Now the streets go to Hell
Death scene … police examine the inner-Sydney location where a man
was shot dead on Thursday.
April 22, 2006
Sydney's big bikie gangs are armed and dangerous. And now the Hells
Angels are rolling into town, writes Stephen Gibbs.
Every inner-city bouncer must by now have added these new guidelines
to their unwritten nightclub entry rules: Hells Angels really do
exist, and they don't expect to queue.
That message was delivered loudly, clearly and painfully to a
doorman who refused about six bearded walking canvases entry to
Sapphire Suite in Kings Cross on February 11. "We're Hells Angels.
Step aside," one told him. "Who?" the bouncer asked. Bang - Hells
Angels. And bang again.
One bullet hit the bouncer, lodging in his leg. Another grazed a
woman waiting to get in. No one has been arrested for that shooting
but detectives from the gangs squad have a good idea what happened,
and were not surprised when shots - this time inside a nightclub -
rang out again.
After decades of being perhaps the most attractive city on the
planet the Hells Angels have ignored, Sydney is starting to witness
the presence of the world's biggest outlaw motorcycle club.
The only surprise to police is that they have not seen it before.
"They certainly do have a propensity for that violent behaviour,"
said a police source who has studied bikie gangs for years. "I think
the point to be drawn is they're no different to any of the others
that you see around. It's just that they've kept a low profile for
so long."
Five weeks after the Sapphire Suite shootings, on March 16, it was
the Nomads' turn. A member was shot leaving the Men's Gallery strip
joint in Pitt Street. Police believe that shot was fired by a Hells
Angel as another signal of the club's current expansion plans. That
Angel had until recently been a Fink.
Ten days after the Men's Gallery shooting, on March 26, one of the
country's most senior Nomads, the national sergeant-at-arms, was
shot inside Showgirls at Kings Cross. This time the shooter was not
a patched Hells Angel and the dispute was supposedly over a woman
rather than territory, but it was another sign of the increasingly
free use of firearms by bikies in the city.
Kings Cross and the CBD have traditionally been neutral territory
for outlaw motorcycle gangs, where any club can fly its colours at
will. But in recent years several clubs have tried to establish
inner-city clubhouses - notably the Bandidos at Pyrmont. "There
seems to be a bit of a bottleneck," the police source says.
The expansion plans of most interest to police are those of the
Hells Angels, for whom the attention on bikie gangs that will follow
Thursday night's shooting could hardly come at a worse time: next
Tuesday they stage their annual Anzac Day poker run from their
Guildford clubhouse - their biggest public event of the year.
Sydneysiders have an image of the Hells Angels shaped by pop
culture, foreign stories and the club's own PR. In most foreign
cities with big bikie gangs they are the most powerful club. But
their presence here has always been small. "You're probably looking
at maybe eight to 10," a police source says. That is members. The
whole lot.
Their numbers here are dwarfed by the Rebels, Bandidos, Nomads,
Finks, Comanchero and Gypsy Jokers. But in recent months, the
original 1%ers have shown they mean to do more. The Hells Angels
Corporation appears to be staking out new territory; the Big Red
Machine wants to roll into town.
That they are such a part of bikie culture here without any
significant presence is a testament to their worldwide dominance.
The Bandidos and Comanchero, through the Milperra massacre of 1984,
might be the custodians of outlaw bikie lore in Sydney, but the
Hells Angels own its copyright. The Hells Angels have the resources
and reputation to dominate the bikie culture in any city they
choose. "Sydney's a ripe cherry with a big market," the police
source says.
Police say the attraction of inner-city expansion is the drug trade,
particularly amphetamines. There is little dispute that Hells Angels
in Melbourne introduced large-scale amphetamines manufacturing to
Australia in the early 1980s. Peter John Hill flew to the club's
mother charter in Oakland, California, twice in 1980 to learn about
speed manufacture, returned with the master recipe and a local
industry was born.
In Sydney, as across Australia, the largest club is the Rebels, with
the Bandidos and Nomads about level on a second rung. The Finks and
Comanchero come next, then the Gypsy Jokers. The top five all seem
to be on the move. The Rebels have perhaps 2000 members and have
been expanding for most of the past decade. The Bandidos and Finks
have been trying to establish a permanent inner-city presence that
would counter the Kings Cross nightclub owner Sam Ibrahim, president
of Nomads' Parramatta chapter. The Nomads have another chapter at
Riverstone. The Bandidos are at Prospect and have been house hunting
in the inner west; the Comanchero are at Erskine Park and
Strathfield. The Finks have chapters at Blacktown and Brookvale and
have been scouting out somewhere around Castle Hill. The Gypsy
Jokers are at Wetherill Park and St Marys.
The Bandidos have been prominent in Sydney since the mid-1980s, when
members of the Comanchero left and affiliated themselves with the
Texas-based club. The split led to the gun battle in the car park of
the Viking Tavern at Milperra that left four Comanchero, two
Bandidos and a teenage girl dead on Father's Day 1984.
One of the Comanchero who survived, Raymond "Sunshine" Kucler, has
deposed Jock Ross, the club's founder and only previous president.
"The Comanchero are back and recruiting," the source says. "You see
a lot of brand new Comanchero patches around now." The new members
are distinctly different, younger and mainly Lebanese-Australian.
"If they weren't wearing the same patches you'd think they were from
a different group."
All expansion - particularly club defections or takeovers - creates
ill-feeling between clubs, the source says.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see it descend into something," the
source said two weeks ago. "Obviously we just keep your eyes on it
and see what's what." And hope in the meantime no bystanders are
killed.
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