NSW Police to receive expanded powers via interim Serious Crime Prevention Orders

NSW Police are set to get extraordinary powers to tackle underworld violence, but whether the move will be effective remains to be seen.

Prompted by two mistaken identity gangland murders within 48 hours last week, the beefed-up serious crime prevention orders (SCPO) will be a valuable tool for crime fighters.

The deaths of Marco Tapia and Joshua Macdonald tragically marked the sixth and seventh murders of innocent people attributed to underworld hostilities in the space of a year.

What is a serious crime prevention order?

Though rarely used, the orders are broad powers restricting the activities of those who police suspect are involved in organised crime conflict.

Currently, police have to bring an application before the Supreme Court before one is made.

An SCPO can restrain who a gangster talks to, where they live, what bank accounts they use and force them to hand over passwords to email and social media accounts.

They restrict what they are allowed to wear, what phones they can use and what car they can drive.

The extraordinary nature of the orders is that those on the receiving end do not have to be charged with committing a crime to effectively be on conditions akin to house arrest.

Those who breach the orders can face jail, as Hamzy crime family member Ghassan Amoun found out in 2021, months before he was shot dead.

He was given a 12-month jail term for breaching his SCPO and was gunned down in South Wentworthville just days after being released from serving his sentence.

What is changing?

The catch has always been that NSW Police have to wait for Supreme Court approval for an SCPO, which could take weeks if not months.

And time is vital when underworld violence spirals out of control.

In 2022, one Sydney-based head of a bikie gang subject to an SCPO was only handed it six months after the acts of violence that sparked the order's necessity.

Premier Chris Minns's announcement on Monday of an "interim" SCPO that does not require a court's approval essentially bypasses this hurdle for police.

While the legislative changes make the battle to stem the bloodshed easier for the state's crime fighters, NSW Police face another roadblock.

Unlike previous eras of tit-for-tat violence, police suspect most of the criminals orchestrating the recent attacks are not in NSW.

Their utility in stopping overseas-based crime figures organising kidnappings, assaults and murders this time around will be the first challenge for police.

Detectives believe the heads of the self-proclaimed "Coconut Cartel" and the Alameddine crime family remain scattered across Asia, eastern Europe and Lebanon.

The Coconut Cartel consists of Pacific Islander Australians from the city's western suburbs and takes its name from a historical slur against Pasifika people.

The two groups, police believe, are at the centre of a surge in attacks, kidnappings and assassinations that culminated in last week's tragedies.

With key figures remaining offshore, those likely to be on the receiving end of SCPOs this time around are possibly their Sydney-based underlings and the fledgling teenage crime-for-hire groups they contract.

Great powers, great responsibility

Those involved in the current conflicts plaguing Sydney's streets will be familiar with the acronym SCPO.

The orders were credited in police circles with stemming a wave of gangland violence between the Hamzy and Alameddine crime families in 2020.

Alleged crime figures Rafat Alameddine, Masood Zakaria, Ibrahem Hamze and others in the rival clans were subject to them for 12 months as police worked to calm tensions.

Similarly, that conflict also saw two innocent people killed in the crossfire: Toufik Hamze and Mustapha Naaman.

The orders granted police some of the broadest powers in NSW legislation, though the main complaint from crime bosses at the time was that it made them "sitting ducks" for their adversaries.

When the conflict spread to the Comanchero bikie gang and the Ahmad family in 2022, the upper hand police had on underworld violence found its limits.

The oppressive nature of the SCPO saw the gang's sergeant-at-arms Tarek Zahed and national president Allan Meehan move to Victoria and Queensland respectively to escape the scrutiny.

This is where the orders met their match.