The Rise of Middle Eastern Crime in Australia - Part Two
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.
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.
The Middle Eastern cycle of violence is not local. It can occur on the central coast, around Cronulla, Bondi, Darling Harbour, Five Dock, Redfern, Paddington, anywhere in Sydney. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, they roam the city and are not confined to either Cabramatta or Chinatown. 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 being racial 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 race 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. 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.
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 it 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 consider intrusions by police and authority 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.
Some of the problems we now see with policing are the result of Peter Ryan’s dream of restructuring and retraining police. The Police Academy was changed from a police training college into a university teaching social sciences and very little else. 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 placed not only 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 is ethnic communities being policed selectively. The implications for this are frightening when you look at Paris. They had selective policing of a particular community, which as a result is now out of control.
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, lunatics from the ABC and their associates at the Sydney Morning Herald as well as that fruit loop Mike Carlton from 2UE. 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. The critics still refuse to concede that we have a problem. They are still clinging to the multicultural theme. To highlight the problems with Middle Eastern communities in this city is to threaten to tear down the multicultural facade.
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. Cabramatta 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.
But I have not heard anything like that from the Middle Eastern community. Initially the gang rapes were the fault of Australian culture, according to one religious leader in the south-west. I note that he has now softened his stance and is calling for change among Middle Eastern youth. But they are just words; there seem to be no Thung Ngos among them.
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.
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.
Only recently I have seen quotes from senior police and retired police who claim that race is not the issue in organised crime. Those statements are stupid and dangerous. Organised crime groups with the exception of the bikies are almost always ethnically based — any experienced detective will tell you that. The days of Anglo-Saxon gangs are almost gone, with the exception of one or two local beach gangs.
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 also 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.
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. 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. Whoever is to blame is now irrelevant, but they have left a terrible legacy for the young generations of citizens of Los Angeles who have to run the gauntlet of drug-crazed gangsters in the suburbs engaging in deadly shoot-outs and drive-bys nearly every day.
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.
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 a 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 that 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.
I do not want to paint a picture of gloom, but as a policeman I have seen the destruction that gangs can wreak on innocent citizens who only want to live their lives in peace. I just hope we can trust the people in government and the police to ensure that we don’t lose the values and the rights we have received from past generations.
It is fitting that one day after Remembrance Day, 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?
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