We Asked This Police Detective What He Learned Studying Melbourne's Gangs

A first-of-its-kind study illuminates how in the early 2000s police effectively avoided gangs in certain parts of Melbourne, allowing them to thrive. According to Detective Superintendent Patrick Boyle, who completed four years of research as part of his master's thesis, Victoria's police have only recently began to understand the kind of culture that perpetuates violence.

To answer the question, "what is a street gang?" Superintendent Boyle interviewed 43 police officers all working in areas affected by gangs. Through these interviews he discovered Australian groups is heavily influenced heavily by the US and New Zealand gang culture, while most members are aged between 10 and 30. We spoke to Patrick to find out some more.

VICE: Hi Patrick. What prompted you to start this research?
Patrick Boyle: Back in 2003 or 2002 I saw an escalation of violence in Melbourne relating to the Vietnamese community. I was an inspector in charge of the Asian squad at the time. I was seeing multiple shootings happening across Melbourne and I wondered why the violence had escalated so much. They'd gone from using fists and knives to firearms.

What sort of cases were you seeing?
We had a shooting in Chinatown where a boy was chased from a nightclub and was being beaten. Suddenly a car pulled up and a person got out and fired three shots. People were injured but no one died, thank god, and then this guy rescued the boy. The vehicle was later linked to a particular family we started targeting that family for their activities.

So we started a taskforce that ran for 12 months. It was called Operation Mystical and it was a group of officers put together to determine whether we had a gang situation in Melbourne, and we targeted a particular Asian family. From there we determined we do have a gang presence, and I wanted to know more about this.

All of this activity was based around one family?
Yes, one particular family and their associates. They were all about 16 to their early 20s. The taskforce looked at their drug and other criminal activities. We prosecuted them at later date and showed how that particular family had an influence over a number of violent cases across Melbourne.

Did the problems stop after prosecuting this family?
No, we started to have other incidents. One gang decided to have a fight with another gang over a girl. They went down to Fitzroy Gardens and when they all arrived in a tram, the other gang was waiting in the park. When they got off the tram they could see there was only a handful of members there. So they then confronted them, and suddenly all these gang members jumped out of trees like ninjas. There was a fight, and then they decided they would stop and the best two in the group would fight. And they did. One had a machete and one had a samurai sword. They swung at each other and one guy lost his arm from his elbow downwards—it was chopped straight off. Everyone panicked and ran. There were close to 100 involved. The kid was rushed to hospital and later we arrested about 40 of them.

So what kind of gangs are you seeing on Melbourne's streets today?
Most of them are ethnic-based, and really the problem at the moment is that we are not collecting the intelligence as well as we should. We say something is a street gang but is it really? Is it just a bunch of kids that are mates?

But you say that in some ways they're defined by ethnicity?
Yes, many are Asian and when I say Asian I mean mainly Vietnamese. Others are from Pacific Islanders, including in there Maori, Middle Eastern being Lebanese, and then Northern Africa, which is mainly Sudanese and Somalian. Some Maori and African kids mix together. In the Asian gangs you might see one or two Caucasian kids but mainly the other gangs seem to be one ethnicity.

Do they behave differently?
What I have noted about Pacific Island kids is that they're shit scared of their mums. The mothers come along and see the police have arrested their sons and they want to just about rip the door of the van off to get to their kid because they're so disappointed with them. And the same kids are going to church on a Sunday and then come out and commit acts of violence. It just doesn't make sense. You go to church, sing hymns then walk out of there and go beat someone up. It just doesn't make sense at all.

What kinds of weapons are they using?
It's usually a knife or their fists. In some cases it's just the handle of a supermarket trolley—pulling those handles out of trolleys and using them as weapons.

What did you learn about how people are recruited?
Mainly through the schools, that seems to be the main areas.

What did the police officers you interviewed tell you about their interaction with gang members?
Some of them were involved in activities that really, really concerned me. They would be baited, called to a job that was false and notice there was a whole bunch of kids waiting to ambush them. They told us about incidents where they would return to their van and every window was smashed. They were basically being confronted without any feeling of fear or respect for the police. Some of those officers got to the stage where they didn't go to those areas because they were no-go zones.

Where were these no-go zones that had been created?
Broadmeadows, Flemington, and those areas with low-socio economic concerns.

So the police have at times been evasive about the street gangs?
Yeah, they were but a lot of that has changed now. As you will understand, some of those interviews [with police] were over a four-year period and some of that information is now in the past. They've put measures in place to have closer interaction with those communities or try and work out what the problems are.

So right now in Melbourne, how much of a problem would you say the gangs are?
It's a concern, but it's not a threat. But we need to make sure we stay on top of it.

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