Arabic version: نيو ساوث ويلز توسّع أوامر منع الجرائم الخطيرة
According to ABC News, NSW Police are set to receive expanded powers to tackle underworld violence through changes to serious crime prevention orders, or SCPOs. The changes followed the mistaken-identity killings of Marco Tapia and Joshua Macdonald in separate Sydney shootings last week. Their deaths were described as the sixth and seventh murders of innocent people attributed to underworld hostilities over a year.
SCPOs are broad restrictions that can be imposed on people police suspect are involved in organised crime conflict, even if they have not been charged with an offence. Existing orders can limit whom a person contacts, where they live, the bank accounts they use, the phones and vehicles they use, and what they wear. They can also require passwords for email and social-media accounts to be provided. Breaching an order can result in imprisonment.
Previously, police needed to apply to the Supreme Court for an order, a process that could take weeks or months. Premier Chris Minns announced on Monday an “interim” SCPO that would not require court approval, removing that delay for police. In one 2022 case, a Sydney bikie gang leader received an SCPO six months after the violence that prompted the order.
The orders were credited within police circles with helping curb violence between the Hamzy and Alameddine crime families in 2020. Several alleged crime figures were subjected to 12-month orders while police sought to ease tensions. But the conflict also involved the deaths of innocent people, including Toufik Hamze and Mustapha Naaman. Ghassan Amoun received a 12-month jail term in 2021 for breaching an SCPO.
Police face a further obstacle because they suspect many people directing recent attacks are outside NSW. Detectives believe leaders of the self-described Coconut Cartel and the Alameddine crime family are spread across Asia, eastern Europe and Lebanon. The new powers may therefore be applied to Sydney-based underlings and teenage crime-for-hire groups rather than alleged organisers overseas.
