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How gangsters are still obtaining military-grade guns · The Morning Edition

• 0:04
  S1: Last week there were a couple of shocking crimes in Sydney.
• 0:08
  S1: In one, a father and his 15 year old daughter
• 0:11
  S1: were forced to flee when a gunman approached them at school.
• 0:14
  S1: Pick up time. In another, assailants in a car filmed
• 0:18
  S1: themselves as they sprayed bullets from a high powered firearm
• 0:22
  S1: into a funeral home. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris, and you're
• 0:27
  S1: listening to The Morning Edition from The Age and The
• 0:30
  S1: Sydney Morning Herald. Today, crime reporter Perry Duffin discusses the
• 0:35
  S1: crime war in Sydney and how the underworld is still
• 0:38
  S1: accessing military style guns. After Port Arthur and in the
• 0:42
  S1: wake of the Bondi Massacre. It's Monday, June 15th. Perry,
• 0:51
  S1: welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:52
  S2: Sam, good to be here.
• 0:54
  S1: Okay, Perry. So a pretty shocking scene unfolded at a
• 0:57
  S1: school in Sydney last week. a father had just picked
• 1:00
  S1: up his 15 year old daughter from school there in
• 1:03
  S1: their ute in the parking lot, and then a gunman
• 1:06
  S1: approaches them. They've got to flee. So what happened?
• 1:10
  S2: Yeah. So it appears that this was a attempted assassination
• 1:14
  S2: by the underworld on a man who is, in fact,
• 1:20
  S2: not connected to the underworld personally. He is believed to
• 1:24
  S2: be a relative of a high ranking organized crime figure,
• 1:27
  S2: but is otherwise a completely innocent individual who was sitting
• 1:31
  S2: there with his 15 year old daughter when a gunman approached.
• 1:38
  S3: We begin tonight with another terrifying escalation in Sydney's underworld
• 1:42
  S3: crime war.
• 1:43
  S4: A man and his innocent teenage daughter, the targets of
• 1:46
  S4: a failed attack. The masked gunman closing in on the
• 1:50
  S4: pair during pick up at a major school in Fairfield West.
• 1:53
  S5: The staggering new low even for Sydney's ruthless underworld.
• 1:58
  S2: The pair got out and ran down the street. The
• 2:01
  S2: father is seen on CCTV sort of pulling his daughter along.
• 2:04
  S2: She's urging him to be careful, and it seems that
• 2:08
  S2: the assassin's gun jammed, and that was the reason that
• 2:14
  S2: those people managed to make it away unscathed.
• 2:19
  S1: Okay. So, you know, listeners hearing this, or readers who
• 2:22
  S1: have been across your stories, they might be like me,
• 2:24
  S1: they see the headline and they think, God, that sounds
• 2:27
  S1: absolutely just atrocious. But perhaps this is just some random,
• 2:31
  S1: horrible private crime. But it's not, is it? It's actually
• 2:35
  S1: reflective of a much bigger and far more shocking crime
• 2:38
  S1: wave that's happening. So tell us about that. And whether
• 2:41
  S1: a gangland war is playing out. Like, is that what
• 2:44
  S1: we're seeing on the streets of Sydney?
• 2:46
  S2: Yeah. So we're seeing a large scale and long running
• 2:49
  S2: conflict between a very dominant crime group called the Alameddine
• 2:54
  S2: Organised Crime Network, and some of their former allies and rivals,
• 3:00
  S2: chiefly the Coconut Cartel. And there are other groups involved
• 3:05
  S2: as well, but it seems that there's an increasingly public,
• 3:09
  S2: brazen and brutal set of attacks going on between these
• 3:14
  S2: various groups. We've seen kidnappings of innocent people, murders of
• 3:20
  S2: innocent people who are only tangentially connected to other players.
• 3:26
  S2: And in the last week, we have seen this attempted
• 3:29
  S2: assassination in a school zone and a heavy weapon being
• 3:34
  S2: fired into a funeral venue again in broad daylight. So
• 3:39
  S2: it's an extremely serious application of violence on Sydney's streets
• 3:44
  S2: by very motivated warring underworld groups.
• 3:48
  S1: Okay, so just quickly before we get to who those
• 3:50
  S1: two groups are. So is that what you're saying happened
• 3:52
  S1: with this father and daughter at the school that the
• 3:55
  S1: man and the daughter neither were affiliated with a gang,
• 3:58
  S1: but perhaps there was some relationship.
