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Newman Government's bikie crackdown to target public servants with links to gangs

 
 
Police have warned bikies, they could face jail time for sharing Christmas lunch in a public place.
 

The Courier-Mail can reveal the Crime and Misconduct Commission is preparing to probe whether criminal motorcycle gangs have infiltrated the public sector and gained access to sensitive information for illicit gain.

In an exclusive interview, the three men in charge of Queensland's anti-bikie assault - CMC chief Dr Ken Levy, Deputy Commissioner Brett Pointing and Detective Superintendent Mick Niland - have outlined the next battlegrounds, estimating it could take a generation to rid the state of the gangs.

 

THE MEN BEHIND THE BIKIE CRACKDOWN

 

 

Police numbers will be increased and a campaign will begin to encourage the public to come on-board and deter young people from joining up to the bikie trade estimated to be worth up to $3b in Queensland.

"It's unlike a novel you might read or CSI. You don't get a result at the end of the episode," Mr Pointing said of anti-bikie effort.

"These (bikie) networks are sophisticated and they are not going to give up easily.

Deputy Police Commissioner Brett Pointing and Mick Niland at Police HQ, Roma St. Pic Annette Dew

Deputy Police Commissioner Brett Pointing and Mick Niland at Police HQ, Roma St. Pic Annette Dew

"We are very much here for the long term. This is something that has to be sustained well into the future."

Det Supt Niland said police were working alongside federal agencies and the CMC to not only hit the bikies hard in high-visibility operations such as Operation Takeback on the Gold Coast, but to also attack their networks and their wealth.

"It's not really a crackdown. This is relentless pressure that's going to be applied and it's going to stay there," he said.

Dr Levy said the CMC had also been resourced to probe bikie links within the public service.

"You might get bikies who have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or somebody else ... who might be able to use official information to assist a criminal motorcycle gang in some respect," he said.

"Transport is the usual one people always think of but it could be any government department at all. That public sector type grouping will be one of those things that we will have the crosshairs on.

"There are many aspects where there could be conflicts of interest. Certainly as far as bikies go any possible avenues will be looked at."

It comes on top of tough new laws introduced by the Newman Government last year in the wake of the now infamous Broadbeach bikie brawl including extra funding and intelligence gathering powers for CMC, lengthy mandatory sentences for gang members and office bearers, and tougher licensing schemes for industries bikie gangs are known to have infiltrated including tattoo parlours.

"We are doing a lot of work across government," Mr Pointing said in a bid to ensure police had the tools needed weed bikies out.

 

"The end game is to eliminate criminal motorcycle gangs from Queensland. They are always going to keep trying because the markets are so lucrative.

"That's why it's so important to make the legal and structural changes that we have so that we send a message that if you want to commit crime in Queensland there are going to be significant penalties and there are going to be significant risks and you better factor that in."

 

DON'T USE BIKIES AS DEBT COLLECTORS, POLICE WARN

BUSINESS owners disillusioned with the legal system are being urged not to engage bikie gangs to help recover debts.

Deputy Commissioner Brett Pointing said since the global financial crisis businesses had been turning away from traditional debt recovery methods and bikies were benefiting as a result.

"We've had a number of instances where people, because they've lost money in the global financial crisis ... have used criminal motorcycle gangs as debt collectors,' Mr Pointing said.

"We've heard of circumstances where they've sold the debt to a criminal motorcycle gang. For example, someone might owe them $100,000 and they feel they have no likelihood of recovering the debt so they sell the debt to a criminal motorcycle gang for, it might be, half of that.

"Then the gang, using threats and violence and intimidation, attempt to get money out of the person."

Mr Pointing said the trend was fraught with danger.

"They (businesses) very much run the risk of getting involved in an extortion," he said.

"We've seen example where they end up getting involved in a criminal enterprise they can't get out of.

"Hopefully the publicity around this will send a message to those people."

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