A crime war that must be ended
A new path for investigating crime in Victoria is becoming more urgent.
The recent gangland killings in Melbourne are crimes that excite morbid fascination but little sympathy among the general public. For most people this is a world far removed from their own, something more readily associated with television drama than the people next door. When criminals kill criminals, it is easier to ask who really cares. So long as no innocent bystanders are harmed, does it really matter when bad people take out their fellows?
Of course it does. It suggests not just that criminals are intent on establishing their own system of "justice", but moreover that the justice system that applies to the rest of the community is failing to control events.
To some it might appear that Victoria Police is content to let the city's warring criminals sort themselves out. Rather, a police investigatory group, Taskforce Purana, has been working to find a solution to the bloodshed for months. Even so, the killings continue.
The gangland war so evidently being waged has resulted, according to police, in no fewer than 24 deaths over the past six years. Motives of power-seeking, revenge and rivalry have been suggested. Since April there have been six high-profile killings - a figure that accounts for roughly 10 per cent of Victoria's annual homicide rate.
Two of the most public slayings are associated in form and, according to the police, in substance. On June 21, Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were shot in Essendon as they sat in Moran's vehicle watching a children's Auskick competition. The murder on Saturday of crime figure Graham Kinniburgh in front of family members in the driveway of his Kew home was similarly callous in execution. Kinniburgh and Moran have been linked by police to the murder of another crime figure, Alphonse Gangitano, murdered in his Templestowe home in 1998.
As we have previously noted, these killings represent a serious challenge to law and order in this state. The calculated manner of the executions - and that of Kinniburgh is a good example - is at once brutal and inflammatory. Yet this is not just about feuding criminals eliminating each other, but about threatening public order and safety, for which those involved have little or no regard. Those responsible show utter contempt for the law, the police and the broader society these institutions are designed to protect.
Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has previously hinted at the need for a crime commission in this state similar to the one in place in New South Wales. The Age believes there is a good case for establishing such a body with powers that have been exercised by judicial inquiries and royal commissions in Victoria, including the power to subpoena witnesses and documents, and to imprison those who refuse to testify. The longer these gangland killings continue, the stronger the case for such a body becomes.