PREMIER STEPS INTO ETHNIC CRIME ROW

Migrants with criminal histories in their country of origin were
responsible for drug and violence problems in Cabramatta and Lakemba, the
Premier said yesterday.

Mr Carr, who has asked the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, to review
Cabramatta's policing strategies, called yesterday for police, business
leaders and the community to work together to solve Cabramatta's problems.

"There are some people on the fringes of that community who've got a
criminal history in their own country and [are] replicating in Australia
some of the practices they've bought with them," Mr Carr told ABC radio.

"It is people on the fringes of these communities - the Vietnamese or the
Indo-Chinese in Cabramatta, the Lebanese at Lakemba - people on the fringes
of basically good communities and respectful communities, that are causing
the problems."

Mr Carr's remarks follow the warning of the outgoing Federal Police
Commissioner, Mr Mick Palmer, that ethnically based gangs are responsible
for much of the rise in violent crime and the increasing use of knives and
handguns.

Police sources said a "new generation of policing initiatives" demanded by
Mr Carr was likely to include increased powers to allow officers to remove
from the streets those waiting to buy drugs.

The Government is also opposed to a suggestion late last year by the Police
Deputy Commissioner, Mr Jeff Jarratt, to close Fairfield police station and
merge it with Cabramatta.

Mr Carr yesterday challenged Cabramatta's Chamber of Commerce, a vocal
critic of a perceived neglect of the suburb, to be more constructive.

"I think it's silly to talk about suing police, about taking police off the
streets and sticking them in the court while the Chamber of Commerce sues
them," he said.

The chamber president, Mr Ross Treyvaud, said the legal action was being
considered by a group of shopkeepers - not the chamber - and it was planned
against the Government, not police.

Mr Treyvaud, who is also president of the Cabramatta Police and Citizens
Youth Club, said the chamber worked with police every day, and he had
donated $30,000 this year to the youth club.

Unity MP Dr Peter Wong said there were no Vietnamese or Chinese-speaking
police in Cabramatta, although most residents were from these two ethnic
groups.

A Police Service spokesman confirmed there were no officers in Cabramatta
who spoke an Asian language, although there were three civilian ethnic
community liaison officers who spoke Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian.

Mr Carr said his Government had increased Cabramatta's police force from 86
officers to 126 since 1995 and introduced new measures such as the Drug
Court and a 20-bed detoxification unit at FairfieldHospital.

The latest newsletter from the Premier's Office's Cabramatta Project, which
was last published in August, includes a claim that the number of drug
arrests in Cabramatta hadincreased.

But in November the director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and
Research, Dr Don Weatherburn, told an Upper House parliamentary inquiry
into Cabramatta that Cabramatta's drug enforcement had fallen by up to 52
per cent in the previous two years.

There had been no comparable trend in other parts of NSW, and he concluded:
"It is more likely that police have eased off in their enforcement action."