Rat-out A Bikie Week

This week the Western Australia police launched a unique campaign which they hope will help them in their battle against organised crime.

It's called "Dob a Bikie".
A Bikie is a colloquial term for a biker and it is unashamedly Australian. Australians have created an entire lexicon of words they have shortened (or lengthened) to fit into their daily lives such as righto, goodo and Maca's (McDonalds) - which they pepper their conversations with.

Bikie's here are leather wearing, long bearded, Harley Davidson driving gangsters. They control the drug and nightclub market throughout Australia and go by names such as the Coffin Cheaters, Hells Angels, Gypsy Jokers, Finks and the Camencheros amongst others.

These gangs are ruthless and have had long running, bloody battles with police.

Recently some of these gangs have been outlawed in parts of Australia where authorities have imposed laws - similar to ones the Apartheid government used - that has banned membership or gatherings by these people.

They live by a code of silence. Recently when a former leader of one of the gangs was shot here in Perth, he refused to allow doctors to remove a bullet lodged in him because according to their code they do not get the police to sort out their disputes. Had the police removed the bullet it might have led them to shooter and these guys do not want that.

This week, the police have gone on the offensive urging Perth's residents to rat out the bikies in their neighbourhood. Not like the police can just arrest a bikie because he happens to live in your street, what they actually want from people is intelligence like car registration plates and the such.

Just hours after launching their campaign, the police received more than 300 calls from the upstanding four wheeled drivers of the community. 60% of which were being investigated. The other 40% were from bikies themselves, pranking the police's hotline.