By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim NSW police commenced an investigation in June 2017, which led to detectives identifying eight men involved in a drug manufacturing operation producing MDA (3, 4-methylenedioxyamphetamine), a substance usually sold as MDMA on the street but can differ in effect. The joint criminal enterprise involved three properties belonging to one of… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim In mid-May, news hit that western Sydney is in the grips of a gang war, which involves feuding between the Alameddine and Hamzy families, and has resulted in 13 dead gang members. So, the NSW Police Force has launched Taskforce Erebus in response. In its first week, Erebus had reportedly… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim PM Scott Morrison, home affairs minister Karen Andrews and AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw lined up before the press last June, to announce the success of the transnational drug crime investigation known locally as Operation Ironside. Spruiked as the “most significant operation in policing history”, Ironside had, at that time, resulted in… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim A young man, who we will refer to as Mr C for the purposes of this article, commenced using drugs in his last year at a high school, as his girlfriend was using them. Eighteen months later, in late 2019, Mr C, who was regularly using MDMA by then,… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim The body of meth cook Sonny Nguyen was found on the side of the road in Bankstown in April 2013. He’d been strangled and his arms were bound. The body of his partner, Thi Kim Lien Do, was found decomposing in bushland in Hoxton Park the following January, with… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim At 10.22 am on 10 August 2017, ten NSW police officers conducted a raid of the Grime2Shine carwash in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown. The business was co-owned by the brothers Danny and Ranny Shaitly, who’d both fallen short of the law in the past. On a second… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim Alleged leader of a southwest Sydney dial-a-cocaine ring Sarah Rutherford was released on bail on 13 May this year, after being remanded in prison for close to three months, following a late February raid on her Greenacre home, which turned up the illicit substance and drug paraphernalia. The 30-year-old… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim At around 2.30 am on 3 October 2008, police pulled over Dwayne Schirmer, who was driving a red Nissan Exa along the Midlands Highway near Glen Innes. After blowing negative on a breathalyser test, Schirmer admitted that he had a small amount of cannabis in the glovebox. The officers… Read more »
These days, spotting police officers accompanied by a sniffer dog when leaving a train station, leads Sydneysiders to hardly blink an eyelid. Though some commuters will curse under their breath about the incursion upon their civil liberties the warrantless use of drug dogs in public involves. While others will stop and take a photo of… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim On 7 February this year, Australian federal police (AFP) and Victoria police executed search warrants in NSW and Victoria that led to the arrest of two US nationals and two Australians in and around Melbourne, while two men were arrested in their south-western Sydney homes. The drug raids related… Read more »