UNDERBELLY PART II

Victorians can still not legally see the television drama Underbelly although many of us have seen it despite the court suppression orders.And the way things are going they may have started shooting the next series before Channel Nine gets to screen the first one.

Because, I kid you not, another real-life version of the gangland war is going on in our streets and terrorising our suburbs.

There’s a new group in the western suburbs terrorising people and for months they seemed impervious to the law. Shootings, fire bombings, assaults, drug running, kidnapping, threats and intimidation.

We started covering it on my 3AW program months ago with a seemingly singular complaint about hoon neighbours. But when we started to dig into it it was obviously much more than a backyard squabble.

And when a woman told us a neighbour had threatened to kill her she had reason to be really scared.

Because of pending court actions it has been difficult to report some of the stuff we know but I can tell you that some of the men involved still have links with the Underbelly gangsters – Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel.

On the other side is an ethnic group trying to step into the drug dealing void filled by the deaths of the Morans, the incarceration of Williams and the flight of Mokbel.

Adding to the problems is the low morale and dissension in the ranks of  investigating Police.

I revealed recently that the Task Force had been cut from ten to five men.  A fact a Police spokesman tried to spin his way out of on my program.

If you need proof there’s the revelation today a senior police officer has quit the hobbled task force blaming the Brass for putting petty squabbles ahead of crime-fighting.

Det.Sgt. Paul Lunt wrote an e-mail to senior police –including Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland – according to the Herald Sun, in which he  said:

‘I can no longer stand by whilst the departmentally-sanctioned spin doctors  sugar-coat what is a very serious gang war in the making and letting a very dangerous family run amok without proper co-ordinated attention.’

He said people obviously hadn’t learned from what came out of the Purana Task Force.

‘The only difference here is that no one has died. And that is only good luck, not good management. But you’re all more worried about petty squabbles over staff ownership and whether you may get criticised in the media.’

 So, Det. Sgt Lunt has quit the case. And probably, bravely, jeopardised his career. Over to you Mrs Doubtfire.

Friday, April 18, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008