• 4:01
  S2: Yeah. So it appears that the father is related to
• 4:05
  S2: an organized crime figure, but has no criminal connections himself,
• 4:09
  S2: no criminal background, and was targeted, police believe, purely because
• 4:14
  S2: of that familial relation. There's no sense that this man
• 4:19
  S2: had done anything wrong, and the only reason he was
• 4:22
  S2: a target was because of who he's related to, and
• 4:25
  S2: to have his daughter, their teenage daughter, in a school
• 4:28
  S2: zone around members of the public, other parents, other children.
• 4:31
  S2: I mean, it's just such a shocking sight to see
• 4:34
  S2: on CCTV.
• 4:35
  S1: Okay, so tell us who he's related to. And then
• 4:39
  S1: who are these two warring gangs?
• 4:41
  S2: Well, we've taken the editorial decision not to identify who
• 4:44
  S2: he is related to, because it's very clear to us
• 4:47
  S2: that this man's life is completely in danger. But what
• 4:51
  S2: we can say is that the Alameddine crime family has
• 4:55
  S2: been involved in a long running war with some of
• 4:58
  S2: its former allies, previously someone known as CVE. Others are
• 5:04
  S2: now known as the Coconut Cartel. Broadly speaking, it appears
• 5:07
  S2: that some of these individuals were actually enforcers or muscle
• 5:12
  S2: for the Alameddine's as they ran their drug and crime
• 5:16
  S2: empire across south west Sydney, who have now turned on
• 5:20
  S2: their former bosses and are trying to stake claim to
• 5:24
  S2: parts of the city's drug market. And we're seeing effectively
• 5:30
  S2: outright war between these gangs across Sydney as they try
• 5:34
  S2: to maintain control.
• 5:36
  S6: And so what was the actual catalyst.
• 5:38
  S1: If we know, that began this war between these two
• 5:41
  S1: rival gangs, the Alameddine crime family and the so-called coconut cartel?
• 5:47
  S1: As I understand from what you've just said, they used
• 5:48
  S1: to be the enforcers of the Al-deen family, so they
• 5:51
  S1: used to be allies, right. So what's happened here?
• 5:54
  S2: Well, we're not quite sure exactly what the spark was.
• 5:56
  S2: There's been a conflict between the Alameddine's and some of
• 6:00
  S2: their enforcers going back for at least a year. There
• 6:05
  S2: have been punch ups inside prison and out there have been,
• 6:09
  S2: you know, drive by shootings. We know that there are
• 6:13
  S2: various groups that are now importing drugs, whereas they used
• 6:17
  S2: to have a role working for the alameddine's, and that
• 6:21
  S2: type of conflict is bound to follow when you start
• 6:25
  S2: to become competitors in a drug market as lucrative as Sydney's.
• 6:30
  S2: And so what we've seen over the last year or
• 6:33
  S2: so is clearly an escalating and widening conflict between them,
• 6:38
  S2: where members of families, just innocent members, you know, of
• 6:43
  S2: effectively the public, are being dragged into this because the
• 6:46
  S2: attacks are becoming so brazen and just so wide ranging
• 6:51
  S2: in their scope.
• 6:52
  S6: Well, I wanted to ask.
• 6:53
  S1: You about one of those attacks in particular, because it
• 6:55
  S1: is tragically the sort of thing that you would see
• 6:58
  S1: in like a Martin Scorsese movie or something. And this,
• 7:00
  S1: of course, is the drive by shooting last week at
• 7:03
  S1: a funeral of all places, because I wanted you to
• 7:05
  S1: tell us about the gun that was used in this
• 7:07
  S1: drive by, because it was a high powered military grade weapon.
• 7:12
  S1: So I want to ask you, what sort of damage
• 7:13
  S1: can these guns inflict and how common are they in
• 7:16
  S1: the underworld?
• 7:17
  S2: So this appears to be an SKS semi-automatic. It's a
• 7:23
  S2: Soviet era rifle. The predecessor or cousin to the infamous
• 7:28
  S2: AK 47. Usually this thing would shoot ten rounds. High powered,
• 7:34
  S2: extremely powerful rounds.
• 7:36
  S7: Out the window.
• 7:42
  S8: Hold it, hold it, hold it. Are you done? Let's go.
• 7:47
  S2: What we see in the video is a hooded figure
• 7:50
  S2: roll down the rear window in an SUV and stick
• 7:54
  S2: this SKS out the window while the person filming who's
• 7:58
  S2: sitting in the front instructs him, you know, hold the
• 8:01
  S2: trigger down, shoot up here. And this gunman lets off
• 8:06
  S2: almost 30 rounds in a few seconds into a funeral home.
