NSW Police arrest 25 ‘wannabe gangsters’ over spate of Sydney shootings
By crime reporter Mark Reddie
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Police are targeting “wannabe gangsters” and “career criminals” in Sydney’s south-west, after a series of shootings, some of which are believed to be fuelled by tensions between rival bikie gangs.
Key points:
- Police raided 50 properties and cars yesterday
- NSW Police Minister David Elliott condemned the spike in gun violence
- Police say every shooting is “being thoroughly investigated”
Twenty-five men have been arrested and charged with more than 40 offences as part of Operation Clampdown, which was set up to investigate 12 shootings across the region over the past few weeks, including one murder.
Fares Abounader, a former ally of late Comanchero boss Mick Hawi, was shot dead when he stepped out of his Mercedes outside his Panania home earlier this month.
The 39-year-old was charged alongside Hawi for his involvement in a deadly bikie brawl at Sydney Airport in 2009.
No one has been arrested over his alleged murder.
Fairfield man Mark Shammo, 29, was taken to hospital in a serious condition after he was shot in the legs and torso at Lakemba at the end of last month.
Officers raided more than 50 properties and cars yesterday, and arrested Ayman El-Sankari, 23, at a Bankstown unit block.
He was charged with intent to murder, and is the only person arrested in connection with that shooting.
A 22-year-old man and a 28-year-old man were arrested at a home in Fairfield Heights, which was peppered with bullets less than two weeks ago.
Investigators have so far seized 13 guns, including seven pistols, as well as knuckledusters, drugs, cash, knives, 380 fake credit cards and 101 mobile phones as part of their investigations.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna said Operation Clampdown was ongoing.
“Our message really is … to those wannabe gangsters or even career criminals, who want to commit violence in public places that we will come down on them very swiftly and very firmly because our number-one priority is and always has been protecting members of the community,” he said.
“Every single shooting is being thoroughly investigated.
“We understand the seriousness of these matters and we will leave no stone unturned.”
Despite the shootings being targeted, Acting Assistant Commissioner McKenna said he was concerned about public safety.
“Each of them have been targeted, there hasn’t been random attacks out there in which the public are in danger,” he said.
“However, any time a shooting takes place in the public arena, of course it carries that inherent risk of someone innocent getting hurt.”
Police Minister David Elliott has also expressed outrage at the spike in gun violence across Sydney.
“Their reckless actions show a flagrant disregard for community safety and this Government will not tolerate this vigilante behaviour,” he said.
“Throwing my camera was the right thing to do”: The photographers behind the viral protest photos
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| The photo John Abernathy took, showing his point of view as he was being surrounded by ICE officers, right before he threw his camera to another photographer. Photo: John Abernathy | Instagram: @john_abernathy_ |
By now, you’ve probably seen the viral photo of John Abernathy, an independent photographer, throwing his Leica M10-R to another photographer after being pinned to the ground by officers of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. It’s from a striking sequence of images taken by freelance photographer Pierre Lavie, which show Abernathy being tackled, locking eyes with Lavie – then a stranger – and tossing his camera and phone to him in an attempt to keep them from being confiscated.
We caught up with both photographers to get the story behind the photos they took that day, see how they’ve dealt with suddenly having their work presented on a global stage, and talk about how this incident, and others like it, have affected how they cover protests and other similar events.
Click to see Lavie’s images of Abernathy throwing his camera
If you haven’t seen the photos or aren’t familiar with the backstory, this is what happened: Abernathy and Lavie were photographing a protest against ICE around the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, MN. Both photographers say that, throughout the event, police forces would gather to press into the crowd. Abernathy says that, while photographing protesters and counter-protesters, he lost his situational awareness for a moment as he was trying to simultaneously live-stream with his phone and take photos. That’s when he was tackled from behind and wrestled to the ground by several ICE officers, who then pepper-sprayed him.
Lavie, who was shooting nearby, saw this happening and turned to photograph it. That’s when the now-famous moment was captured. Abernathy, concerned that the police might delete photos from his camera, locked eyes with Lavie and tossed his Leica M10-R and phone to the other photographer.
“It was instinctual at that moment”
“It was instinctual at that moment,” Abernathy says, adding that he believes an ICE agent was trying to grab his phone out of his hand. “I didn’t know what would happen to me after that, so in a split second I decided: ‘I gotta throw it.'” Lavie, who was crouching down to photograph what was happening, says it was all very quick. “It’s not more than a handful of seconds that he went from being tackled to being on the ground, tossing his camera and his phone, and then being pulled back in and detained.”
Lavie admits he briefly hesitated before going for the camera and phone. “In my head, I was like, ‘Do I grab this? Do I not? If I do, am I gonna get pulled into this thing?” But then he told himself, “Okay, screw it. I’m doing it.”
