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SA too hot for Angels
 
16apr06
INCESSANT police pressure has resulted in four senior Hells Angels bikies leaving the state.
 
And a fifth club member has fled overseas as a result of joint investigations by South Australian police and the Australian Crime Commission.
 
Legal sources said the five bikies – all key members of the gang's so-called "north crew" – have been the targets of organised crime investigations and that their decision to move to Sydney was linked to this.
 
One of the bikies was involved in a shooting incident in a Sydney nightclub six weeks ago.
 
"Certainly with two of them it got to the stage where they could not move here without having police all over them," one lawyer said.
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

While senior police would not comment on any investigations involving individual bikie gang members or their whereabouts, they have vowed to maintain the pressure on SA's outlaw motorcycle gangs.
 
Detective Superintendent Deane Paynter, the officer in charge of the Drug and Organised Crime Investigation Branch, said the Operation Avatar motorcycle gang section was "having a significant impact".
 
"What we have found is there has been a considerable change in bikie behaviour because of the influence of Avatar," he said.
 
"Certainly, their public behaviour has been more controlled and we have had an impact on some of their criminal ventures. We try and create an environment that makes it very difficult for them to operate in and therefore reconsider their position here."
 
Since 2002, Avatar operations have led to 1035 arrests or reports of gang members and associates.
 
The operation also has uncovered 45 amphetamines laboratories and taken 4.3kg of amphetamines, 107kg of designer drugs, 590 grams of cocaine and 100kg of cannabis off the streets.
 
Almost 250 firearms, including machine guns and pistols, have been seized.
 
Supt Paynter said gang members' access to firearms remained "a constant concern". He said they often were able to easily replace guns seized by police.
 
It also was difficult to track the history of seized firearms because serial numbers were often removed or changed and parts were swapped. However, police have found handguns taken in the state's largest firearms robbery in the possession of nine gang members or associates in recent years. The Peterborough premises of Starlight Firearms was robbed at gunpoint in 1999. Included in the haul were more than 500 handguns, 350 being semi-automatic weapons such as Glocks, Lugers, Berettas, Mausers and Walthers.
 
Avatar periodically conducts operations aimed at detecting gang members and associates with weapons.
 
Last month one such operation, dubbed Cornerstone, resulted in 28 firearms, four Tazer stun guns, a silencer, ammunition and a quantity of drugs being seized. It also resulted in 11 people being reported and six arrested for firearms offences, drug offences, assault and traffic offences.
 
Supt Paynter said the area of greatest police concern remained the involvement of bikie gangs in organised crime. Every club had members identified as playing key roles in such activity.
 
"Those key members are in a position to profit personally from their involvement in organised crime, but they are also in a position to be able to use other members of their gangs as soldiers to further their pursuits," he said.
 
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,18826354%5E2682,00.html
 

 

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