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Five-year plan to strike at gangs

By William Birnbauer, Jason Dowling
June 27, 2004

Victoria Police may seek extra resources to combat organised crime as part of a sweeping, five-year strategy designed to combat underworld networks.

Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland said organised crime networks were multimillion-dollar enterprises and doubted police would ever be able to eradicate them.

"It very much becomes a matter of managing them because you'll never totally eliminate them," he said in an interview.

The networks' activities included drug trafficking, fraud, identity crime, firearms trafficking, and vehicle theft and rebirth.

Mr Overland conceded that Victoria Police had "dropped the ball" in gathering intelligence on organised crime gangs.

"We just haven't had the right systems in place," he said.

Police resources had been diverted by competing priorities, meaning that "you lose focus on the less immediate, but perhaps more serious, implications of organised crime".

It is believed Mr Overland was referring to the decision 10 years ago to abolish the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. Crime analyst Bob Bottom recently wrote in The Sunday Age that Victoria was left with a fragmented intelligence system following the bureau's abolition and that the Purana taskforce had operated in an intelligence void, not knowing the names or backgrounds of some crime figures.

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Mr Overland said much of the early work of the Purana taskforce - which has investigated 27 gangland killings over the past five years - was spent trying to gain an understanding of the crime gangs involved.

Police now had a good understanding of particular networks, but "clearly we've got a lot of work we still need to do in that direction", he said.

He said the gangland murders "in a sense are a symptom of organised criminal activity".

Mr Overland also indicated the community could expect further shocks as corruption cases proceeded against former drug squad members.

"There will be allegations made during those trials. There will be further revelations during those trials... there's nothing new that we are seeing but they are playing out in the public domain for the first time. You are going to see that continue for the next year or two."

He admitted the corruption revelations had significantly affected police morale.

Mr Overland confirmed a report in The Sunday Age two weeks ago that Victoria Police had invited international experts, including from the FBI and Northern Ireland, to assist them to develop a wide-ranging strategy on organised crime. Some of the experts would continue working with Victoria Police following a summit in August.

Police were examining how to achieve world's best practice in controlling organised crime.

"Whilst what we have been doing to date has had some success... the issue is whether the basic approach we are taking is the right approach."

Mr Overland foreshadowed that police would probably request more resources, but it was too early to be specific. Extra lawyers, accountants and technology experts might be needed.

Victoria Police, in conjunction with experts at the Australian National University, had developed a model of organised crime and was testing its validity.

The related strategy, which would take five years to develop and implement, would focus on legislation and regulation, operational and intelligence capability, and public relations.

The ANU's Professor Peter Grabosky said his team had put police in touch with the world's foremost organised crime experts.

Mr Overland said the public's perception of a traditional Italian Mafia structure with a godfather, lieutenant and hierarchical structure was "outmoded".

Organised crime today operated in networks, characterised by friendship and social connections, that were involved in profit-driven illegal activity. "It's inherently opportunistic and always looking for a way to make a fast buck illegally."

Whether it was drugs or other illegal activities, the motivation was the same: money. Usually, there was a core network. "They're the people who instigate and organise the criminal activity for profit. More often than not they tend to be a little removed from the actual illegal activity. If it's drugs, they're very rarely hands-on and if they are, it's only for very limited periods of time. They sit back and they tend to control and they tend to reap the benefits of the activity."

Then there was a looser set-up of "worker bees" producing, transporting and selling drugs and recouping the money.

"From a law enforcement point of view, they're the group that are much easier to work against because they are directly involved in criminal activity.

"If you take them out of the picture they are very easily replaced. They're expendable.

"The trick for us is to identify the core network and how it is structured and how it works and try to take that out."

Mr Overland said the networks were fluid and responsive and he did not know how many existed. "Organised crime flourishes best when you don't see it. You might see some of the impacts but you don't actually see the structures. What's happened with Purana is that a couple of networks have become highly visible and have attracted a lot of attention.

"But from an organised crime point of view, that's a really dumb thing to do, because the more attention you draw to yourself, the more law enforcement response you draw to yourself and that's actually bad for business.

"Classic organised crime normally wants to go along quietly without being noticed and just getting on with their business," he said.