Australia - Bikies fight for lucrative drug trade

OFF THE WIRE
BY: Les Kennedy
Source: smh.com.au
WHOEVER controls Kings Cross controls Sydney's drug trade - and the lucre that flows from it. The Golden Mile has long been the setting for turf wars by gangs trying to dominate points of distribution for the drug market.
Nightclubs and bars in the Cross are the prime place to sell, mostly amphetamines, to cashed-up partygoers. So it's no wonder that bikie gangs are jostling for a piece of the action.
For gangs such as the Comanchero, Hells Angels and Notorious (the new boys on the block) it has been ''game on'', with no let-up in the violent struggle for supremacy, despite intense police scrutiny and legislative attempts to stop them associating.
Advertisement: Story continues below Kings Cross police received information in January last year that the Comanchero were trying to usurp the moves to ban bikies from clubs by attempting to covertly purchase the Lincoln nightclub right in middle of rival Notorious and Hells Angels turf, a bid that was unsuccessful. The next month, a riot squad was sent to the area of the Cross known as ''the strip'' to boost the number of officers on the street.
In early October this year Gang Squad police were bracing for a flare-up in bikie violence after receiving fresh information of a recruitment drive. At that time, 30 Comanchero and Notorious members clashed in the Cross, an incident that went unreported.Later that month, just kilometres from the Cross, the gangs clashed again outside a Bondi tattoo parlour.
Comanchero are suspected of being behind last Sunday's drive-by shooting at the Ryde home of Armani Stelio, the sister of former Nomads member Sam Ibrahim and Kings Cross organised crime figure John Ibrahim. The next day, Notorious sergeant-at-arms Saber Murad, 24, was shot at his Doonside home by a gunman believed to be a Comanchero.
When police arrested 10 senior Comancheros and three members of the Hells Angels over the fatal brawl at Sydney Airport on March 22 last year they thought it would break the back of the ''Comos''' command structure. They were wrong.