rise in organised crime linked to drug trade

[Tom]

ACT rise in organised crime linked to drug trade, says Quinlan

The recent growth of organised crime in the ACT was linked largely to the hydroponic marijuana trade, acting Police Minister Ted Quinlan said yesterday.

 

Concerns about the emergence of organised crime in the territory were revealed in a recent ACT Government submission to a Productivity Commission report on government services.

 

"Increasingly sophisticated criminal networks have been detected in the ACT some of which have clear links to larger scale operations in other Australian and international jurisdictions," it said.

 

Mr Quinlan said a large proportion of the rise in organised crime was linked to cannabis, but Canberrans did not need to worry about crime gangs taking over the city.

 

"The ACT does not experience the level of organised crime that we see in other cities, such as the recent occurrences in Melbourne."

 

He said it was part of a national trend over recent years for criminal networks to establish sophisticated groups that used the Internet and other new technologies to profit illegally.

 

Acting Chief Police Officer Steve Lancaster said people often associated organised crime with ethnically based groups, like the mafia.

 

"However, organised crime groups differ broadly from this stereotype and are often a group of cooperating individuals with varying useful skills, exploiting opportunities for illicit profit making," he said.

 

"ACT Policing is committed to detecting and disrupting all forms of structured criminal activity."

 

Recent examples of organised crime in Canberra include the 38-year-old Flynn man charged with child pornography offences as part of Operation Auxin, fraudsters who have passed themselves off as charity collectors, and people pretending to be bank officials asking for credit- card details. These groups acted separately.

 

Mr Quinlan said police used intelligence to tackle emerging types of crime, often through forming specific task forces. He gave the example of Operation Stolid, which he said had disrupted a prolific hydroponic cannabis-growing operation in Canberra.

 

"Operation Stolid resulted in charges being laid against 20 offenders, and the seizure of almost $2 million in cannabis and an estimated $1 million in forfeited and seized assets," he said.

 

However, police could not reveal any more details about the drug operation because people arrested during it were still before the courts.

 

ACT Opposition police spokesman Steve Pratt said figures revealed in the Productivity Commission report showed it was no wonder organised crime was a growing threat.

 

"Criminals from elsewhere see Canberra as a soft touch," he said.

 

Mr Pratt said the national average was 289 police for each 100,000 Australians, but Canberra had just 251 per 100,000 in 2003-04 - the lowest ratio in the country.

 

"The ACT Government should be ashamed of these figures," he said.

 

Author:David McLennan

Date:29 January

Source:The Canberra Times

Copyright:The Canberra Times

[Tom]

Criminal networks detected in ACT

Criminal networks with links to large-scale operations in other Australian states and overseas have been detected in Canberra.

 

The links have been revealed in the ACT Government's response to a federal/state government report on government services.

 

Investigating the criminal operations have been made more difficult by a simultaneous increase in information technology and credit-card fraud and the sexual exploitation of children.

 

The ACT Government said in a comment in the report that, "increasingly sophisticated criminal networks have been detected in the ACT, some of which have clear links to larger scale operations in other Australian and international jurisdictions.

 

"The development of organised crime elements in the ACT presents new challenges for traditional policing methodologies.

 

"These challenges are exacerbated by concurrent increases in information technology-based crime particularly in the area of credit-card fraud and, of greater concern, in relation to the sexual exploitation of children".

 

ACT police spokesman Andy Parsons said because of ongoing investigations of matters before the courts, police could not "put our cards on the table to basically expose exactly what we're doing or how we're going to address it or exactly what those targets are".

 

"We really can't throw that up straight off", he said.

 

A recent example of ACT police tackling organised crime was Operation Stolid which cracked a syndicate using rental houses to grow hydroponic cannabis crops. He said the arrest of people who were either sent to prison or deported, stemmed a lot of that operation.

 

To reveal anything further of current investigations would jeopardise some of the work. "We wouldn't go into operational avenues of organised crime as it is at the moment," he said.

 

He said police could not enter into any details, or even hint at the type of people that they were after.

 

The ACT Government's comment in the report says the total number of offences reported in the ACT in 2003-04 was 10 per cent lower than in the previous year.

 

This decrease was attributed to Operation Halite.

 

But the Government said that while these results were positive, police were concerned that there was increasing evidence of growth in a range of emergent "crime types" and "criminal methodologies".

 

Of particular note was the prevalence of organised crime groups involved in the growth and large-scale distribution of hydroponically grown cannabis.

 

Author:Paul Malone

Date:28 January 2005

Source:The Canberra Times,

Copyright:The Canberra Times,