The New South Wales police minister says she will not accept that gangland crime is “out of control”, in the wake of two shooting deaths of seemingly innocent men in as many days.
Instead, she says critics were “kidding themselves” if they thought police were not doing enough.
“I do not accept that this is out of control because, as I said, we will not surrender our streets to organised crime gangs. Not now, not ever,” Police Minister Yasmin Catley said.
“The New South Wales Police are working around the clock to address these issues. And they’re not going to stop.”
She described the way police locked up offenders only for them to be swiftly replaced with new young criminals as like a game of “Whack-A-Mole”.
Sydney has been rocked by two fatal shootings this week, claiming the lives of Marco Tapia and Joshua MacDonald, with both victims believed by police to be innocent parties killed in cases of mistaken identity.
Taskforce Falcon, the squad trying to break the back of Sydney’s gang violence, has urged law-abiding citizens to stay “vigilant” as the city reels from the two murders.
Multiple former and current police officers on Thursday spoke on how rookie hitmen were taking on underworld murder plots at “bottom price rates” and again causing devastation by killing the wrong people.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said the murder of two innocent people was “something that, as an organisation, we will never tolerate”.
“And it’s not something the community has to stand for,” he said.
He said Taskforce Falcon had made 800 arrests in 12 months and described the challenge they faced in stopping the cycle of retaliatory violence.
“The problem with organised crime at the moment is … that we know that those that are organising it are recruiting young people, inexperienced people, using encrypted communications,” he said.
“We believe the large majority of these organised crime offences are being orchestrated from overseas. But we know that there are people onshore who are facilitating and putting together the groups that are doing it.”
The Commissioner said he understood questions over whether police had lost control, but said the number of shootings “demonstrates that there is a complete lack of respect by those that want to engage in organised crime”.
Police are under huge pressure to get a grip, and Taskforce Falcon Commander Detective Superintendent Jason Box told 2GB all resources “were being allocated to solve this”.
Supt Box said there had been eight innocent people killed in alleged underworld shootings since 2021 and police had arrested suspects in six of those cases.
But he urged civilians to “be vigilant” amid the current wave of violence, saying “we need all the assistance that we can get as well”.
“We ask that people be vigilant if they see a car that shouldn’t be in their street. Let us know. If they see people sitting in a car,” he said.
“Let us know if they see people driving at night. Anything unusual, do not hesitate to contact us.”
Radio host Mark Levy asked if Supt Box’s message to be “vigilant” meant that regular people should be “on edge”.
“It makes it sound like … (it’s) average people who need to be concerned or worried about what’s happening in our city,” he put to the senior cop.
Supt Box replied: “There’s obviously concern when these acts are occurring”.
He said acts of violence were being ordered by organised crime figures overseas and “most of them” were being committed by “juveniles or young men … (who) are reckless.”
It comes after university student Mr Tapia, 23, was shot in his own bed at his family home in Glen Alpine early on Tuesday morning when a group of men burst into his bedroom.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr MacDonald, 40, was killed in a driveby shooting in Merrylands West soon after arriving at an associate’s home where two children were also present.
Superintendent Simon Glasser said MacDonald did not feature in any police holdings and was shot as he walked to the front door of the Bruce St home whose residents were well-known for connections to organised crime.
Both incidents followed the non-fatal shooting of another man, related to members of the Alameddine crime clan, during a home invasion in Guildford on Saturday night.
Police are investigating if the man, Emad Alameddine, was targeted purely due to his last name, and he himself is not known to have any involvement in the underworld.
It came amid a feud between the Alameddines and rival network the Coconut Cartel, with senior figures in both groups openly goading each other on social media.
Many people arrested by gangland police in connection with recent underworld shootings have been teenagers or even underage, as crime networks outsource crimes to younger offenders via encrypted chats likened to an Airtasker for crime.
Other shocking incidents of alleged mistaken identity murders include the kidnapping and shooting of 85-year-old widower Chris Baghsarian.
Mr Baghsarian was taken from his home and his body dumped in bushland in February, with police alleging the offenders had believed him to be someone else.
Another was the alleged shooting of young tradie John Versace, 23, gunned down outside his home in Sydney’s southwest last year, a man police said had no criminal links.
Former NSW Police detective Peter Moroney said on Thursday the shocking events of this week showed Sydney’s gangland scene of 2026 was “not the underworld that we’ve known”.
“Let’s go back ten, 15 years. If we looked at the old traditional, Italian mafia-style crime or traditional organised crime, there was a code,” he told the Today show.
“Fast forward to what we have now between allegedly the Alameddines and the Coconut Cartel is that we have guns for hire being done through apps at probably, to be honest, bottom price rates to be able to get it done and get it done very quickly.
“That’s going to bring inexperience. That’s going to bring haste. And what that does now do is cause a greater concern to us in the community of being targeted.
“Whereas in days gone by, there was generally that safety net that if we weren’t involved directly in that crime generally, then we wouldn’t be targeted.
“That seems off the board now.”
Former cop Vincent Hurley, now a criminologist at Macquarie University, said Sydney had entered an era of “disorganised crime” where chaos reigned.
An organised crime detective for 23 years, Mr Hurley said where once crime syndicates would carry out assassinations themselves, such acts were now being “brokered” out for a pittance, often to “kids”.
“And because they’re outsourcing it now to the kids, the kids do not have the same vested interest as the organised crime syndicate does,” he said.
“They don’t have the same, for want of a better phrase, ‘due diligence’ that once organised crime syndicates would have had.
“These kids – you know a 14, 15, 16, 17-year-old kid – who’s offered $5000, they’re going to take that money.”
An alleged senior member of the Coconut Cartel, Iziah Utai, has been providing a running commentary on events in Sydney via social media from his undisclosed location overseas.
Utai, who is wanted for offences related to an alleged May 2025 murder in Sydney, posted a video of him dancing with a gun hours after the non-fatal shooting of Emad Alameddine.
On Tuesday, he reacted to the death of Mr Tapia by sharing a post reading: “Popped the wrong person, didn’t even get the right house”.
The following day he shared another post about the incident captioned “innocent victim” and “RIP Marco”, alongside a passage from the Koran.
Utai has previously posted direct references to well-known members or associates of the Alameddines, including by superimposing their heads on targets at a gun range.
Asked how police stop violence allegedly being planned overseas and carried out by random criminals here, Mr Hurley said bluntly “you can’t”.
“It’s a tragedy to say it,” he said.
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