NSW Police kick in doors across Sydney to suppress gun crime

NSW police have targeted known criminals with links to bikie gangs and organised crime networks in the wake of the brazen shooting of a Comanchero last week. See the suburbs they hit.

NSW police have targeted known criminals with links to bikie gangs and organised crime networks in the wake of the shooting of Comanchero Alen Moradian.

Heavily armed police raided a dozen homes across Sydney in Revesby, Greenacre, Maroubra, Millers Point, Barangaroo, Pyrmont, arresting three people and seizing a rifle and firearm parts.

Operation Hawke, designed to disrupt gun crime, deployed officers from the NSW State Crime Command’s Raptor Squad and local officers from Central, South West and North West Metropolitan Regions during raids where they served 12 Firearm and Weapon Prohibition Order compliance checks.

“These types of proactive taskings – both issuing and ensuring compliance of FPOs and WPOs – are an everyday occurrence at Raptor Squad,” Raptor Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Andrew Koutsoufis, said.

“What we do works, and the stats speak for themselves. In twenty years, we haven’t seen shooting numbers this low according to recent BOCSAR figures,”

NSW Police charge three people and execute 12 firearm and weapon compliance checks during week of action – Operation Hawk. Picture: NSW Police.

Those arrested in the week-long operation included a 58-year-old man from Tahmoor where during a search of a property police located and seized a rifle barrel and slingshot.

The man was taken to Camden Police Station and charged with use prohibited weapon contrary to prohibition order, possess or use a prohibited weapon without permit, possess a barrel for a firearm unless authorised by licence and firearm etc found at premises-subject to prohibition order.

Alen Moradian was shot dead last week.

A 33-year-old man was at an address in Redfern and charged with contravene prohibition/restriction in AVO (domestic).

In Quakers Hill police located and seized three ballistic vests, two mobile phones and approximately 10g of white power, believed to be cocaine.

A 22-year-old man was arrested and taken to Riverstone Police Station, where he was charged with possess or use a prohibited weapon without permit and use prohibited weapon contrary to prohibition order.

“The community should be encouraged by those figures and know that we will keep doing the work to ensure our priority of keeping the people of New South Wales safe is met,” Superintendent Koutsoufis said.

Moradian was on parole at the time of his death.

The police blitz follows the violent death of Moradian in Bondi Junction on June 27.

The crime figure, known as Sydney’s Mr Big, was fatally shot multiple times in the head as he was driving out of his apartment complex’s carpark to head to the gym.

Moradian was a drug-importing bikie boss from Iraq, who had links to at least four other organised crime murders on Sydney’s streets in recent years.

His murder is the biggest of a two-and-a-half year underworld war, with it occurring in the heart of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, with no shortage of enemies who wanted him dead.

The 48-year-old has been a major player in the city’s organised crime circles for decades, and had links to at least four of the 17 other murders that have occurred on the city’s streets since late-2020.

Because of his standing in the underworld Moradian had long been aware of the dangers he faced, but they were made especially plain and obvious to him when NSW Police warned him of a bounty on his head last August.Moradian soon moved out of his family home in the lower Blue Mountains in a bid to protect his wife Natasha, shifted between secure high-rise apartments in the city and regularly changed the car he was driving.

But the life the Comanchero bikie boss chose to live for decades finally caught up with him as he left to go enjoy a gym session, unaware two gunmen were lurking in the underground car park of his Bondi Junction apartment.

Moradian was the epitome of a gangster, with gold teeth and a love of the finer things in life such as his Versace-inspired home that had even seen his wife describe him as being like TV Mafia boss “Tony Soprano”.

He had been involved in setting up “The Commission”, which was allegedly formed in early 2021 by Comanchero bikies in an effort to tax and control Sydney’s lucrative drug market.

This meant the threats to Moradian’s life could have come from not only rival bikies and crime networks in Sydney, but also drug cartels overseas.

Moradian had previously served a decade behind bars between 2007 and 2017 for importing cocaine and was still on parole at the time of his death.