‘Appalling’ bikie violence putting public at risk: Police
The ACT Government’s refusal to introduce anti-consorting laws has turned Canberra into an oasis for bikers, according to the federal police association. Despite this, police are making headway in tackling bikie crime.
Canberra Star
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It was like a scene out of a movie.
The serenity of a neighbourhood settling down for the night was abruptly shattered when four bikers snuck into a suburban backyard under the cover of darkness.
Dramatic footage shows one of the hooded men douse a car in petrol before multiple shots are fired into the home of a rival bikie, who police allege took up a rifle and returned fire in defence of himself, his wife and young child.
Police allege a wayward bullet lodged in the bedroom wall of the adjacent house, narrowly missing his sleeping neighbour’s head by half a metre.
Three cars and the driveway were engulfed in a ball of flames while the shoes of one of the men was set alight as they fled the carnage.
But this isn’t a movie. This happened at Calwell in Canberra’s south on June 28 last year.
Police released the footage to seek help identifying the offenders but also to demonstrate how gang warfare is putting innocent members of the public in danger.
A man has been charged with attempted murder over the attack and is yet to face trial.
He has denied being one of the Comanchero-linked men involved and will plead not guilty.
The shocking attack, police allege, was partly triggered by an internal split into two blocs within the Comanchero when one faction defected to the Finks.
ACT Policing Detective Superintendent Scott Moller said the incident was a “significant” example of bikies’ “every day business playing out and affecting the rest of the community”.
“You’ve got people living next door to the house and in front of it, all these people have been subjected to this violence and are all being impacted by it,” he said.
“How did this happen in Canberra? It is dramatic and it’s appalling.”
Supt Moller says the nation’s capital is in the grip of a dangerous battle between outlaw motorcycle gangs for control over the city’s lucrative drugs market.
“You’ve got these members of the different outlaw motorcycle gangs; using their links, locally, nationally and internationally to conduct criminal activity and to ensure they have control and dominance in Canberra by using violence to carry out their business,” he said.
“We’ve seen firebombings, we’ve seen shootings, we’ve seen home invasions and significant assaults like at the Canberra Men’s Club where we saw that all in-fight between various factions of the Comanchero.”
CCTV footage captured the moment when fitness instructor, male model and then acting national Comanchero president Hasan Topal smashed a glass of beer into his own forehead before diving into the wild brawl in August 2017 for which he and five others would later be jailed.
Senior citizens and young children were among those in the firing line during a dinner time dust-up between bikies in the busy restaurant of the Canberra Southern Cross Club at Woden on January 18.
Seven alleged members of the Comanchero, including Pitasoni Tali Ulavalu who police say is the commander of the gang’s ACT chapter, have denied charges of affray over the incident and will face a hearing over the allegations in October.
Police allege the men intimidated four Nomads, the main rival gang to the Comanchero, who were sitting in a restaurant booth before one man was punched in the nose, breaking it, in front of families eating their dinner.
In June last year, bikies fired several shots into the home of a Ngunnawal family and set fire to their front door as they had wrongly believed a rival still lived there.
“Unfortunately a new Chinese family was living in that house and they were subjected to extreme violence,” Supt Moller said.
“The family will never get over that and that was very significant in terms of the impact on every day citizens in our community.
“Here’s these people who have no involvement with bikies and the next thing they know, people are storming through their house with guns and setting fire to their front door.”
Despite this appalling violence, Det Supt Moller said police are making headway in combating organised crime through new investigative strategies, a working group and new laws including crime scene powers introduced by the ACT Government in late 2017.
The powers allow police to declare private property a crime scene without a warrant, allowing them to obtain crucial evidence including CCTV, if its occupants refuse to co-operate.
It has helped reduce OMCG linked drive-by shootings in the capital from about a dozen two years ago to three this year — in Kambah, Theodore and Richardson.
Figures compiled for The Canberra Star reveal ACT Police’s bikie busting Task Force Nemesis charged 46 gang members with 113 offences in the 19 months to August 2, 2019.
It executed 128 search warrants and seized 32 firearms over the same period.
Coercive powers recently helped police seize the Lakeside Tattoo Parlour in Belconnen which was allegedly being used by bikies to launder drug money.
The alleged Canberra Comanchero “road captain” Jirawat McCallum remains behind bars and will stand trial next year on charges of money laundering and possessing property suspected of being the proceeds of crime.
In July the largest ever drug interception by ACT Police resulted in the seizure of 384kg of cocaine, worth $144 million, found hidden in an excavator from South Africa and intercepted at Port Botany.
