Australasian biker news
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."
Back
HOME