A spate of shootings in New South Wales may be linked to illegally imported guns, according to police, with their impact reaching outside that state.
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: A surge in illegal gun imports is fuelling a spike in public shootings in Australia, particularly in Sydney.
Across the country, the illegal gun trade is booming and according to police, criminal syndicates are now importing more weapons than ever before.
They're alarmingly easy to get. Many are ordered online and come direct from the manufacturer straight through Australia Post.
Adding to that, legal and licensed gun owners have more firearms today than they did before the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
Caro Meldrum-Hanna reports.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: Late January, 2012. It's 3am in Western Sydney. A lone car makes its way through the quiet streets of suburban Wiley Park.
Stopping outside an apartment block, a handgun is drawn. A single shot is fired into a second storey unit.
RADIO PRESENTER: Shell-shocked residents of Denman Avenue in Wiley Park awoke this morning to find their street a crime scene.
WILEY PARK RESIDENT: That's shocking, really shocking.
WILEY PARK RESIDENT 2: I heard the gun shot throughout my bedroom window.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It was just one in a growing epidemic of drive-by shootings and street violence across south-west Sydney.
But there was something different about the crime. This time the shooter and the weapon were found within hours.
REPORTER: Police allege this Glock pistol was found inside the car. They arrested a 25-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: That one Glock pistol led New South Wales police on a remarkable process of discovery.
An international gun importation syndicate, starting in Europe and allegedly ending at this small post office in the exclusive southern Sydney suburb of Sylvania Waters.
Three men were arrested and accused of importing up to 300 handguns over 12 months.
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT KEN FINCH, NSW FIREARMS AND ORGANISED CRIME SQUAD: The allegation that we would make is that those hand guns were bought by a dealer in Germany, who on-sold them to another smaller dealer and as a result of an approach by A criminal syndicate in Australia, that smaller dealer was selling the hand guns on to the criminal syndicate here in Sydney.
The further our investigation went, the more sophisticated it appears that the syndicate were in their methods.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Detective superintendent Ken Finch is the commander of the firearms and organised crime squad with New South Wales police.
KEN FINCH: These are the weapons that are in demand, semi-automatic, self loading pistols, relatively new the majority of these ones.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: 7:30 has learnt that seven of the illegal Glock pistols imported through Australia Post into Sylvania Waters have now surfaced in New South Wales.
Many were used in the recent street shootings and drive-bys taking hold yet again across Sydney.
JUANITA PHILLIPS, ABC NEWS PRESENTER: More than 200 Glock pistols believed to be in the hands of criminals...
JEREMY FERNANDEZ, ABC NEWS PRESENTER: Another shooting has rattled another Sydney suburb...
DEBORAH RICE, ABC NEWS PRESENTER: Police say the drive by shooting was a targeted attack...
JUANITA PHILLIPS: Police investigating a fatal shooting in Punchbowl in Sydney's south-west...
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: In the past three months alone there have been 25 separate shooting incidents in Sydney.
Last night, two shootings in south-west Sydney were reported to police. The numbers have sky-rocketed and the style and purpose of the shootings isn't confined to traditional turf warfare over drugs or ongoing reprisals between rival outlaw motorcycle groups.
KEN FINCH: We are seeing a spike, there's no doubt about that. We've seen a number of instances lately where petty arguments, verbal arguments have escalated.
Firearms may not have been produced at the time but it appears that perhaps later under the cover of darkness one or even both protagonists involved in the original argument may take action to settle their score by using a firearm.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Are they licensed firearm owners?
KEN FINCH: In the main, no.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The problem is fuelled by the alarmingly easy access to firearms online.
NIGER FAIR, CENTRE FOR INTERNET SAFETY, UNI OF CANBERRA: If there's an off line problem you can guarantee people are using the internet for their criminal misdemeanours.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Nigel Fair is the director of the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra.
NIGER FAIR: There's a lack of policing focus on anything online. These investigations are far from impossible, they just require time and effort.
I'd urge law enforcement and intelligence agencies to really get online, work out what people are doing, where the criminal elements are, where these websites are hosted, how they're hosted and then subsequently how people are importing firearms in this case into Australia.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Almost 750,000 firearms have been imported into Australia since the 1996 gun buyback sparked by the Port Arthur massacre.
Today, there are more than 3 million firearms in circulation and the number of guns held by licensed owners has leapt to an average of five each.
CHARLES DINNELL, PRESIDENT NSW GUN CLUB: I don't think gun crime is about somebody owning a gun, I think it's somebody illegally owning a gun and using it for crime.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Charles Dinnell is the president of the New South Wales Gun Club. Like all of the licensed gun owners at this rifle range in northern Sydney, Dinell wants to see more focus on illegal importations and less focus on licensed shooters.
CHARLES DINNELL: I believe that every time that there's a story in the paper about gun crime, and especially coming out of the States, the sporting shooter and the genuine licensed shooter in Australia does come under attack, they do get scrutinised as to why do they have a gun.
Why should you have a gun? This is a sport that we cherish and we do feel threatened.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: With the scourge of illegal firearms and suburban violence now growing beyond state borders, and revelations of widespread corruption among customs officials, the Federal Government is being called to account.
TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: Well if the Prime Minister was fair dinkum, surely she would not have cut some $60 million out of our border protection budget.
This is a Government which couldn't stop the boats and it can't stop the guns either.
JULIA GILLARD: The Australian Crime Commission in 2011 looked at sources of illegal firearms in Australia and they said around 1 per cent come over the borders, that is they're imported.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: New South Wales police are seeing a very different reality on the streets.
KEN FINCH: There is a problem, there are too many firearms out there in the community and the firearms that we've seen lately, particularly, have been hand guns that have been illegally imported.
LEIGH SALES: Caro Meldrum-Hanna reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment