Bikers are just about the closest Sydney has to a mafia these days. The reasons are simple: they're loyal, secretive, prepared to be very violent, and have no respect for the law. A recent book by a leading journalist makes this perfectly clear.
The following is based on a review I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald a few months ago about Dead Man Running, a fine read by ex-Sunday journo Ross Coulthart and ex-NSW detective Duncan McNab
The book looks at the crucial question: to what degree are Australia's motorcycle gangs involved in crime? Retired Melbourne academic Arthur Veno, the only souce on this subject for most in the media, reckons only a tiny minority are criminals. The problem is that even if he's right (and several cops I've asked say he is plain naive), the secretiveness of the other bikers protects this minority, making them chillingly effective in their work as drug manufacturers, dealers and general enforcers.
The gangs are active everywhere you look, from drug deals, drive-bys, bombings, this week's murder at Sydney Airport, and the war between gangs for control of the drug trade in Oxford Street and Kings Cross, which saw Todd Anthony O'Connor gunned down in Tempe a few months ago.
Dead Man Running is about one of the country's biggest gangs, the Bandidos. The story starts in 1966 in Galveston, Texas, where former marine Donald Chambers was starting a biker gang named after some Mexican bandits. Seeking inspiration, he and his followers turned to art. They consulted Hell's Angels, a new book by a fellow named Hunter S. Thompson. "All of us read it to get some ideas on what we should be doing," recalled one, "and then we looked at one another and said, 'Hell, we can do a lot better than these guys."'
The Bandidos flourished. In 1983 they set up their first clubhouse in Australia, in beautiful Birchgrove. They subsequently became one of this country's most potent gangs, involved in the Milperra massacre, where they killed four members of a rival gang and lost two of their own. Teenager Leanne Walters died in the crossfire.
This book is a biography of Stevan Utah - not his real name - a criminal who became close to the Bandidos for many years, although he never joined because he couldn't afford a Harley. He reckons there are 400 Bandidos in Australia today but he's not always good on figures. He was valued by the bikers because he was a whiz at turning cheap cough medicine and cold tablets into expensive recreational drugs. He also dealt in drugs himself and was around when people were beaten up and killed.
In 2004 Utah was charged with 116 fraud offences in Queensland and decided to roll over to the Australian Crime Commission in return for indemnity on the fraud charges. For the next two years he informed on the Bandidos, recording many conversations on a nifty recording device disguised as a car's remote control. In 2006 the bikers came to suspect what he was doing and gave him a savage beating as a prelude to killing him. He escaped and is now living in another country under a new name.
Dead Man Running is full of accounts of murder, mayhem and dirty dealing. To pick one episode almost at random: Utah claims to have known within 20 minutes who shot Sydney Bandido president Rodney Monk outside Bar Reggio in East Sydney in 2006. He informed police and they went public with an appeal for Bandido Russell Oldham to hand himself in. Three weeks later Oldham walked into the gentle surf at Balmoral and killed himself with a pistol.
According to Utah, Oldham, like himself these days, was a "dead man running". "Let's say he gets a 30-year sentence. That's a long time to deal with people beating the living shit out of you [in prison] and if that hadn't happened, Bandidos would have f---ing got him. For sure. He was a knock-on-sight."
Rather curiously, given the previous government's determination to withhold entry visas from people of "poor" character, Bandidos from around the world attended Monk's funeral. One local member assured the media there that the Bandidos had "put violence behind them". A member of the God's Squad biker group told mourners that people such as Monk represented something lost to Australian society: "community and loyalty to your mates".
In contrast with such rosy views, Utah says the gangs in general are mafia-like "mobsters". In his account, those bikers not directly involved in serious crime facilitate it by maintaining the secrecy, loyalty and reputation for extreme violence that make the many criminals in their midst so effective. Bikers have an influence far beyond their numbers because of their strong networks and the favours they're owed by the many other criminals who have called on them for assistance in violent situations.
What do you think? Do we need more severe laws against biker gangs?
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