• 8:11
  S2: This funeral home was supposed to be filled with the
• 8:14
  S2: family of a coconut cartel gangster who was shot dead
• 8:19
  S2: in Vietnam, but they'd canceled the memorial service at short notice,
• 8:24
  S2: and so no one was injured. But this gun fires
• 8:27
  S2: nearly 30 rounds out of what appears to be a
• 8:30
  S2: modified banana clip magazine. So this is an extremely powerful
• 8:36
  S2: military grade weapon. It is absolutely prohibited in Australia. And
• 8:41
  S2: there's really nothing like it that you could get through
• 8:44
  S2: legal channels. These guns are rare. They turn up a
• 8:48
  S2: couple of times a year when police raid firearms, bolt
• 8:53
  S2: holes or illegal firearms manufacturing syndicates in Sydney. But they
• 8:57
  S2: are turning up every few months now.
• 9:01
  S1: Okay, well, I have to ask you this then. I mean,
• 9:03
  S1: how are gangs obtaining these types of guns here in Australia?
• 9:07
  S1: Because I think, like many listeners, I thought that these
• 9:11
  S1: sorts of weapons were outlawed following the Port Arthur massacre
• 9:14
  S1: in 96, weren't they, Perry?
• 9:17
  S2: Yeah. So the way that people are actually getting their
• 9:20
  S2: hands on these guns, I asked a senior police officer
• 9:23
  S2: this recently and he jokingly said, the way to get
• 9:27
  S2: a gun into Sydney is hide it in the cocaine.
• 9:30
  S2: In other words, there's a huge amount of illegal product
• 9:35
  S2: coming in through our borders. The best efforts of our
• 9:38
  S2: authorities are not able to stop all of them. They
• 9:42
  S2: use a lot of intelligence. They scan a lot of
• 9:44
  S2: shipping containers. But the reality is stuff is slipping through constantly.
• 9:48
  S2: If you're able to buy drugs in Sydney, that means
• 9:51
  S2: that stuff is getting through the border. And it means
• 9:55
  S2: that guns are getting through the border. And traditionally we've
• 9:59
  S2: seen handguns used in these types of shootings. We've seen,
• 10:04
  S2: you know, 3D printed, rarely used, but sometimes it can
• 10:09
  S2: be a combination. You know, a barrel is imported here
• 10:11
  S2: and put into a 3D printed pistol frame. But to
• 10:15
  S2: see an SKS fully operational, modified on the streets. Recently
• 10:20
  S2: there was an AR 15 found. There have been nine millimeter,
• 10:25
  S2: you know, machine pistols found in criminal groups recently. We're
• 10:30
  S2: looking at very, very serious, very large long arms that
• 10:34
  S2: absolutely dwarf anything that you would see carried by a
• 10:39
  S2: police officer on the streets or traditionally used in a
• 10:44
  S2: drive by shooting, even in recent years.
• 10:52
  S1: After the break.
• 10:54
  S2: There have been other attempts by terrorists to get their
• 10:57
  S2: hands on illegal weapons in Australia through the gangland. And
• 11:01
  S2: so there is a massive amount of pressure on authorities
• 11:05
  S2: to try and disrupt that link.
• 11:20
  S9: Okay, so I've got to ask you, are.
• 11:22
  S1: Our authorities perhaps not doing a good enough job essentially
• 11:25
  S1: at cracking down on these weapons coming into our country?
• 11:28
  S1: Because I'm sure many listeners will be sensitive, as many
• 11:32
  S1: Australians are, to the importance of guns. Now, just in
• 11:35
  S1: the wake of the attack that happened in December at
• 11:38
  S1: Bondi Beach, where 15 people were murdered by a father
• 11:41
  S1: and son with a bolt action, high powered rifle and shotguns.
• 11:45
  S1: So what has the Royal Commission into anti-Semitism revealed, if anything,
• 11:50
  S1: to us about access to guns in Australia? Like, are
• 11:53
  S1: there loopholes that have been revealed or something else?
• 11:56
  S2: No. In fact, the Royal Commission has been very limited
• 11:59
  S2: in what it's been able to publicly say. There's been,
• 12:02
  S2: I am sure, interrogation of how this father and son
• 12:07
  S2: were able to legally acquire their weapons. But none of
• 12:11
  S2: that has been public for us. And, you know, police
• 12:15
  S2: say to me that there's obviously been failures because 15
• 12:18
  S2: people are dead and there's no way around that. But what,
• 12:23
  S2: if any, interrogation is happening of the firearms loopholes? Is
• 12:28
  S2: absolutely out of our sight because it's happening in closed doors.
• 12:32
  S2: I will say about whether or not authorities are doing enough.
