COSTA TARGETS ARMED ROBBERS

A special team of detectives will investigate armed hold-ups as new figures
reveal that such robberies soared by more than a third in two years.

Four areas of Sydney have borne the brunt of the rise, which has been
blamed largely on a heroin drought driving up prices and pushing addicts
into more desperate robberies.

In Blacktown, armed robberies rose 138 per cent in the two years to last
December. Also hard hit were St George-Sutherland, where the rise was 77
per cent; central western Sydney, taking in Auburn, Holroyd and Parramatta
(64 per cent); and Canterbury-Bankstown (43 per cent).

The Police Minister, Michael Costa, responded by announcing the new armed
robbery response team - but he insisted it would not be a reborn armed
hold-up squad.

That unit, once home to some of the state's best, and most notorious,
detectives, was disbanded in the early 1990s. It was discredited at the
Wood Royal Commission as harbouring corruption.

"That's why we're not going back to the days of Blue Murder," Mr Costa
said, referring to the ABC television drama on 1980s gangsters and corrupt
police.

The jump in armed robberies was the main finding of the annual NSW Bureau
of Crime Statistics and Research figures. As the data was released yesterday:

- -- Senior Constable Glenn McEnallay, who was shot in the head and chest as
he sat in his patrol car at Hillsdale eight days ago, died in Prince of
Wales Hospital. Police recovered three handguns after he was shot.

- -- A woman was shot in the arm near a Fairfield ATM, the day after a patron
was shot in a hold-up at the Diggers Club at North Bondi. The bureau's
director, Don Weatherburn, said there was a significant increase in the
availability of handguns, especially in Sydney's south-west.

"I think there's no doubt there are more handguns in circulation. But it's
manifest not just in the firearm robbery category; it's manifest in the
shoot with intent to do grievous bodily harm, or murder."

Rates in most crime categories were stable over the two years, but
robberies with a firearm rose by 34.1 per cent across the state.

Fraud rose about 16 per cent and assaults by about 8 per cent, while sexual
offences and acts of indecency fell 6 per cent and burglaries by 3 per
cent. All other crimes, including murder, remained stable.

Mr Costa said "a core of experienced detectives and intelligence analysts"
would help plan and co-ordinate operations against armed robbers.
"Certainly, this is not an armed hold-up squad," he said.

But such a squad is exactly what the state needs, says the Opposition
police spokesman, Andrew Tink.

"He's making it up as he goes," Mr Tink said of Mr Costa. "There's no point
'responding'. A response team is following, not leading; being reactive,
not proactive."

Mr Tink acknowledged that special squads had caused problems in the past
but that after years of reform the force should be able to form a
corruption-resistant armed hold-up squad.

Dr Weatherburn attributed the armed robbery jump in the four areas to the
heroin drought first noted between December 2000 and January 2001, saying
that immediately after "you started getting higher levels of robbery with a
firearm".

The Opposition Leader, John Brogden, meanwhile backed a plan to put police
in 10 high schools considered most at risk of gang violence.