Crime in Sydney

History of Crime in Sydney Sydney was founded as prison colony, with the combination of various penal institutions, corrupt authorities, gold rushes and increasing wealth encouraged the growth of a criminal element. However today Sydney is one of the safest cities in the world and is ranked 10th of the List of cities by quality of living. Below is some notorious and noteworthy criminals and criminal cases from Sydney's past.

Crime statistics

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) reported in 2007 that eight categories of crime were down, including property offences, while five categories, including murder, were stable, and domestic violence was up. Bureau director Dr Don Weatherburn stated that a heroin shortage and a strong job market had contributed to a drop in crime.

The 2007 BOCSAR figures reported that Kings Cross was a hotspot for most major crimes. Three areas, Kings Cross, the area around Central Railway Station, and the section of George Street between Liverpool and Market streets, were hotspots for assaults. The report also identified the period between midnight on Saturday to 6am on Sunday as a time when crime peaked, particularly in those areas. The report also showed that personal offences such as assault peak in December and January.

In 2011 the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reported that Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross, Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, King Street in Newtown, Glebe Point Road in Glebe and George Street in the CBD were hotspots for city violence. The BOCSAR report found that 56.8 per cent of assaults in the city centre were within 50m of a liquor outlet. The same report found that that each additional alcohol outlet per hectare will result, on average, in 4.5 more assaults a year.

Early 20th century

A vastly profitable illegal gaming operation developed, based on the Australian coin-tossing game "Two-up" was intruced in the early part of the 1900s by the Thommo's Two-up School,that operated continuously in various locations in Sydney until well after World War II. Although Thommo's was known and frequented by hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders and that it operated for decades, in the late 1960s the then New South Wales Commissioner of Police, Norman Allan, was still publicly denying that Thommo's even existed.

Illegal gaming houses, brothels and "sly-grog shops" (illegal alcohol outlets) operated freely in the inner city throughout the 1900s, thanks to on-going protection by corrupt police. One of the most notorious gambling clubs of the postwar period, the Forbes Club, located in Forbes St, Darlinghurst, conducted its business with impunity for years, even though it was openly signposted and was located only metres from the Darlinghurst Police Station.

1960-70s

In 1960 Sydney was the scene of one of Australia's first widely publicised kidnappings, when schoolboy Graeme Thorne was kidnapped and killed after his father won the Sydney Opera House Lottery. This was followed in 1965 by the still-unsolved murders of two Sydney schoolgirls at Wanda Beach in Sydney's south.

In 1968 one of Australia's first hostage sieges took place in the outer southwestern suburb of Glenfield, when Wally Mellish held his de facto wife and child hostage at gunpoint for several days. Other notorious cases in more recent years include the Strathfield Massacre, the North Shore Granny Murders, the disappearance of Bondi school girl Samantha Knight and the rape, torture and murder of Anita Cobby.

In the late 1960s, following the 1965 election of the Liberal state government headed by Robert Askin, there was a drastic realignment of criminal activities as the old networks dissolved. One of the most controversial claims about the Sydney crime scene at this time, reported by crime writer David Hickie in his book The Prince and the Premier, the allegation was that Askin was corrupt and that he regularly received huge cash payments from illegal gaming operators like Perce Galea in return for political and police protection. After his death it was revealed that Askin's multi-million dollar estate was worth vastly more than he could have legally earned, and this has been seen by many as confirmation of his corruption.

During 1967, as rival gang leaders fought to gain control of Sydney's crime industry, there was a series of highly-publicised murders including infamous brothel owners Joe Borg, who was killed by one of Australia's first car bombs, and Richard Gabriel Reilly, who was shot to death in broad daylight in his car as he was leaving his mistress' home in Double Bay. .

The Reilly case became a cause celebre for investigative journalists, and David Hickie claims that Reilly's kept numerous highly detailed diaries, which were found after his murder The diaries reputedly contained the names and details of all Reilly's criminal contacts, as well as those of many police, politicians and prominent Sydney society figures with whom he had dealings. According to Hickie, these diaries would have blown the lid off the Sydney organised crime scene and its connections to public corruption, but he alleges that at Commissioner Allan's direction, the diaries were carefully scrutinised and their contents relayed to him and Premier Askin and then deliberately suppressed to keep their explosive contents secret.

