Tim Priest, is a former New South Wales Police Detective Sergeant in Australia. He served in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta and led a police revolt against his commanders for failing to take action about gang crime and heroin dealing in South West Sydney. Prime Minister John Howard announced that Tim Priest would be the new Chairman of the Prime Minister's Crime Advisory Board and advise the Coalition Federal Government on Crime Prevention initiatives.
He wrote a book called To Protect And To Serve with Richard Basham about his experiences dealing with the drug trade and the police service. [1]
In 2002 he gave evidence to an enquiry into the crime- and drugs ridden suburb of Cabramatta and attracted national and international headlines. His testimony led to the resignations or sackings of the State's Police Minister, Education Minister, Police Commissioner and Deputy and Assistant Commissioners. Major changes were made to the NSW police force and the way that police handle gangs and drugs in Sydney.
The Cabramatta Parliamentary Enquiry's final report (2002) recommended that the Government adopt some of the initiatives that Priest had offered as a means to solving the crisis in Cabramatta. Ultimately the NSW Government adopted the recommendations and the NSW Police implemented them in 2002.
In 2003, he gave a talk at a Quadrant dinner in November 2003 titled "The Rise of Middle Eastern Crime in Australia" in which he also talked about his experiences policing specific households of people of Lebanese descent, and criticised police commissioner Peter Ryan and journalist Mike Carlton. [2]
In the same speech he warned of the consequences of ignoring "middle eastern" crime and pointed to the Sydney suburb of Cronulla as a likely trouble spot involving "mid eastern" gangs. In 2005 the Cronulla riots erupted over a 48-hour period across Sydney as caucasians went on a violent rampage, attacking youths thought to be of Middle East descent and police, in retaliation over an earlier incident at Cronulla Beach.
He endured a long campaign of hateful media articles engineered by former police officers whom Priest had exposed as either corrupt or incompetent, and ill informed media personnel. Priest eventually sued The Sydney Morning Herald (twice), Author Chris Masters and publisher Allan and Unwin over various publications. All matters were reportedly settled out of Court.
He has written a number of best selling books since 2003 including Enemies of the State and On Deadly Ground- the John Newman Assassination. His most recent book "Cops and Crooks" entails unfortunate stories of criminals humorously caught on the wrong side of the law.
Priest continues to speak on crime prevention strategies and often asked to give an opinion of current issues on multiple media platforms, particularly his opinion editorials in various news papers. He is survived by his wife and four children.
John Paul Newman was an Australian politician who served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1986 until his assassination.
Phuong Canh Ngo is an Australian former businessman and politician who was convicted of ordering the assassination of Australian MP John Newman on 5 September 1994.
The New South Wales Police Force is a law enforcement agency of the state of New South Wales, Australia, established in 1862. With more than 17,000 police officers, it is the largest police organisation in Australia, policing an area of 801,600 square kilometres with a population of more than 8.2 million people.
The Australia First Party (AFP), officially known as the Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated, is an Australian nationalist political party founded in 1996 by Graeme Campbell, a former member of the Australian Labor Party. The policies of the party have been described as nationalist, anti-multicultural and economically protectionist, advocating for strict immigration controls, the prioritization of Australian citizens in employment, and the promotion of Australian culture and values. The party's logo includes the Southern Cross of the Eureka Flag.
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The 2004 Redfern riots took place on the evening of Sunday 15 February 2004, in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, New South Wales, and were sparked by the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey, also known as TJ Hickey, resulting from a bike accident in the neighbouring suburb of Waterloo on 14 February 2004.
Lakemba is the name of two places, and the Sydney one was directly named after the Fijian one.
Cabramatta is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is currently represented by Tri Vo of the Labor Party.
The 2005 Cronulla riots were a series of race riots in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It began in the beachside suburb of Cronulla on 11 December, and spread over to additional suburbs the next few nights.
Razor gangs were criminal gangs who dominated the Sydney crime scene in the 1920s. After the passage of the Pistol Licensing Act 1927, the Parliament of New South Wales imposed severe penalties for carrying concealed firearms and handguns. In response, Sydney gangland figures began to use razors as their preferred weapons.
The New South Wales Crime Commission is a statutory corporation of the Government of New South Wales. It is constituted by the Crime Commission Act 2012, the object of which is to reduce the incidence of organised crime and other serious crime in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Koby Abberton, an Australian former professional surfer, is a member of the Australian surf gang the Bra Boys. He rose to local prominence in 2006, when he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice in an incident surrounding his brother Jai Abberton, who was charged but found not guilty of the 2003 murder of stand-over man Anthony 'Tony' Hines. Together with his brothers, Abberton achieved national and international attention in 2007 with the release of a feature-length documentary entitled Bra Boys: Blood is Thicker than Water, written and directed by members of the Bra Boys. In November 2008, Koby Abberton was jailed for three days by a US court after being found guilty of assaulting an off-duty police officer in a fight outside a nightclub in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2021, Koby appeared on the TV show SAS Australia.
DLASTHR is an Assyrian criminal organization that is active in the south western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The group is said to have originated from another gang, called the Assyrian Kings. The crime gang was formed by Raymon Youmaran who is now serving a 17-year sentence for the murder of Dimitri DeBaz in 2002.
Corrective Services New South Wales (CSNSW) is a division of the Department of Communities and Justice of the Government of New South Wales, Australia. CSNSW is responsible for the state's prisons and a range of programs for managing offenders in the community. The state has 36 prisons, 33 run by CSNSW and three privately operated. The agency traces its origins back to 1788, when New South Wales was founded as a penal colony.
Organised Crime and Gangs in Australia refers to the activities of various groups of crime families, organised crime syndicates or underworld activities including drug trafficking, contract killing, racketeering and other crimes in Australia.
The history of gangs in Australia goes back to the colonial era. Criminal gangs flourished in The Rocks district of Sydney in its early history in the 19th century. The Rocks Push was a notorious larrikin gang which dominated the area from the 1800s to the end of the 1900s. The gang was engaged in running warfare with other larrikin gangs of the time such as the Straw Hat Push, the Glebe Push, the Argyle Cut Push, the Forty Thieves from Surry Hills, and the Gibb Street Mob.
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Operations Support Group (OSG) police are specialist police within the New South Wales Police Force. They are trained in public order (riot) response; weaponless control ; violent prisoner cell extractions; high-value asset protection; navigation and terrain search; bomb searching; and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) response.
Anti–Middle Eastern sentiment is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against people who belong to or originate from the various ethnic groups of the Middle East. Although it is commonly associated with Islamophobia, as Muslims constitute the majority of the region's population, it is a distinct type of hatred in itself and may not always stem from religion-based animosity. People who harbour negative feelings towards the region's people view them as barbaric and inferior on racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious grounds, or a combination of any of these factors.
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