AUSTRALIA - The end justifies the means: why Queensland is losing the bikie war
OFF THE WIRE
COMMENTS,
Laws that focus on association rather than specific crimes have a
history. In retrospect they are often revealed to have been made in
haste for political purposes.
The writer makes a good point in stating that the "purpose of the
legislation is to target criminal activity, not police social
interactions" and the stats seem to indicate that this law may be an
overreaction.
A writer commenting on such laws risks being tarred by association.
This risk can lower the standard of debate over key issues. Terry
Goldsworthy has taken this risk and provided some useful data for those
of us unsure of the need for these types of laws. I hope that this
enables others to enter the debate. We need more discussion of whether
it's useful to target who a person is rather than what they have done. Abolishing the 1894 rule which conceals evidence of a pattern of
criminal behaviour ("similar facts") would help with repeat offenders,
e.g. serial rapists and those bikies who are organised criminals.
Taxpayers who fund the legal system may hope that academics will encourage lawyer-politicians to abolish the rule. Similar facts evidence is highly prejudicial. If the rules of
evidence are to be relaxed to allow similar facts evidence it should be
done most cautiously.
Of course justice is more expensive than being right only 90% of the time, but that's no justification for compromising it. What is more disturbing is that the senior managment of the Queensland
Polce Service seems to have submitted meekly to the government's
demand to rigidly enforce the laws in return for dramatic increases in
resources.
As I recall it, the development of a symbiotic relationship between
police management and government in Queensland was the beginning of the
road to the corruption in both police and government uncovered by the
Fitzgerald Royal Commission.
Again it started with the replacment of the uncooperative Ray
Whitrod as highly qualified and respected officer by Terry Lewis who
jumped from inspector at Charleville to Deputy Commissioner and then
Commissioner over the objection of both Whitrod and the Police Union.
Terry Goldsworthy
A change in investigative and policing strategy is needed if the Queensland government is to win the so-called ‘bikie wars’.
AAP/Paul Miller
Three months into the campaign
by the Queensland government against outlaw motorcycle gangs, some
meaningful analysis of the effectiveness and justification for the
unprecedented measures is possible.
On the statistics and anecdotes that have emerged, it appears likely
there will be no smoking gun to indicate success at the end of this
campaign. There will be no major evidence that bikie gangs are the
epicentre of organised crime in Australia. Yes, they play a part, but
not an overwhelming one.
Arrest figures
Last December, figures were released to show the effectiveness of the policing response, codenamed Operation Resolute. Impressive numbers of arrests and charges were given to the media:
Officers as part of Operation Resolute, created in
response to offending behaviour of Criminal Motorcycle Gangs (CMGs),
have arrested 384 people on 817 charges since October 6.
But of the 817 charges, only 28 – or 3.4% – can be considered “organised crime” type charges such as drug trafficking and extortion.
Even more interesting is the proportion of overall crime statistics
these figures account for in that two-month period. In Queensland,
73,309 offences were reported in October and November 2013. Bikies
accounted for only 1% of these offences.
Given the over-policing of bikies, one could also reasonably expect
that these figures would be inflated to some degree. The figures rest on
all the offenders being conveniently termed “participants of a criminal
organisation”. The police will not supply figures for the actual
arrests of members – nor the grey and fuzzy “associate arrests” –
instead grouping them into a homogeneous category.
If we were to consider just members, I suspect the arrest and charge figures would be drastically reduced.
Illicit drugs
The offences laid against bikies account for just 0.8% of total drug
supply offences in Queensland. For trafficking in dangerous drugs they
account for 5% of offences. For production of dangerous drugs they
accounted for only 1.3% of total offences.
Production by Queensland drug laboratories has been exploding for the
last five years, yet we never heard that the bikies were the criminal
masterminds behind it. Australian Crime Commission (ACC) data
indicates that from 2010-11 to 2011-12, Queensland drug laboratory
production increased 29%, and Queensland labs accounted for 81% of the
national increase in this same period.
Police have indicated that some 193 amphetamine labs had been located
in the last six months in Queensland. Unfortunately, the media were not
told how many of these busts resulted in the arrest of any bikies.
How much of Australia’s illegal economy are bikies actually responsible for? AAP
Charge stats
Included in the December update on Operation Resolute was a short note that six offenders had been charged under the anti-bikie laws. These laws provide for mandatory 25-year prison sentences for bikie gang members for a wide range of charges.
Of the 384 arrested, only 1.5% of offenders were charged under the
anti-bikie laws. This is despite the authorities saying that all 384
people arrested were participants in criminal gangs.
The explanation is simple. First, the vast majority of offences
involved were of such a minor nature that they are not covered by the
anti-bikie laws. Second, the people arrested were acting as individuals:
they did not commit their offences as part of some criminal conspiracy
for the benefit of the organisation.
It is easy to claim someone is a participant in arrest figures and
media releases. It is not so easy to do this when subject to the
scrutiny of the criminal courts, where actual evidence is required to be
proven to requisite standards. In a number of instances, claims of bikie gang membership evaporated when the courts required proof.
Involvement in organised crime
Claims
have also been made that bikies are responsible for over two-thirds of
organised crime profits in Australia (around A$10 billion). We have not
seen any credible evidence or methodology to support this.
Of concern is that such claims are being attributed
to organisations such as the Australian Crime Commission. A search of
the ACC website, however, finds no such data. In fact, its bikie profile
series specifically states:
…it is difficult to gauge the percentage of organised
crime attributed specifically to OMCG members. While they are prevalent
in all states and territories, they are just one part of the organised
crime picture in Australia.
In the first two months of Operation Resolute police have recovered
only around $200,000 worth of drugs. Divide that figure by all of the
“participants” arrested and they would have earned an average of $260
per month – hardly what high rollers are made of.
Impact on freedom of association
The legislation included the introduction of consorting or
association laws, which prevented two or more bikie gang members from
gathering in public.
The two most prominent cases where this law has been enforced are the arrests of five men having a quiet beer in a suburban pub and another five offenders buying icecreams during a family holiday on the Gold Coast.
This is hardly the backroom, nefarious criminal consorting that the
laws were put in place to prevent. It simply is not in the spirit of the
legislation, and has been a public relations disaster for the
government.
Police resources in Queensland are scarce, so why is so much of it being spent to curb a small amount of crime? AAP/Dan Peled
The strategic direction of the campaign has begun to go badly off the rails. With tradesmen now in the sights of law enforcement
over links with bikie gangs, the government has moved the war from
fringe occupations – such as tattoo parlours – to mainstream society.
This move has raised the ire of trade unions, and they do have the money to fund a legal challenge.
The government has taken the “war on bikies” too far and alerted a
complacent wider community to the impact on basic civil liberties. The
“us and them” (the bikies) dichotomy has changed to a more encompassing
view of who can be affected by the laws.
The other obvious issue is that if you remove all lawful occupations
for bikies there is little alternative but for them to undertake a life
of crime. Rehabilitation does not feature in the current war. The public
perception of the war has not been helped by police telling people who they can and cannot be friends with:
It cannot be socially acceptable to be a friend of a bikie, you have to learn that it is not on.
The purpose of the legislation is to target criminal activity, not police social interactions.
Resourcing problems
All of these arrests have involved substantial planning and policing
resources. The public therefore have the right to ask if the police
would be better employed actually targeting criminal enterprise rather
than people enjoying beers and icecream.
Police have finite resources, and as discussed earlier, there are
plenty of criminals to be caught other than the bikies. Only three
months into the fight, police have diverted dedicated anti-bikie resources to deal with other public order issues.
On top of this, the G20 meeting in Brisbane is looming. That will certainly curtail the current resource diversion to the purported bikie menace.
Bikies undoubtedly commit crime. Unfortunately, in this current
climate, if you attempt to explain why the current approach is wrong you
are simply labelled a bikie supporter. For most commentators nothing is
further from the truth.
The crime committed by bikie gangs would be better combated by using
crime management techniques that target actual crime rather than the
current set of association laws, which merely target the person and to a
large extent miss the criminal activity. The results are not positive. A
change in investigative and policing strategy is needed.