• 12:36
  S2: There's a lot of talk about the amount of intelligence
• 12:39
  S2: and the amount of work that is done in order
• 12:42
  S2: to disrupt firearms as an illegal flow into this country.
• 12:45
  S2: But the reality is Australia's an island and we import
• 12:49
  S2: a hell of a lot. And it all requires shipping containers,
• 12:52
  S2: shipping containers by the boatload, and there is simply no
• 12:57
  S2: way to scan them all. If if we were to
• 12:59
  S2: scan everything that came into this country, you wouldn't be
• 13:02
  S2: able to get anything within months of ordering it. And
• 13:06
  S2: so at some point, they have to target and refine
• 13:09
  S2: what they're looking at. And that means that if they're
• 13:12
  S2: not already aware of a shipment coming in, it might
• 13:15
  S2: just slip through.
• 13:16
  S9: Okay. But Perry, tell us what two.
• 13:18
  S1: Senior police independently told you about what would have happened
• 13:22
  S1: at Bondi if those gunmen had access to the guns
• 13:27
  S1: that are now available to the underworld?
• 13:29
  S2: Yeah. So two police, quite independently, told me the same
• 13:34
  S2: fear that they had, that one day terrorists would get
• 13:38
  S2: their hands on the type of weapons that the gangland
• 13:40
  S2: currently has. They told me there would be 100 bodies
• 13:44
  S2: on the sand at Bondi. If the people who opened
• 13:47
  S2: fired in that crowd had been using something like an
• 13:50
  S2: AK 47 or an SKS or something else like that.
• 13:54
  S2: We've seen an overlap between the terror space and the
• 13:59
  S2: gangland in Sydney. Before the murder of Sydney Police accountant
• 14:05
  S2: Curtis Cheng was an overlap where a member of the
• 14:10
  S2: Alameddine crime family supplied a gun to a terrorist, and
• 14:15
  S2: that gun was used to kill Curtis Cheng. It was
• 14:18
  S2: a revolver. But what we do know is that there
• 14:22
  S2: already has been the merging of these two streams of criminality.
• 14:27
  S2: There have been other attempts by terrorists to get their
• 14:31
  S2: hands on illegal weapons in Australia through gangland. And so
• 14:35
  S2: there is a massive amount of pressure on authorities to
• 14:39
  S2: try and disrupt that link and prevent these guns from
• 14:43
  S2: finding their way to groups of people who are not
• 14:46
  S2: trying to target other gangsters. They're trying to target crowds
• 14:51
  S2: of people in Sydney or in Australia more broadly.
• 14:54
  S1: And so is law enforcement. Then either beginning to crack
• 14:58
  S1: down on how the underworld is accessing these types of weapons,
• 15:00
  S1: or perhaps fine tuning their existing approach to cracking down
• 15:04
  S1: on how the underworld is getting these weapons.
• 15:07
  S2: Well, there have been very, very targeted raids and investigations
• 15:12
  S2: into the underworld in the last year. Task force Falcon
• 15:16
  S2: has made 500 arrests just this year alone. They are
• 15:20
  S2: desperately trying to crack down on this, but evidently there's
• 15:24
  S2: at least one case out there that they haven't recovered.
• 15:28
  S2: When police arrested three people for this funeral home shooting,
• 15:33
  S2: two of them were age 17, one aged age 23.
• 15:36
  S2: And they recovered a magazine from that weapon, allegedly, but
• 15:41
  S2: no gun. And so you can imagine that it's a
• 15:43
  S2: very valuable commodity. I don't think that the streets are
• 15:47
  S2: absolutely full of SKS or similar high grade military weapons,
• 15:52
  S2: but evidently there's at least one out there and probably more.
• 15:56
  S2: We saw in the immediate aftermath of that shooting and
• 16:01
  S2: the footage emerging, we saw online profiles, people posting photos
• 16:06
  S2: of what appeared to be other SKS and other military
• 16:10
  S2: style weapons. It's unclear to us whether or not they're real,
• 16:14
  S2: whether or not they're gel blasters. But people do pose
• 16:17
  S2: with these in various rap videos and things like that
• 16:21
  S2: that are filmed here in Australia, so we have to
• 16:23
  S2: assume that they are out there.
• 16:24
  S10: Well, I guess I just wanted.
• 16:25
  S1: One follow up question on that, Perry, because before we
• 16:28
  S1: started recording, you told me that there's this real confluence
• 16:31
  S1: with drill, rap culture or subculture, and young men who
• 16:36
  S1: are also posting videos of their guns. Is that perhaps
• 16:40
  S1: fueling some sort of greater interest in accessing these guns?
