Turn signals and coarse language: Police nab alleged kingpins on minor offences

From failing to signal a turn to swearing in public, some of Sydney’s alleged gang figures are being nabbed on surprisingly minor alleged offences.

As investigations into solving the murders of more than a dozen men killed in Sydney’s current underworld war continue, police on the street are disrupting the lives of alleged gang kingpins however they legally can.

One of the most common tactics for the NSW Police Raptor Squad and local officers in the city’s southwest who are trying to disrupt their alleged criminal activities is to target them with driving offences.

And when it comes to members of the Alameddine organised crime network, police rarely miss a trick.

For the crime family’s alleged leader Rafat Alameddine, day-to-day life regularly involves being watched and charged for any minor indiscretion.

This week the 33-year-old will face Parramatta Local Court on Thursday on three charges including driving on or over a continuous white line, not indicating to turn right at traffic lights and negligent driving.

Alleged crime network leader Rafat Alameddine will face three driving charges in court this week.

Relative Richad Alameddine pleaded guilty to a driving under the influence of drugs charge.

While police allege he controls the crime clan’s operations, it is the minor offences he most often appears in court for.

In another police stop Rafat was again charged with giving a direction signal for less than five seconds, and pleaded guilty but was not convicted, while a charge of driving with his arm out the window was withdrawn.

Aside from his petty crimes, he is currently on $900,000 bail for charges including robbery in company and aggravated assault.

His relative Richad Alameddine last week pleaded guilty to driving with an illicit drug in his bloodstream.

Last October, Richad faced court again on minor charges including two charges of breaching Covid rules, a further two counts of using offensive language near a school and another of not walking on a footpath as a pedestrian.

Those charges, all from the one incident, cost him a host of additions to his criminal record and a collective $4,400 in fines.

Hamdi Alameddine has been convicted and fined for using his truck’s indicator for less than five seconds.

But it is not just minor matters that police have charged him over, with Richad currently behind bars on remand over charges including supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drugs and directing a criminal group.

When another relative and alleged crime figure Hamdi Alameddine, 30, got into his grey Toyota HiLux on Whittaker St in Old Guildford on March 12, 2021, and drove out of his carpark, he did so without using his right indicator – “or hand signal” – despite it being wet and hard to see, court papers state.

As a result a watching police officer pulled him over and checked that his indicator worked, which it did.

Feared Hells Angel bikie Mustafa Hafizi is fighting a charge of using offensive language in public.

Having not used it he was charged with giving right change of direction signal (for) less than 5 seconds, to which he pleaded guilty and was last week convicted, and fined $110 by Bankstown Local Court.

Another alleged associate of the Alameddine crime clan is Hells Angels bikie gang member Mustafa Hafizi who on June 30 is due to face Parramatta Local Court after pleaded not guilty to a count of “using offensive language in a public place, or near a school”.

While he understandably avoided going to prison for that offence, he did serve five years jail for his role in a Parramatta shooting in 2012.

But it is not only the Alameddines being targeted by NSW Police, with crackdowns also occurring against their rivals, with Ibrahem Hamze last year charged with driving in a furious/reckless manner.

Hamze – who has a history of driving offences – was convicted in Liverpool Local Court, lost his licence for two years and placed on a community corrections order for 18 months.