(video)-A FORMER Gold Coast top cop who took on the bikies has made the startling claim that they “don’t commit that much crime”.
Crimefighter turned criminologist Terry Goldsworthy says bikies are responsible for less than 1 per cent of crime in Queensland and have been unfairly demonised.
In today’s Qweekend magazine, the former Burleigh Heads CIB chief says the September 2013 Broadbeach bikie brawl was nothing more than “a fist fight” and the tough anti-gang laws introduced by the then Newman government were a “massive overreach”.
“It (the VLAD laws) was the most classic example we’ve ever seen of a moral panic,” Dr Goldsworthy said.
“The response was almost a sledgehammer to a walnut approach.”
Dr Terry Goldsworthy.
Dr Goldsworthy has been a fierce critic of the Vicious Lawless Disestablishment Act (VLAD) and together with university colleague Laura McGillivray has written a soon-to-be published paper, entitled Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs and the Drug Trade: The Fallacy of Queensland’s Anti-Bikie Laws.
In it, they cite Queensland Police Service figures showing bikie gang members were responsible for between only 0.17 and 0.6 per cent of all reported crime in Queensland between 2008 and 2014.
Dr Goldsworthy’s views are at odds with major crimefighters, including senior police and Crime and Corruption Commission boss Alan MacSporran, who have warned of a bikie resurgence ahead of the Palaszczuk Government’s expected repeal of VLAD laws.
Taskforce Maxima boss Superintendent Mick Niland has told Qweekend that bikies are regarded nationally as “a major threat”.
