spent seven years
in refugee camps in South East Asia before coming to Australia said the day he
landed in Australia was like dying and coming to heaven. Cabramatta was a
community of ordinary people like that old man, who recognised the problems of
drugs and organised crime in their community and spoke up and agitated for
change. It was a slightly built Vietnamese man named Thung Ngo who led the
charge on behalf of a community that had had enough of crime and forced a
parliamentary inquiry into Cabramatta which ultimately saved their community
from destruction.
Not once during that inquiry did I hear
any member of the Cabramatta community - apart from the Anglo Saxon local
member - complain that they were being racially discriminated against because
of the inquiry or its aftermath. They wanted change; they wanted a safe
law-abiding community. It was my duty to do everything I could to honour my
pledge to protect and to serve.
 |
| Keyser Trad the pro-polygamist Lebanese-Muslim leader. |
What is it that draws such defence for
this community from certain sections of the media? Why didn't they join in to
defend the Asian community during the fallout from the Cabramatta inquiry? And
where are these apologists when it comes to the plight of our first
Australians, our indigenous peoples? Their cause is not trendy enough, not
global like the refugee or Islamic issues. Yet one of the most depressing
sights that has confronted me as a policeman is the shame of Redfern.
I first saw Everleigh Street some
twenty two years ago, and nothing has changed since. The atmosphere of sheer
hopelessness and desperation still hangs around the neck of every young
Aborigine who lives in those ghettos, yet they hardly ever rate a mention.
National Threat
The Middle Eastern crime groups and
their associates number in the thousands, not the hundreds as the government
and senior police would have you believe. It is the biggest crime problem we
have ever faced, and it is growing.
Hardly a day goes past without some
violent crime involving a "male of Middle Eastern appearance", though
I see lately that description is watered down now to include "and/or
Mediterranean appearance". To an operational policeman, there is a
noticeable difference between an Italian and a Lebanese male.
That these groups of males can roam a
city and assault, rob and intimidate at will can no longer be denied or
excused. You need only to look at Paris and other European countries that have
had mass immigration from Middle Eastern countries to see the sort of problems
we can expect in years to come. My prediction is that within ten years, Middle
Eastern crime groups will spread rapidly across Australia as they seek to
expand their enterprises.
There will be no-go
areas in south western Sydney, just like Paris.
 |
| Lebanese-Muslim gang and Bra-Boys surf gang negotiating peace in Maroubra after the Cronulla anti-Lebanese riots. |
I also predict that there will be a
dramatic rise in gang shootings as rival gangs compete for turf and business.
This will be done with almost complete disregard for police attention, as they
are well aware that the New South Wales Police has to be rebuilt from the
ground up.
We have seen in the past three years
the phenomenon of drive-by shootings, Los Angeles style. Not only are the increasing
incidents a major cause of concern, but they are also becoming more dangerous
with the use of automatic weapons that spray hundreds of rounds at their
targets. This is virtually unprecedented in this country.
In many ways, what we are seeing is the
copying of Los Angeles gangs: the Crips, the Bloods and others. The motor
vehicles, the music, the dress codes, the haircuts, the weaponry and the
attitudes towards authority are almost identical. These gangs in Los Angeles
have been around for nearly thirty years and a culture has grown around them.
The culture surrounding the Middle Eastern gangs is still in its infancy but
the transition is not far away. [10]
When William Bratton, the most
innovative police commissioner of modern times, took over as Los Angeles Police
Chief recently, he declared the gang problems there a national security
problem, so serious that it was beyond the resources of the state of
California. [11]
There is a lesson for us there, but we
have to learn quickly, or this problem will overtake us.
The blame for the rise of the gangs in
Los Angeles is being spread around - politicians who refused to acknowledge
that it was more than just an ethnic brotherhood searching for their roots;
police inaction because of political constraints as well as incompetence; the
civil liberties movement particularly among the California superior courts that
refused for decades to use lengthy sentences as a deterrent to ethnic based
crime on the basis that it discriminated against minority groups.
 |
| Even the Lebanese-Muslim Toddlers in Sydney are brainwashed to hate Aussies. |
The similarities between the situation
here, with the denial by the government of the extent and the implications of
Middle Eastern crime, and the early situation in Los Angeles is frightening.
What we saw with Cabramatta was the covering up of a major problem by this
government, who only acted when the game was up. It's all about denial. If they
can get away with covering up it saves them the worry of making hard decisions
and spending money on fixing problems that have been allowed to fester for
years. The rail system that Michael Costa now has to fix is yet another
example. [12]
There is no investment in the future.
