Police look for answers in text messages – National – smh.com.au
Police look for answers in text messages – National – smh.com.au
Police look for answers in text messages
By Jonathan Pearlman, Josh Paine and Jordan Baker
December 14, 2005
TEXT messages and emails urging gangs to muster for rampages in and around Sydney continued to be widely circulated yesterday, as police announced a taskforce would investigate the use of phones to incite violence.
Residents of Sutherland Shire yesterday reported receiving several messages a day, including one purportedly intercepted from Lebanese gangs that threatened to “exterminate the enemy at Cronulla”. Emails were also sent announcing plans to attack Terrigal, Wollongong and Bondi this weekend.
A Cronulla resident, Cameron Johnston, said he had received about three or four texts a day.
“You are getting text messages from people you don’t even know,” he said. “The next day I would ring the number and it was disconnected. [I have] no idea where it came from. I don’t know where they’re getting my number.”
The Minister for Police, Carl Scully, said a 36-person taskforce was investigating the use of mobile phones and could order arrests of those who had incited violence.
Under the Commonwealth criminal code, anyone who uses phones to threaten, menace or offend another person can be jailed for up to two years. The law can be applied by NSW police.
A legal expert said anyone who sent messages inciting racial violence, wore T-shirts with offensive slogans (one that read “Mahommid [sic] was a camel f—ing faggot” was worn at Cronulla) or sang Waltzing Matilda in malicious contexts, which also happened in the Cronulla riots, could be prosecuted under the Federal Government’s new sedition laws.
