There is a reason why Sydney earned the nickname “City of Sin”.
Its history is marked by bloody and ruthless fights, led by violent and intriguing figures.
Some experts believe that one difference between the underworld of yesteryear and modern gangsters is that they have become much less subtle.
Instead of making enemies disappear, thieves now settle for shooting down rivals in front of their family and random spectators.
The car park near Rhodes Central shopping center where Yusuf Nozlioglu was shot dead earlier this week. (ABC News: Housnia Shams)
Shameless executions have been the business card of the feuds that have shaken Sydney over the past two years, which have claimed more than a dozen lives.
According to Michael Kennedy, it’s a sign that current gangsters are “out of control,” but the motivation for the murder hasn’t changed much.
Dr. Kennedy, a former detective and now a professor at Western Sydney University, does not accept the theory that this current gang war is the “worst” in Sydney.
“Organized crime is a matter of money,” he said.
“This is an unregulated market.
“There will always be associated violence … and murder has always been a part of it.”
He says past organized crime figures were more “discreet” in the way accounts were adjusted.
Crime gentlemen like Lenny McPherson, George Freeman and Fred Anderson were also well-connected businessmen in their heyday.
Still, the police suspected, they were behind serious acts of violence and exercised incomparable power in the 1970s and 1980s.
Dr. Kennedy believes that the influence of motorcycle gangs like the Comanchero has since grown into the city’s underworld, bringing with them a “much more violent” style.
He points to the mid-1990s Woods Royal Commission as a turning point.
He dismantled the old racket guard for Kings Cross, including the corrupt police officers who helped regulate the underworld.
“Everyone knew who was who at the zoo,” Dr. Kennedy said.
“These people did not want obvious violence because it cost them money. It’s bad for business.
“Now what we have is a lot of people directing the show who will only do what they do … running through the streets shooting themselves.”
He says Sydney crime could have been the worst during the era of the famous Razor gangs in the 1920s, a time when unemployment and poverty hit society hard.
Back then, the streets were full of men who had returned from World War I and “didn’t take a step back,” Dr. Kennedy said.
While not downplaying the severity of the recent violence, the former organized crime detective says the 24-hour-hungry media has amplified the current gang warfare like never before.
Since August 2020, there have been at least 14 underworld shootings related to various conflicts committed on the streets of Sydney.
Yusuf Nozlioglu was murdered in his Rhodes apartment complex. (Supplied)
Most recently, former lone wolf cyclist Yusuf Nazlioglu received up to 10 shots in the parking lot below his Rhodes apartment.
He died at the hospital this Tuesday morning.
As the death toll piles up, police say several other killings have been wiped out by intelligence and some were attempted but to no avail.
Former fraud and homicide detective Tony Calladine cut his teeth on the streets of central Sydney in the early 1970s.
Back then, he says, it was a “totally different era” where there was a level of mutual respect between police and thieves.
Criminals Lenny McPherson and Stan Smith were notorious in an earlier era.
He remembers McPherson and Freeman’s associate Stan Smith, a great underworld player, who came to perform on the street.
Criminal groups also had more respect for each other, Calladine said, but if someone invaded the lawn there would be consequences.
“Was there violence? Yes there was,” he said.
“It’s not like now where people are shot at people’s homes. God knows there are no more dead people.
“In those days it was done in a ‘sanitized’ way.”
Calladine believes the increase in drug trafficking was a “catalyst” for how organized crime evolved, before it was more about armed robberies and safe-breaking.
But he also believes there has been a decline in respect for authority, whether police, teachers or nurses, as a reason why public violence could be the norm now.
The head of the underworld, Bilal Hamze, was assassinated on a scale in the CBD in June last year. (Newspix: Braden Fastier)
At the heart of the recent Sydney massacre is allegedly a power struggle between two notorious criminal families: the Hamzy and Alameddine clans.
The ABC understands that this week’s Nazlioglu murder has nothing to do with this feud.
Among the victims are great figures from the Hamzy family, such as Patriarch Mejid Hamzy, his brother Ghassan Amoun and cousin Bilal Hamze.
But as time went on, other members of other networks have been killed or seriously injured, and now detectives say there is a more complex network at stake.
“The recent gang-related violence affecting Sydney comes directly from the battle for control of these drug markets and their profits,” Police Commissioner Karen Webb said in May.
Omar Zahed, on the right, died at the gym, while Brother Tarek survived after receiving up to 10 shots. (Supplied)
Following the failed assassination of Supreme Commander Tarek Zahed in early May, Commissioner Webb said his shooting could have been planned by rivals or internally.
Dr. Kennedy believes the alleged heads of the Hamzy and Alameddine families could be good news, but they are far from being the top of the tree of organized crime.
People who actually run things, he says, are overseas or secretly embedded in “the big end of town” and will never face the same fate as those who die in the canals.
Mejid Hamzy was shot dead near his car in Condell Park in 2020.
“We don’t have any Al Capone in Australia. There never was,” he said.
“If we have one, he’s a law graduate or he works in a commercial bank.”
Last month, NSW Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet announced a series of new broad police powers targeting criminal groups.
Perrottet said “world-leading” reforms would focus on confiscating inexplicable wealth, breaking money laundering rings, and removing encrypted dark web devices.
The prime minister said the reforms “would ensure that organized crime in this state is over.”
Dr. Kennedy, however, says organized crime cannot be stopped so easily.
He agrees that targeting financial assets is a crippling blow for criminal organizations, but believes a tough approach to crime will do little to stop the long-term cycle.
“It’s like the Roman Empire,” he said.
“One group goes and another comes and takes over.”
Addressing the social problems that drive people toward crime, such as economic disadvantage, would be more effective, he said.
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