The Telegraph revealed the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang were behind the failed importation.
It is alleged the excavator was delivered to Bungendore Landscape Supplies run by Adam Hunter and his self-employed associate Timothy John Engstrom.
The men are facing drug importation charges and will next face Queanbeyan court on September 9.
They have not entered pleas yet and it is not alleged they are Rebels members.
This month Khaled Khoder, who police alleged was a senior member of the Comanchero, was sentenced to two years and five months in prison after pleading guilty to trafficking methylamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine.
However, Canberra is still seen as a soft target for bikies who hold their national runs in the territory, which is the only state in Australia that does not have anti-consorting laws.
Australian Federal Police Association president Angela Smith said the ACT Labor Government’s refusal to introduce the laws has created “an outlaw motorcycle gang haven that is detrimental to Canberra being a safe city”.
She does not agree with the Government’s claim that the laws disadvantage minority groups including youth, the homeless and Aboriginals.
“These outlaw motorcycle gang groups call themselves One Percenters,” Ms Smith said.
“This is a reference to 99 per cent of people are law-abiding people.
“The ACT Government continues to use the human rights elements, which I agree is important, but in relation to this discussion; does the human rights of the One Percenters outweigh the human rights of 99 per cent of the community?
“OMCG’s and organised crime syndicates are not minority groups, they are criminal groups that traffic in drugs and commit other offences such as firearm offences, arson, blackmail, people smuggling and serious assaults.
“Strike Force Raptor do an excellent job in the NSW region surrounding the ACT and all their hard work evaporates once OMCG members cross the border into the ACT where they can freely collude and associate with each other.”
Canberra was a one gang town for many years before a split in the ranks of the Rebels saw the Nomads set up a chapter in 2016.
The Comanchero, who are currently the most influential gang in the ACT, set up in the capital in 2017 and late last year the European gang Satudarah fulfilled its aim to have a chapter in every state and territory in Australia.
However ACT Police have managed to lock up all known members of the Satudarah, arresting its second president within two weeks of the first in February, while the Finks have also dissipated.
Police estimate there are about 60 fully patched OMCG members in Canberra.
The main gangs battling for supremacy in the capital are the Comanchero, Nomads and the Rebels who have been pushed out to Yass where they have a clubhouse but are also active in areas like Bungendore and Captains Flat.
Shadow police minister Giulia Jones said if the Liberals are elected at next year’s Act election, they would introduce “long overdue” anti-consorting laws.
“With a bikie related incident happening every other week, the Canberra Liberals introduced a bill in February 2019 that mirror completely the laws in NSW,” she said.
The laws were “tough but fair”, containing protections to prevent them being misapplied to young and indigenous people.
“Unfortunately, ACT Labor and the Greens voted against these laws, in their continual opposition to getting tough on the bikies,” Ms Jones said.
“If we do not act to make the ACT just as safe as NSW, these gangs will continue to come here, they will continue to fight, and sooner or later, someone innocent will get killed.
“The ACT can no longer be an oasis of weaker laws for violent criminal gangs to have turf wars over.”
ACT Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay said the Government recently passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill to help police prosecute firearms offences.
Last year the Director of Public Prosecutions got $980,000 in funding and next year’s budget will deliver another $2.8 million over four years to help prosecutors seize criminal assets.
Another $1.6 million for Taskforce Nemesis funds two specialist officers, a forensic accountant and a surveillance team member.
At a recent press conference relating to the seizure of the Belconnen tattoo parlour, Mr Ramsay reiterated the Government’s view that “anti-consorting laws are not an effective mechanism for targeting and disrupting criminal gang activity in the ACT”.
“The fact is criminal gangs have not stopped operating where these laws have been introduced,” Mr Ramsay said.
“The ACT Government’s strong measures to tackle criminal gangs are evidence based.
“We have actively targeted the financial motivations behind organised crime by funding more police and prosecutors to seize criminal assets, and we are working with the Commonwealth and other jurisdictions to develop new ways of targeting unexplained wealth.
“That work has shown, and will continue to show, concrete results.”
And the bikies are not laying down without a fight when it comes to NSW’s hard line.
Earlier this month the Rebels launched a challenge in Australia’s highest court against NSW’s anti-bikie laws which could have enormous ramifications for law enforcement around the country and determine how far agencies can go in the battle against organised crime.
The constitutional challenge comes after NSW Police applied to the Supreme Court for Serious Crime Prevention Orders (SCPO) against three alleged members of the Rebels; Damien Vella, Johnny Vella and Michael Fetui.
The High Court has reserved its judgment, which should be handed down in three to six months.