5T (gang)

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The 5T was a Vietnamese crime gang active in the Cabramatta area of Sydney, Australia in the final two decades of the 20th century. It was active in distribution of heroin in that area as well as home invasions and protection rackets and was suspected of involvement in the 1994 assassination of John Newman, the Member for Cabramatta in the NSW State Parliament. Their leader Tri Minh Tran was murdered in 1995 leading to a gradual breakup of the gang.

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[edit] Rise of the 5T

The 5T actually rose from Vietnamese youths who came to Australia with their parents after the fall of the Republic of Vietnam. Over the following decade, many Vietnamese families settled around the Cabramatta area. The 5t gang started forming in the mid 1980's. It allegedly stands "Jail, Death, Guilt, Love, Money" with the Vietnamese words for each of these starting with T although an alternative meaning was "Young People Lack Love" [1]. Gang members apparently were tattooed with the emblem consisting of a straight horizontal line and 5 joined vertical lines.

Tri Minh Tran rose to leadership of the 5T gang by the age of 14 in 1989. He was born in Vietnam in 1975 and arrived in Australia at the age of 7 as a refugee. By the age of 11, he was arrested for carrying a sawn-off shotgun and in the next couple of years was suspected of the murder of two rival gang members.

The 5T gang became the dominant players in the Cabramatta heroin trade especially at street level. In January 1988, the Sydney Morning Herald warned: "Criminal gangs in the Vietnamese community are increasingly heavily armed, are moving into drugs and gambling, establishing links with Australian crime figures, and becoming involved in standover rackets in their own community". [2]

John Newman first warned of the Vietnamese gangs including the 5T in 1989 in NSW State Parliament saying: "The Asian gangs involved don't fear our laws. But there's one thing they do fear and that's possible deportation back to the jungles of Vietnam, because that's where, frankly, they belong." [3] Newman campaigned strongly against the crime gangs in Vietnam and would receive regular death threats before his murder.

[edit] Heyday of the 5T

By the early 1990s, the 5T and the other Vietnamese gangs had turned Cabramatta into the heroin capital of Australia and the gang started organising the importation of heroin. The Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence reported in 1993: "This network, formed around the dominant 5T gang, was engaged in securing a large market with Cabramatta as its centre, by supplying high-quality Southeast Asian heroin (from 65 to 75% pure) for the same price that lower purity heroin was sold for elsewhere (a cap of 0.03 g costs $40-50 on the street). This attracted addicts and dealers from far and wide. By organising its own importations of heroin (typically impregnated in fabric, or carried by couriers returning from Vietnam), it was able to greatly reduce its reliance (and its overheads) on the Chinese criminals who supply the greater proportion of the market. The 5T gang also cut out the middlemen, and sold directly to the street. A marked increase was noted in heroin overdoses, prompting the New South Wales Health Department to issue a public warning." [4]

In the two years between July 1992 and 1994, there were 1,360 people charged with heroin-related offences including 518 for supply of heroin and 63 juveniles [5]. Public attention was focussed on the 5T gangs after the murder of John Newman in September 1993 and Tran was widely suspected after Newman's deaths given the number of death threats the politician had received. Phuong Ngo, a local nightclub owner was eventually convicted of Newman's murder in 2001.

[edit] Breakup of the 5T

Tran left the 5t, this sparked a power struggle within the organization with another leader being assassinated. There was an escalation of violence in 1999 as rival mobs the Four Aces and Madonna's Mob (breakaway groups of the 5T) challenged the 5T leading to an increase in the murder rate in Cabramatta. This gang warfare eventually led to the NSW Parliament establishing a Parliamentary Inquiry. During this inquiry in 2001, Tim Priest, a police officer based at Cabramatta warned of a upsurge of gang violence in Southwestern Sydney including Vietnamese, Chinese and Middle Eastern gangs. He was criticised for his comments by then NSW Education Minister John Aquilina and Reba Meagher, Newman's successor as Member for Cabramatta, who labelled him a "disgruntled detective" [6] before being forced to apologise.

The successors of the 5T include the Four Aces and Madonna's Mob (Madonna the Leader & name sake of the gang was subsequently murdered outside a western sydney pub shortly after being released from jail) as well as Black and Red Dragon gangs who continue to remain active in the drug trade as well as other rackets. Both the Red Dragons and Black Dragons have tried to recruit members from local high schools and are suspected of being an offshoot of the BCG triad. The NSW Police Force had established a task force in 2002 under Dave Madden to address the new triads.

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1997 Four Corners Op. Cit.
  2. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald "Police warn on Viet gangs" 2 January 1988 cited in Parliamentary Joint Committee Report.
  3. ↑ John Newman speaking in NSW Parliament reported on Four Corners Op Cit.
  4. ↑ Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence Australian Drug Intelligence Assessment 1993 page 40 cited in Parliamentary Committee Report Op Cit
  5. ↑ NSW Crime Statistics cited in Joint Parliamentary Committee Report Op. Cit.
  6. ↑ Sun Herald Op. Cit.
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