• 16:44
  S2: Yeah. So there's a real overlap when it comes to
• 16:48
  S2: the current wave of organized crime shootings and drill rap,
• 16:53
  S2: which is that we're seeing very, very young men becoming
• 16:57
  S2: involved in these shootings. Just a few years ago, we
• 17:00
  S2: would see teenagers picked up because their job was effectively
• 17:03
  S2: to go to Sydney's east, break into a mansion and
• 17:06
  S2: get the beeper for a Porsche and drive it to
• 17:10
  S2: Sydney's west, where it would be stripped of identification, given
• 17:13
  S2: fake plates and then used in a murder plot by
• 17:16
  S2: more serious established gangsters. Whereas now what we're seeing is
• 17:20
  S2: the young men themselves actually going and trying to carry
• 17:23
  S2: out these murders on the street. Very often we're seeing
• 17:27
  S2: people turn up who are 16 or 17. I think
• 17:30
  S2: we've seen people as young as 15. Caught up in
• 17:32
  S2: these crews. And there's an extreme overlap between this cohort
• 17:37
  S2: of young men and online sort of boasting with drill
• 17:42
  S2: rap posting drill rap videos, participating in drill rap videos,
• 17:47
  S2: and posing alongside weapons or other types of, you know, drugs, money,
• 17:53
  S2: that type of thing. The young man, who is 24
• 17:57
  S2: years old when he was shot dead in Ho Chi
• 17:59
  S2: Minh City, had himself appeared in drill rap videos alongside
• 18:04
  S2: alleged members of the Alameddine network. The other issue that
• 18:09
  S2: we're seeing is that this latest wave of gang violence
• 18:13
  S2: in Sydney, involving young men carrying out very public shootings,
• 18:17
  S2: is that we're seeing people who are more tangentially related
• 18:22
  S2: to their enemies or rivals being targeted, and so they're
• 18:26
  S2: starting to become a blurring of the line, even at
• 18:28
  S2: the edges of the gangland, about who is a viable target.
• 18:31
  S2: Is it a suitable, reasonable target to open fire on
• 18:38
  S2: a funeral home because it's hosting the funeral of your
• 18:42
  S2: rival or your enemy? Because most of the people there
• 18:46
  S2: are not going to be other gangsters. They're going to
• 18:48
  S2: be family members who are grieving the death of someone.
• 18:51
  S2: And you open fire with a military grade rifle into
• 18:55
  S2: the venue, you're not likely to hit another gangster, you're
• 18:58
  S2: likely to hit an auntie or an uncle. And so
• 19:02
  S2: I suppose there's real concern among police now that the
• 19:07
  S2: type of people who can get access to this gun,
• 19:10
  S2: it's unclear what type of threat they pose. They're not
• 19:13
  S2: necessarily going to go and target a gangster in their home.
• 19:18
  S2: They might go and shoot someone in a kebab store,
• 19:21
  S2: like we saw in Auburn last year, where an innocent
• 19:24
  S2: woman was shot in the back by a gangland assassin.
• 19:28
  S2: We've seen nurses get shot through the window of hospitals
• 19:31
  S2: with stray bullets before, and the potential damage if a
• 19:38
  S2: high powered weapon used by the gangland either falls into
• 19:42
  S2: the hands of a terrorist or someone who has a
• 19:45
  S2: really loose definition of a viable target. It's just going
• 19:50
  S2: to be absolute carnage if it happens. And police do
• 19:53
  S2: live in fear of this, they're acutely aware of it.
• 19:55
  S2: The only other point that I'll make there is that
• 19:58
  S2: there's also a blurring of the lines around gangland terror
• 20:05
  S2: and disgruntled criminal who have a look at Desi Freeman.
• 20:08
  S2: The damage he was able to do. Sovereign citizens generally,
• 20:12
  S2: police are looking at a very, very mixed threat space,
• 20:16
  S2: which is what they told the royal commission. Counter-Terror is
• 20:20
  S2: overlapping with gangland. It's overlapping with conspiracy theory. There's a
• 20:24
  S2: real concern that if you add high powered weapons to
• 20:29
  S2: the mix, which are being imported by the gangland, then
• 20:32
  S2: the upside in human damage is just absolutely unpredictable and
• 20:37
  S2: through the roof.
• 20:46
  S1: Well, thank you so much, Perry, as always for your time.
• 20:49
  S2: Thanks, Sam.
• 21:01
  S1: Today's episode was produced by Josh towers. Our executive producer
• 21:06
  S1: is Tammy Mills, and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa
• 21:09
  S1: Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow
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