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Thursday, December 16, 2010

AUSTRALIA, Police fear on Bikers

OFF THE WIRE
JUSTIN O'BRIEN  
ntnews.com.au
EXPERIENCED police officers are worried bikie gangs will have free reign to roll into the Territory if a planned shake-up of a specialist organised crime unit goes ahead.
Internal restructuring under consideration will result in the disbanding of the Special Operation Section - who target bikie gangs, unlicensed prostitution, guns and trans-border drug trafficking. The SOS detectives will be incorporated along with the drug squad officers into a new unit called Drugs and Organised Crime.
But pessimism is permeating through the ranks of SOS officers who believe years of hard work focused on organised crime in the Territory will be undone. "It's not a matter of if, but when we'll get other bikie gangs in Darwin, worse than what we've got now," said a source.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Colleen Gwynne said the proposed restructuring won't involve a cut in man power or stop police targeting high level criminal gangs. "We restructure all the time it's part of policing," she said.
"It's about giving the unit more flexibility in dealing with operations and in terms of people we're not adding or losing any."
The NT News revealed exclusively yesterday Commissioner John McRoberts is disbanding the Commanders Tactical Team, Youth Crime unit and removing 20 detectives from local Darwin stations in a major shake-up of the NT Police. Officers believe Mr McRoberts is adopting a West Australian model of policing for the Northern Territory. "When Paul White arrived we changed to the way they did things in South Australia, it's different now," a source familiar with the changes said.

The Special Operations Section has been credited with eliminating the Hells Angels as a viable criminal element. Officers worry any perceived power vacuum will tempt others to try to fill the void if police are not vigilant. Act Assist Comm Gwynne said meetings were planned this week to ask officers for input into the proposed changes.