Bikie law on ice: Gang-busting anti-association laws unused
LAWS to ban bikies and other organised crime figures from associating are still unused, almost a year after they came into force.
Law & Order
Don't miss out on the headlines from Law & Order. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- New laws to cripple bikie gangs
- Bikies pay price for quitting gangs
- Soft laws attract interstate bikie gangs
LAWS to ban bikies and other organised crime figures from associating are still unused, almost a year after they came into force.
Last June, the State Government said the Criminal Organisations Control Amendment (Unlawful Associations) Bill would give police the power to “smash gangs”. But no one has yet been charged.
The Herald Sun understands many of the likely targets of the anti-association law would fail to meet its criteria.
The law allows a senior police officer to issue an unlawful association notice to a person who has at least once “associated with an individual convicted of an applicable offence tried on indictment”.
But many likely targets of the law have never been “tried”, having instead been convicted after pleading guilty.
It had been expected Victoria Police’s anti-bikie Echo taskforce would use the laws.
But it appears Toby Mitchell, who has previously made no secret of his association with underworld identities, regularly posting photos of himself with them on social media, might be unaffected.
The former sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos motorcycle club has never been tried and convicted.
Serious drug and violence charges against him have been resolved by guilty pleas.
Mitchell is due for release later this year, when he will have served 20 months in jail for being caught with almost 500g of ice and cocaine.
He had previously been jailed after 1.4kg of MDMA tablets and 471g of pure MDMA were seized in 2000.
Comancheros president Mick Murray is another who has long been a target of national and state law enforcement, but who the Herald Sun believes has not been tried and convicted.
Last year, he was spared jail when he pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice and to a related charge of committing an indictable offence while on bail; 13 other charges were dropped.
Another condition of imposing an unlawful association notice is that a senior police officer reasonably believes “the commission of an offence is likely to be prevented if those individuals are prevented from associating with each other.”
But associations are exempt if they are familial, or in the course of lawful business or employment, education and training, health care, legal advice, or political purposes.
Shadow attorney-general John Pesutto said the laws were not being sufficiently used to attack organised crime.