"THE CAMORRA."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 116, 18 May 1932, Page 8

"THE CAMORRA."

IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

BLAMED FOR A MTTRDER.

ITALIAN CONSUL'S PROTEST. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, April 13. One reads a great deal nowadays of j the "crime wave" that seems to be threat- j enin" social security and peace in all great centres of population throughout the world. Even in England conditions have grown so alarming of late that Hie Majesty the King has appealed to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Loid Trenchard, to do something effective m the way of cleaning up London and . te environs. If this is the state of things at Home, we need hardly be surprised that in a young and sparsely-settled country the criminal record tends from time to time to assume alarming dimensions New South Wales is still maintaining its questionable reputation in this respect. There is one criminal element, however, which appears to have been imported into Australia from abroad, and seems to have already secured for itself a definite foothold in New South Wales. A few clays ago it was reported from Adelaide that an Italian named Musolini had been murdered, and that the local police "suspect the hand of the Camorra." A few weeks back an Italian named Trij machi was shot at Griffith, in this State, ! and though his son was found guilty of the crime the police maintain that his murder was at least in part to be credited to the Camorra.

The murder of Trimachi revived public interest in the activities of the Camorra, which came into the limelight most dramatically in February, 1930, when Domenico Belle was stabbed in broad daylight on the steps of Newtown railway station. The police have been constantly blocked in their investigations i by that "wall of silence" with which such secret societies have always concealed their operations. But it has been officially stated that there are at least 800 members of the Camorra in New Sjjuth -W/aicS,'uQjrM- utrate&in. J. l ;_: ityafc.

Newtown and Woolloomooloo, and in the country in the Griffith and Wollongong districts, and-that they levy blackmail and conduct "vendettas" among themselves in the fashion that has been traditional for centuries in Sicily and Calabria, the parts of Italy from which these people mostly come. Unfortunately, the respectable portion of the Italian community in Sydney resents bitterly the prominence given to these facte of late, and Commendatore Grossardi, the Italian Consul-General, has recently declared that he will secure the publication in all leading Italian newspapers of "a daily chronicle of execrable crimes" committed in this country by Australians, as a set-off to the accusations made here against his own ("nationals." It ie to be hoped that Commendatore Grossardi will realise in time that, just as the Italian Government has been compelled to employ vigorous measures to stamp out the Mafia and the Camorra and other "black hand" organisations,- so it is obligatory upon the police officials here to prevent by all means the establishment of organised crime in our midst, and to take active measures against its promoters, without i fear or favour.