Police target Hells Angels bikies

New South Wales Police have lodged an application with the Supreme Court to declare the Hells Angels motorcycle club as a criminal organisation.

If granted, it would be illegal for members to associate with one another, even hold certain jobs, and would result in two to five years jail if members are in breach of these laws.

This new push to categorise the Hells Angels motorcycle club as a criminal organisation is NSW Police's first attempt to make use of new anti-bikie legislation.
Police reckon the ban would affect around 50 people, and it estimates that there are around 1600 'bikies' in New South Wales.

The New South Wales Crime Command Chief, Dave Hudson, told the ABC, "We are not saying that they are worse than other gangs, we are saying that the Hells Angles motorcycle club at this stage is the club that we have approached the Supreme Court and lodged an application to declare a criminal organisation."

Hudson said the motocycle club was involved in "...serious criminal activity, which ranges from a wide variety of offences, all the way to illicit drug trafficking.

"It would have been irresponsible of the police not to utilise legislation that was available to us to try and control criminal organisations within New South Wales.

"We expect that there may be some challenges, or that not everybody's going to be happy with the action we've taken; we're prepared for that," added Hudson.

However legal experts are not convinced all is hunky dory with the new legislation. Dr Andrew Lynch from the University of NSW said, "There's been a sort of transference where the threat level is completely different. The harm caused by bikies isn't anything like the harm that you see from terrorist organisations and yet we've adapted the same mechanism for dealing with them."

Others have also expressed concern over the new laws, with the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, going on record to say the anti-bikie laws could be used to stymie unions, religious groups and even political parties.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties vice president, David Bernie echoed these thoughts: "It's only a few years away before we'll start seeing laws like this being used against political activists, environmental activists and things like that, saying they're engaged in criminal activity, saying they defaced property or something like that."

The Hells Angels motorcycle club with the help of a bikie gang coalition says it will mount a challenge to the ban in court.