Apex gang has been ‘contained’ but youth violence is increasing, police say
MELBOURNE’S notorious Apex gang is now a “nonentity” after key leaders were thrown in jail or booted out of Australia, senior Victoria Police officers claim.
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VICTORIA Police claims it has “broken the back” of the notorious Apex gang, but voiced alarm at escalating violence in youth crime.
Senior police today told a federal committee investigating the settlement of new migrants that key Apex leaders were now behind bars or had been booted out of Australia.
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Specialist Operations Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton and Supt Peter De Santo said advanced technology and specialist taskforces implemented in the wake of last year’s Moomba riots had managed to “contain” Apex, which had about 130 members at its peak.
“It’s substantially diminished, so much so that we would call it pretty much a nonentity in terms of a gang,” Mr Patton said.
“It’s now a group of network offenders that are loosely associated through social media.
“This isn’t about ethnicity or nationality to us, it’s about criminality.”
While the number of youth offenders had decreased in recent years, a minority of “network offenders” were repeatedly committing increasingly serious and violent crimes.
“The offending we’re seeing is remarkably different to the offending we’ve seen in the past,” Mr Patton said.
“We’re not seeing any gradual escalation, it’s more violent and it’s more risk-taking.”
Four Apex-linked thugs to be booted out of Australia
Supt De Santo said such crimes stretched across Melbourne with young crooks using the internet to communicate.
Crime Statistics Agency figures, also presented to the federal Parliament Migration Committee, reveal:
THE number of Sudan-born alleged offenders involved in aggravated burglaries increased fivefold in the two years to 2016;
THEY now make up 4.8 per cent of all alleged offenders, up from 1.4 per cent;
THE number ofAustralian-bornalleged offenders involved in aggravated burglaries jumped 56 per cent over the period to 1624; and
SUDAN-born alleged offenders committing riot and affray crimes more than doubled.
Committee chairman Liberal MP Jason Wood said he had no problem with cancelling serious young offenders’ visas provided they had a safe place to go back to.
“When we’ve got the Sudanese community committing the second highest number of aggravated burglaries behind Australians we have a major problem which we need to address,” he said.
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“These 17-year-olds are not carrying out harmless thefts, they’re bashing people with baseball bats and attacking them with machetes.”
“If deporting someone will eliminate the risk of this happening to another innocent family, I’m all for it.”
The committee will provide recommendations to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton by year’s end.