Police confirm sightings of bikies on Gold Coast as gangs fight to keep control of underworld

WE thought they were gone. But the bikie menace is re-emerging on the Glitter Strip with gang members in colours spotted across the city.

THE bikie menace is re-emerging on the Glitter Strip with gang members in colours spotted across the city.

Police have confirmed sightings of bikies at the southern end of the Gold Coast, while riders were seen in Mongols colours at Runaway Bay.

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The gangs are getting more brazen to keep their tentacles on the city’s $1 billion underworld business.

“We are seeing more and more of them get involved in legitimate businesses,” police said. “But they have had to go low key to avoid police.

“That means using street dealers and intermediaries to help run the network, but the bikies are still in control.”

Despite the tough anti-bikie laws, criminal gang members are still regularly being arrested by police. This man was pictured at Palm Beach police station recently.

The return is unwelcome news for politicians in the shadows of a state election.

Premier Campbell Newman gutted the seedy belly of the underworld with tough anti-bikie laws in his first term in government and is hanging his party’s Gold Coast re-election campaign on the crackdown.

However, last week he would not commit to backing the breakthrough laws beyond next year.

Labor says it will repeal the laws if elected, effectively reopening the door to gang crime in the city.

These weapons were seized by police in raids over the weekend when 11 bikie members and associates were arrested.

Aside from the drug market, police say gangs have a hand in weapons, extortion, loan sharking and money laundering through otherwise legitimate businesses.

“They will attempt to ­exploit weaknesses in the legal system, the financial systems. Credit card fraud for example,” police said.

“That gives them the opportunity to launder money … clean money and that makes it so much more difficult in the future.”

The gang presence come as 11 bikies from five separate gangs were arrested and charged statewide over the weekend.

The frightening bikie brawl at Broadbeach in September 2013 sparked the crackdown but gangs have been reluctant to give up on the Gold Coast. Pic: A Current Affair.

The arrests were the result of street checks, vehicle intercepts and the execution of two search warrants at the Gold Coast, Chinchilla, Beerwah and Brisbane.

It will be alleged the ­members and associates were from the Mongols, Bandidos, Odins Warriors, Rebels and Hells Angels Criminal Motorcycle Gangs. The charges include possession of dangerous drugs (ice and cannabis), ­possession of weapons including restricted items and a dangerous article.

RAP boss Jim Keogh has been charged with ridding the Gold Coast of the bikie menace. Pic: Adam Head

Police seized ice (worth approximately $70,000), cannabis, cash, four replica handguns, knuckledusters, a Taser, extendible batons, flick knives and a crossbow.

“While CMG members and their associates choose to remain and support these declared criminal gangs they will be targeted,” Acting Detective Inspector David Cove of Task Force Maxima said.

“The results of these police actions, in terms of the drugs and weaponry located and seized from CMGs, demonstrate the continuing threat these crime gangs pose to our community.”

Organised crime in Australia is valued at about $15 billion a year.

And the Australian Crime Commission attributes about $10 billion of that to bikies.

The Queensland ­contribution is estimated at about $2 billion to $3 billion, according to police.

The sheer toughness of the Newman Government’s bikie laws — which include up to 25 years extra time behind bars for bikies arrested on almost any charge — forced the bikies underground, but police warn they are still here.