One of the main beneficiaries of the Gang Wars of 1967 was Sydney's so-called "Mr Big" of organised crime, Lenny McPherson, who was believed to have masterminded the killing of several rivals, including Reilly. From the late 1960s onwards he became the most feared and powerful crime figure in the city. Most significantly, it was widely believed that McPherson initiated contacts between Australian crime figures, Asian crime syndicates and the American Mafia.

One of the key events in this process was beginning the McPherson-sponsored visit of Mafia financier Joseph 'Dan' Testa in 1965, 1969 and 1971. The purpose of the 1971 visit was to arrange the purchase of slot machines manufactured by The Bally Manufacturing Company, an American slot-machine manufacturer that was Mafia-controlled, and to arrange the purchase of Bally slot-machines by Sydney clubs, often through threats of violence.

From this beginning, McPherson and his allies are alleged to have laid the groundwork for Mafia infiltration of the Australian illegal drug trade and the vast expansion of heroin trafficking in Australia and South-East Asia that took place in the 1970s. McPherson's opening of connections with the Mafia is also thought to have been a pivotal action in the ongoing campaign to introduce poker machines (slot machines) into NSW, and this is reinforced by persistent claims that some of the leading poker machine manufacturers were controlled by the Mafia.

One of the most revealing cases concerning the connections between NSW police and organised crime came was in the early 1970s with the so-called Arantz Case. Phillip Arantz was a NSW Police Detective Sergeant and computer expert who was charged with overseeing the computerisation of police crime statistics. During the course of this program it became obvious to Arantz that the police were persistently under-reporting serious crime incidents and it soon became evident to him that he had uncovered a systematic program of suppression of information, the obvious aim of which was to protect corrupt police who were involved in or being paid off by Sydney organised crime networks. Arantz reported his suspicions to the then Commissioner, Norman Allan, but his claims were dismissed and he soon discovered that Allan had no intention of allowing Arantz's findings to become public. Frustrated by this official obstruction, Arantz became one of Australia's first "whistle blowers" when he leaked details of the disparities between the actual and reported crime statistics to the Sydney press. As a result, he was targeted by Allan in a deliberate campaign of harassment and vilification—he was suspended, subjected to a forced psychiatric evaluation and eventually dishonourably discharged from the force. It would be almost twenty years before Arantz could finally clear his name, by which time Allan and Askin were both long dead.

Perhaps what was the most notorious place in Sydney in terms of criminal history is Kings Cross. Located in inner eastern Sydney, "The Cross" had a long history of prostitution, illegal gaming, sex clubs, drug dealing, "shooting galleries" (places frequented by intravenous drug users), police corruption and murder. It was the backdrop for the mysterious and famous disappearance in 1975 of Juanita Nielsen, an heiress who opposed high-rise development there.

A NSW Royal Commission into gambling in the 1970s estimated that the annual turnover from organised crime in NSW was far in excess of the total NSW state government budget.

1990

The Wood Royal Commission into police corruption in the 1990s found widespread corruption amongst the various police units at Kings Cross, resulting in several long-term changes to policing in New South Wales.

Cabramatta, which became notorious in the 1990s for illegal drugs being openly sold in its streets and at its railway station by juvenile drug dealers, and for the political assassination of John Newman in 1994;

Punchbowl and Lakemba, focal points of much ethnic tension and ethnic-based crime including a shooting attack on a police station;

Redfern, known for a politically-sensitive failed indigenous housing development called "The Block", drug-related crimes and an infamous riot in February 2004.

2000

In the winter of 2000 a series of four gang rapes occurred, in which gangs of up to 18 men of Lebanese descent abducted and violently raped women. These incidents led to harsh new sentences for gang rape in New South Wales. These rapes and the following investigation and trials were the subject of the book Girls Like you.

See also

• History of New South Wales
• Bogle-Chandler case
• Milperra massacre
• 2005 Cronulla riots
• Gangs in Australia
• 5T
• Notorious (gang)
• Rocks Push
• Dlasthr
• Roger Rogerson
• Sallie-Anne Huckstepp
• Christopher Dale Flannery
• Neddy Smith
• Abe Saffron
• Lenny McPherson
• George Freeman (bookmaker)
• John Ibrahim

TV series

• Blue Murder (mini-series)
• Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities
• Underbelly: The Golden Mile
• Cops L.A.C.

Books (non-Fiction)

• The Prince and The Premier The relationship between Perc Galea and Sir Robert Askin. Author: David Hickie, Publisher: Angus & Robertson, Place Published: Sydney, Australia, Date Published: 1985
• Can of Worms by Evan Whitton

External links

• NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics