The Adelaide Advertiser, famously denounced by the former SA Attorney General as a sewer, reports Commissioner Mal Hyde as commenting that 'bikies have cultivated an image of committing more crime than they actually do' -
there is a great deal of public concern that may not necessarily match the serious crime that they are committingSo much, as the Advertiser notes, for the Premier's 2007 claim that bikies were as bad as "terrorists" and that "the national counter-terrorism laws that have been appropriately modified and adopted could provide a nationally consistent approach to ban and control outlaw bikie gangs". (The former Attorney General was correspondingly emo about gamers.)
Hyde is reported as commenting that OMG members present two problems: the "serious" and "organised type" crime actually committed and, secondly, the "public face which most organised criminals don't have" which portrayed them as "above the law".
The challenge around the bikies is really two-fold. The first is that they commit serious crime and much of it is organised type crime, so you have to deal with that.As the Advertiser notes, Hyde's
There are other organised crime groups as well, but the bikies have a public face which most organised criminals don't have and which is about their persona: how they use violence, how they dress and how they behave and how they like to be above the law.
The fact that there is serious concern about their behaviour is an issue in itself.
views appeared to contradict the repeated comments of the State Government, which had devoted far more attention to "terrorist" bikies than any other crime group and passed laws banning them from associating with each other.That is consistent with other authorities, with the Advertiser quoting the SA Commissioner for the Victims of Crime as critical of "rhetoric" used discussing in OMGs -
Parts of the legislation have been deemed unconstitutional in the High Court.
Critics of the laws have accused the State Government of exaggerating the bikie crime problem to promote its law and order credentials. Mr Hyde also says in the book South Australia is "under-represented" on bikie crime compared with other states.
"In terms of bikies we actually don't have a major problem here in the sense that it exceeds the problem in other states and territories," he says.
"When you count the number of bikies, South Australia only has about 6 per cent of the national figure and we have 8 per cent of the population of Australia, so we are actually under-represented in bikies."
"There is a perception that people are worried about bikies and the crime they are committing but when you ask people what they are worried about, bikies don't feature," he said.In a subsequent ABC interview Premier Rann commented that -
Surveys on fear of crime do not reveal broad public concern about organised crime. Some of the very public and violent incidents involving members of bikie gangs and others have fuelled fear of these people and drawn attention to their activities.
That fear, however, might be a consequence of the general worry fostered by signs of disorder and social incivilities.
There's absolutely no conflict between me and the police commissioner on this.Without deriding the seriousness of illicit drug consumption and distribution, one might question an image of OMG members parked on Harleys next to primary schools selling speed or other nastiness to minors.
Those are the laws the police wanted, those are the laws we gave them, and the police commissioner is well aware and has briefed me about the extortions, the illegal importations of every range of gun - we've got bombs being manufactured.
Essentially, outlaw bikie gangs are about manufacturing and distributing, selling drugs to our kids.