It is about looking good day by day. The Peter Ryan-style policing of
day-to-day media spin is still present. No one seems to have the courage to say
that this is a problem that we need to fix before it gets worse. The time when
the Middle Eastern problem really takes root in this city, the point from which
there is no return, just like Los Angeles, is but a few years away. The leaders
of our government probably hope this will be another government's fault and
that they won't be around to see their legacy.
Maybe we should all
buy property in southern New Zealand.
If the biggest threat to our society is
not addressed honestly and effectively within the next two or three years it
will take drastic action and enormous resources to bring it under control - if
that is even possible. The action we can take now and the resources needed are
a fraction of what it may cost in the future. The potential cost in human terms
is unimaginable.
There is also the serious possibility
that some of these Middle Eastern youth who are engaged in organised crime and
have no regard for our values and way of life may go a step further and engage
in terrorist acts against Australia. The ingredients are there already. It is
but a small step from urban terrorism to religious and political terrorism, as
we have seen with groups such as the IRA, where organised crime often became
interwoven with terrorism.
 |
| Former NSW police detective and hero author Tim Priest. |
It is fitting that when we look to what
was handed to us by the Second World War generation, probably the most
extraordinary generation of Australians in our short history, we should ask ourselves:
are we going to be remembered for handing a similar legacy to our children and
grandchildren, or are we going to be remembered as the generation that did
nothing about the scourge of gang violence and simply passed it on to them.
Tim Priest: January 2006
Brief Footnotes:
1 This was the controversial Wood Royal
Commission into police corruption in New South Wales that ran from 1995 to
1997.
2 Peter James Ryan was Commissioner of
the New South Wales Police from 1996 to 2002. Appointed by the same state Labor
government (that of Premier Bob Carr) that had raised the Wood Royal
Commission. As the highest paid civil servant in Australia and an import from
the UK, he drew a lot of criticism, particularly when organized crime grew
significantly during his watch.
3 Dr Basham is one of Australia’s
experts on crime and corruption (particularly in Asia) and is the Director of
International Business for International Strategic Management Services and a
Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney.
4 “Lebs” is not a derogatory term – In
Australia (and elsewhere in the English-speaking world) young Lebanese
frequently use it to identify themselves.
5 The New York Police Department’s Comp
Stat system charts all major offences (Murder, Rape, Assault, Felonious Assault,
Grand Larceny, etc.) in every section of the city down to the Precinct Level –
and makes it publicly available. Trends are rapidly spotted and the public can
access the statistics via the internet, providing an extra incentive to keep
their police up to the mark. The results have been extraordinary.
6 A ‘Ram-Raid” is the use of a vehicle,
usually stolen, to crash through the front of a store (selling such things as
jewelry, high end electronics, etc) to facilitate a rapid robbery.
7 When police in a Western society are
discontented, they usually stay mute as they serve in a disciplined hierarchal
structure that restricts the careers of dissenters. When police discontent
becomes public, there is a problem and wise politicians start listening very
carefully. The police in New South Wales had become extremely unhappy with
their compensation, the situation on the street, their working conditions and –
most tellingly – their superiors.
8 A similar reaction has occurred to
the growing problem of sexual assault on women in Scandinavian countries by
immigrants from Middle Eastern countries. Sexual assault on women within those
immigrant communities is under-reported to the police in many Western countries
except in France (where many Muslim women are bitterly vocal about their
experiences).
9 2UE is a Sydney radio station with a
talk show and news format. The 2001 Cabramatta Inquiry in the Upper House of
the New South Wales state legislature was a reaction to the soaring crime rates
among immigrant communities (particularly the Vietnamese) and resulted in some
urgently needed personnel changes in the NSW police environment. [The author’s
restraint in describing the valuable perspectives of Australia’s Postmodernist
Multiculturalists is admirable, as we tend to use much coarser language regarding
their Canadian and US equivalents - ed.]
10 [Gangstah Rap does carry a very
toxic message that is spreading across many cultural lines. Toronto’s street
gangs are inspired by it, but young First Nations based gangs in Western
Canadian cities have also adopted the music, the look and the attitudes. Even
Paul Bernardo, the schoolgirl rapist and murderer, fancied himself as a Rap
artist. Don’t take our word for it, watch the videos for yourself and listen
carefully to the words – ed.]
11 William J. Bratton is the American
police officer who has led the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Police and then the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Police in the 1980s,
spent the 1990s first as the Chief of the New York City Transit Police and then
the New York City Police Commissioner, and was appointed Chief of the Los
Angeles Police Department in 2002. He is noted for making major reforms in
police department organizations and procedures that usually result in rapid
major reductions in street crime.
12 Michael Costa was the transportation
minister for New South Wales who started to undertake a major overhaul of a
much neglected octogenarian railway system in the state.
(Lebanese-Muslim Gangs in Sydney)
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