CANBERRA recently had a frisson of excitement with the Comancheros motorcycle gang visiting town in their full regalia to commemorate the September 1984 Milperra “Father’s Day Massacre”.

Word has been circulating for some time that the Comancheros have their eyes on the lucrative and relatively safe Canberra drugs market.

Make no mistake, bikie gangs are little more than highly visible drug-dealing gangs with a carefully cultivated reputation to scare off competitors.

Where do drugs get sold? Well, if one were to buy something that could get one in trouble with police for having it in one’s pocket, but not in one’s stomach, would one not want to buy it as close as possible to where one would like to consume it?

Which brings us to nightclubs.

James Palumbo has written extensively on the public record about his time running London’s famous Ministry of Sound nightclub.

He had to go to enormous lengths to stop his security staff running the drug trade in the bar.

By his estimate, the illegal drug trade in the Ministry was bringing in more money over a weekend than the ticket and bar sales.

As the outrages mounted he eventually worked with police to crack down and took to bussing security teams in, from hundreds of kilometres away, to work at his venue.

Some of you might be thinking that is London and this is Canberra. Such things couldn’t possibly be going on here. Except they have.

In 2005 Michael Ian Lawrence, the owner of MIL Security, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role as a drug dealer.

When he appealed his sentence the ACT Court of Appeal rejected it in 2007, finding: “These charges arose from a relatively well organised drug distribution exercise, involving what may be described as both ‘retail’ sales of individual tablets of ecstasy, and ‘wholesale’ sales of one-ounce packages of methylamphetamine powder.”

So while we have no proof it is happening right now in Canberra, we can say with some certainty that it has occurred in the recent past.

There is absolutely nothing that links industry incumbent Leader Security or its staff to the trade and Leader Security’s Peta-Lee Henare, in an email to Canberra publicans, says the company has spoken with the AFP about its concerns around a rise in incidents in Civic, particularly in relation to “turf wars”, asking for their assistance “in supporting venues and security officers in order to make licensed venues a safer place.”

Nevertheless, it is clear the current situation is one in which the Rebels gang can operate.

A new player to town will, of course, need to upset that status quo.

They who control the security on the door of the club control who can be in there. In theory they could selectively intercept the dealers working for the other team, while leaving others operating with relative impunity.

While the warm welcome ACT Policing gave the Comancheros recently is to be applauded, it would be disturbing if all their attention was directed effectively to the protection of the entrenched outlaw motorcycle gang, the Rebels.

Canberra is not the setting one would normally expect to find a bikie drug war, but neither was Milperra.

Sources: jade.barnet.com.au/Jade.html#!article=9075;

the-riotact.com/michael-ian-lawrence-gets-five-years/3735;

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195900