Youth gangs terrorising South East Queensland
Tense rivalries between Brisbane youth gangs are spilling on to social media as police reveal a crackdown on the ‘complex issue’.
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This week, The Daily Telegraph launched a sequel to its multi-award winning documentary The War.
The War: Young Blood is a gritty documentary series confronting the bloodletting and knife crime that has erupted between Sydney’s postcode gangs.
We take a look at the current state of play in Queensland.
The brazen behaviour of rival youth gangs terrorising South East Queensland posting photos and videos of stolen goods, illicit drugs and guns being fired from moving vehicles on social media has forced a police crackdown on the “complex issue”.
The series examines 11 teenage deaths and the constant violence arising from senseless turf conflicts. But it’s not just Sydney that has been grappling with an explosion of violence driven by so-called postcode gangs.
In Brisbane, a tense rivalry between the Southside Drillas and the Swish Gang, a group associated with Brisbane’s Northside, has resulted in a number of violent clashes.
Both gangs are believed to have some connection with an Australia Day inner city brawl in 2020 that cost a young man his life after he was stabbed several times in the back and chest.
But the feud is ongoing with disagreements known to result in violence and injury with Southside Drillas members known to have referred to themselves as “as ops or people in opposition”.
But tensions between youth gangs in Brisbane reached a crisis point in September 2020 when Girum Mekonnen, 19, was fatally stabbed and 10 others hospitalised at O’Callaghan Park in Zillmere.
Two groups of youths from African backgrounds attacked each other with bats and knives in what police at the time said was a revenge attack.
Another prominent rivalry exists between the Northside Gang, who gained public attention after they were found to be brazenly splashing photos of their illicit lifestyles across social media, and the Southside Gang.
Gangs from both sides of the city have frequently been linked to car thefts and break and enters with the group spruiking their criminal activities on TikTok and Instagram.
Photos recently emerged on the Instagram pages of senior members of the Northside gang (NS) and its rival, the Southside gang.
Other footage posted to the same page shows cars dodging traffic on the Gateway Bridge along with videos of stolen goods including medication, cigarettes, Apple products and a Queensland Corrective Services vest.
Another Instagram page @brisbanecrime shows a young person masking his identity with a Snapchat filter while smoking a bong in the back seat of a car.
The Courier-Mail recently investigated anonymous TikTok accounts called @Brisbanecrime and @Brisbanes_youthcrime, which have posted several videos of youths posing next to cars with captions “F--- the police”, while others are accompanied with song lyrics including “running from the boys in blue” and hashtags like #creepinwhileyasleepin, #north$ide and #southside.
POLICE MOVE TO SHUT DOWN GANG ACCOUNTS
Queensland Police Youth Justice Task Force Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon has previously highlighted the growing intersection of crime and the use of social media, especially in offences regarding the theft of motor vehicles.
“We know such activities are being posted to facilitate notoriety, to encourage others to engage in criminal activities, and to facilitate further crime and compete with other criminals,” Ms Scanlon said.
“We will be moving to disrupt and have accounts shut down.”
Ms Scanlon said there is a cohort of about 400 serious repeat offenders that is the main focus.
“This cohort causes significant harm in the communities, they are complex individuals who need way more intensive interventions, not only directly as an individual youth offender,” she said.
“Parents and carers are part of the solution and they need to be engaged and supported to take control of their children.”
University of Queensland’s School of Social Science researcher Dr Renee Zahnow said despite the best efforts of police, videos posted to social media often have the largest audience within the first 24 hours of being posted.
Dr Zahnow said, when Queensland’s Covid restrictions limited youth gang activity on the streets, many of these young offenders “turned” to social media.
“Getting things off the internet is a bit of a logistic nightmare,” she said.
“Police still need to go through those social media platforms to actually stop something so by the time a page or video is taken down generally speaking everyone has seen it.”
GANG MOVEMENTS: JOINING AND LEAVING ORGANISED CRIME
Dr Zahnow said young people who are unemployed or not involved in organised sport are “more at risk of being involved in youth gangs” with peers and peer groups the “biggest risk factors”.
Asked about these offenders leaving their faces and identifiable tattoos clearly visible to the thousands of online followers, Dr Zahnow said young people “don’t understand the consequences”.
“It is concerning that they’re not worried about authorities – young people are putting their entire life at risk at a very young age.”
Dr Zahnow said South East Queensland residents can assist by not engaging with these social media pages.
Meanwhile, a Queensland Police spokesperson said the service continued to see individuals leaving gangs and “they speak of the negative culture, the personal cost, and the false narrative and allure, spread by gangs”.
“The Queensland Police Service Organised Crime Gangs Group maintains a dedicated team to monitor gang membership and intelligence,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said police had not seen a correlation between youth gangs and recruitment into Organised Motorcycle Gangs (OMCGs)” and, over recent years, they had actually seen a decline in OMCG gang membership.
“Queensland Police and community partnerships are fundamental for societal crime prevention and fostering a conducive society including a range of prevention and deterrent measures for those at risk of joining these criminal street gangs, along with exit pathways for those wanting to leave,” the spokesperson said.
“The QPS continue to promote the OMCG Exit program which has changed the lives of a number of men, who herald it for providing them a future, beyond offending and imprisonment.”
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