Cowardly gunmen hiding in the night

THEY are grandstanders and cowards who have been watching too many TV cop shows and American rapper movies.

THEY are grandstanders and cowards.

They have been watching too many TV cop shows and American rapper movies, emulating the so-called hard-men who spray houses with bullets as the volume is ramped up until it's pumping. They like to play the tough guys.

But they prefer soft targets, the wives and children of the fellow crooks they are trying to intimidate.

On Thursday morning at 12.30am, a two-month-old baby girl narrowly missed being hit by a bullet as it flew past her bassinet and became lodged in a wooden cupboard in the bedroom of the Banks- town unit she shared with her mother and three siblings.

That evening it was other southwestern Sydney houses, other families.

At 8.15pm, five shots were fired at a Yagoona house, three of them hitting the property. Cartridge cases were found on the footpath outside.

No one was home at the time - and the homeowner was less than co-operative.

About 15 minutes later, a 40-year-old woman and two children aged 16 and nine were terrorised at home in Yennora, the second time shots have been fired at their house in three months.

"Two men have a conflict and one of them goes to the house of the other one to shoot it up. I can only describe that as cowardice," Acting Commissioner Nick Kaldas said this week.

"Those who would chew up the houses with women and children in them are cowards."

At least 52 drive-by shootings have rocked Sydney in 10 months - not face-to-face encounters but violence meant to engender fear.

The gunmen aren't known for always getting the address right but they fire at random nonetheless.

"It's senseless behaviour but the frightening thing from a police perspective is not only that they possess firearms but they are willing to use them," a senior law enforcement source said.

"We have never experienced this in Sydney before."

Former top cop Clive Small doesn't intend to romanticise the criminals of yore but said that this would never have happened back in the 1960s through to the early 1980s, when feared underworld figures Lenny McPherson, George Freeman and even Arthur Stanley "Neddy" Smith ruled the streets.

"They were able to exercise a level of calm and control and order," Mr Small, a former assistant commissioner, said.

If they targeted someone, they made no mistake: Heroin dealer Danny Chubb was shot dead outside his mother's house in 1984, Barry McCann was killed in a Marrickville park, standover man and drug dealer Mick Sayers was gunned down in 1985 outside his Bronte home.

As these gangland criminals died, killed each other or ended up in jail, it left the way clear for a fresh breed of criminals, more violent and indiscriminate, and mainly of Middle Eastern origin, Mr Small said.

They included Michael Kanaan, now in jail for three murders, and Danny Karam, shot dead by his own gangmates, including Kanaan.

They barely needed a reason to pull their guns - one night the gang shot up Eveleigh St in Redfern simply in retaliation for a wild brawl inside Lithgow jail between the Middle Eastern prisoners and Aboriginal inmates.

The rise of Middle Eastern gangs coincided with the growth of bikie gangs and the merging of the two.

"What we have here are dangerous and violent people who don't give a shit about the community or the police," Mr Small said.

Most of them make southwestern Sydney their home - and their turf.

Southwest region commander Assistant Commissioner Frank Mennilli has been appointed head of operation Spartan, set up on Thursday, to target the spate of drive-by shootings.

"The media keeps asking about the links between the shootings and the main link is the arrogance and cowardice of these individuals involved in targeting families," Mr Mennilli said.

"Having said that, saying that you don't know why you have been targeted is not good enough.

"You can't tell me that family members, whether it be husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, don't know that their family members or friends and associates are involved in drugs or criminal activity which has resulted in this incident."

In other words, find the reason for the shooting, find the shooter.