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Bikies 'laugh' at crackdown
From:  By Verity Edwards
February 20, 2006 
 
Premier Rann ... with fiancee Sasha Carruozzo, right, and candidate Vini Ciccarello. Picture: Sam Mooy THE Liberal Party claimed yesterday that notorious bikie gangs were "laughing" at the Rann Government's law-and-order pre-election campaign as tensions between rival gangs flared again in Adelaide over the weekend.
 
Opposition police spokesman Robert Brokenshire said Mike Rann had failed to make inroads against the state's bikie gangs during his term in office despite a vocal campaign that targeted their fortresses around suburban Adelaide.
 MP3: Hear audio of this story
 
A truck believed to have been driven by a Hell's Angels gang member rammed the front gates of a Rebels gang fortress on Saturday afternoon, in what was tipped as retaliation after a fight broke out between rival gang members in the city on Friday.
 
"It actually shows that they're playing a game with the Premier. They're laughing at him," Mr Brokenshire said.
 
"The Premier's beaten his chest big time on combating bikies but he's done nothing."
 
 Mr Brokenshire claimed more fortresses had been built and drug trafficking and bikie-related incidences had increased since the Rann Government won office in 2002.
He called for extra police funding to ensure more officers could be seconded to the police bikie taskforce, Operation Avatar.
 
"What they should have done is not just talk tough and write legislation, they should be putting more police into Operation Avatar," he said.
 
Police said weapons were involved in the Friday brawl and people were injured but no one sought treatment.
 
Police raided private homes and the Rebels clubrooms at Old Noarlunga, 30km south of Adelaide, that night.
 
A truck then rammed the fortified steel gates of the Rebels' Royal Park headquarters and smashed a roller door in the compound on Saturday.
 
Police have not yet laid charges.
 
Police Minister Kevin Foley said the Government had been tougher on bikie gangs than any other administration and had introduced legislation enabling police to tear down fortresses and to clean out "criminal bikie gangs from the crowd controller industry".
 
"In an Australian first, the South Australian police in December applied for an order to tear down the fortifications of an alleged bikie fortress in the Adelaide Hills," Mr Foley said.
 
"We are hitting the bikies where it hurts."
 

 

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