After Abernathy was released, he says he looked around for his camera, asking someone with a bullhorn to ask if anyone had seen it, but nobody had. “After they let me go, I was in an absolute panic to know where my camera was,” he says. “I was like, fuck, maybe I made the wrong decision. I shouldn’t have done that, why did I do that?” Eventually, though, he and a friend were able to track his phone, letting him meet up with Lavie and retrieve his camera and the images on it, some of which he’s posted to Instagram.
| One of the last photos Abernathy took before he was tackled. Photo: John Abernathy | Instagram: @john_abernathy_ |
“When I finally got back to the images that I shot during the protest, there are some very aggressive shots of agents coming down on protesters,” Abernathy says. “So in hindsight, throwing my camera was the right thing to do, for multiple reasons. One, bringing attention to this entire issue we’re having. And two, the images show the aggression that they’re coming down on for no apparent reason.”https://www.instagram.com/p/DTwYj-KDixW/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=540&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dpreview.com&rp=%2Finterviews%2F6336791578%2Fjohn-abernathy-pierre-lavie-protest-photographers-ice-minneapolis-thrown-leica#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A1578.2999999523163%2C%22ls%22%3A374.2999999523163%2C%22le%22%3A1092.1999999284744%7D
The photos Abernathy took while being detained, and the photos Lavie took during the event, have received a lot of attention both in national outlets and on several social media platforms, something neither photographer expected.
“I’m actually getting chills right now,” Abernathy says when asked whether he was surprised at people’s reactions. “I did not obviously expect literally any of this attention. If it wasn’t for Pierre’s photo, I literally don’t think any of it would have happened. There were a lot of other photographers there, and they got some good shots as well, but his shot is literally epic. It shows so much. It’s more than a photo of me. It shows the struggle against this… unidentified ominous power.”
“It’s resonating with everybody for a reason”
Lavie calls the response “surreal” and says he’s thankful, flattered and humbled by the outpouring of support. “It’s resonating with everybody for a reason. And I don’t think it’s a good reason. As much as I would love it to be some miraculous picture of a butterfly or something like that, unfortunately, this is the situation, and that’s where we are right now. Hopefully it’s gonna work its way through the system in a healthy way.”
Abernathy also understands why the photos have resonated so much. “I’m most grateful that it’s become a focal point to bring attention to not only this area but what’s happening in the whole United States,” he says. “It speaks to freedom of the press. A lot of people are picking up on that for obvious reasons, but it speaks way beyond my personal experience. It’s freedom of the press, and it’s individual people trying to struggle against that massive power. Both his shot and my last shot show only legs in power positions. And they’re dominating, and there’s weapons, and it really represents a lot more.”
“it is always shocking”
The incident is just part of a recent wave of police and ICE officers tackling, pepper-spraying and arresting photographers and journalists as the agency gains an unprecedented level of power, budget and legal immunity. “I’ve seen it quite a few times now, unfortunately. But it is always shocking,” says Lavie. “It’s a fine line that journalists of all types walk out there to make sure that they can be there and not be involved, and yet still do their job to record.”
It’s a job both men plan to continue doing, though Abernathy says he’ll make sure to have more personal protective equipment the next time he covers a protest, including vapor-tight goggles. He also says he’s considering getting a ballistic helmet and bulletproof vest, both things Lavie tells me he already wears when covering similar events.
When we spoke, Abernathy said he was still recovering from the incident, with some serious bruising from the pepper spray balls and being thrown to the ground, and occasional shivers. But despite knowing that he’ll need to take more precautions in the future, he still sees the need for photographers like him to document these kinds of events. “I think that’s more important than probably most people realize,” he says. “The amount of things that are going on – I don’t know what’s going on in other parts of the country except for what’s been in the news, and I don’t even see all of that. I know that people are seeing bad things, but they’re not seeing all of it; they’re not seeing the volume of it and the random moments.”https://www.instagram.com/p/DTqPqh0Dg9c/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=540&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dpreview.com&rp=%2Finterviews%2F6336791578%2Fjohn-abernathy-pierre-lavie-protest-photographers-ice-minneapolis-thrown-leica#%7B%22ci%22%3A1%2C%22os%22%3A1580.8999999761581%2C%22ls%22%3A374.2999999523163%2C%22le%22%3A1092.1999999284744%7D
Abernathy was out shooting a protest a few days afterwards, with the same camera he threw.
The event has reminded both photographers of the importance of community. Abernathy says he’s received messages from all over the world expressing horror at what’s happening in the US, and gratitude for those documenting it. He also spoke about how other protests he’s covered in Minnesota were moments of bonding for the community, citing how, at the end of a protest over the death of Renee Good, a Somali woman and her husband showed up to feed protesters and give them tea. Lavie spoke of the camaraderie he’s seen between photographers and advised people looking to document events like this to be friendly and ask questions to folks who look like they’ve been doing it a long time.
Finally, there’s the camera. While Abernathy initially thought his Leica had come away unscathed, besides a few new scratches, he said he later discovered that its rangefinder patch had stopped working, forcing him to focus based on his finger’s position on the focusing ring (a task made slightly easier by the fact that he shoots at F11 on a 28mm lens). When we spoke, it was working again, but he was unsure whether the critical focus had shifted. He also says his phone survived the ordeal, despite having been stomped on.
Still, that didn’t stop him from going out and shooting another protest with it, which Lavie was also at. “I’m glad John wasn’t hurt badly,” Lavie says. “He was out that following Saturday taking pictures again. I saw him walk by me. I was like, ‘Oh, dude, you’re out here.'”
