Sydney is a peaceful city. Law and order should prevail. Not gangs

The words “in broad daylight” in relation to violent crimes often convey the sense that perpetrators have no respect for innocent lives, and so it is proving in Sydney with a rash of shootings in public places as our city endures a fresh gangland war.

The brazenness is unprecedented. The 1980s gangland wars portrayed in the television miniseries Blue Murder and based on the novel In the Line of Fire by a former Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir were fought under a kind of code of dishonour that combatants killed one another with no collateral damage.

CCTV shows the shooting inside the Auburn restaurant.Credit: Nine News

Fast-forward four decades, and the public is in the line of fire. To make matters worse, warring gangs have outsourced the killings to young thugs who shoot, burn and run with callous indifference, both to their victims and the lives of others.

An innocent woman is fighting for life after being caught in the crossfire of a gangland shooting in Sydney’s west, while detectives probe possible links to a spiralling turf war, burnt-out getaway cars, and reports that her assailants were respondents to a $50 “hitman-for-hire” job posted online.

The daylight use of guns at Auburn’s M Brothers Turkish restaurant on Monday is linked to infighting within the Alameddine crime clan and resulted in the innocent waitress being shot twice in the back, a senior member of the notorious crime group Samimjan Azari being hit in the arm and shoulder, while his bodyguard took a bullet in the face.

It was the fourth attempt to assassinate Azari.

He survived an attack at Brighton-Le-Sands last February. Three weeks ago, he was sitting with two others in a Toyota ute in Woodville Road, Granville, when a gunman opened fire and killed Alameddine associate Dawwod Zakaria and wounded Parramatta solicitor Sylvan Singh. Last week, he was the target of another planned hit in Rozelle, only to flee before a shot could be fired.

NSW Police had tackled gang warfare but were required to move resources to Strike Force Pearl, targeting antisemitism, until establishing Taskforce Falcon to crack down on escalating gangland violence after the Toyota shooting.

The system is hardly helping.

Azari had been on bail since March, when he was arrested and charged for his alleged involvement in the robbery of a truck delivering tobacco in Guildford last November. Following the Toyota ute shooting, police charged Azari with possessing an unauthorised gun that was found in the vehicle but unsuccessfully opposed his release, warning the court there would be “bloodshed on the streets” if he were granted bail.

And indeed there was.

Premier Chris Minns talked tough, declaring police were already hunting the gunmen who shot up the Auburn kebab shop. “People committing this kind of violence can expect to be arrested, charged and to spend years inside small jail cells,” he said.

But tough talk has little effect on such men of violence. They are part of a remorseless tit-for-tat male culture that likes to regard itself as a law unto itself and feeds on violence as lifeblood. The longer the gangs are allowed to get away with murder, it is inevitable they will kill innocent bystanders.

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