Former detective Deb Wallace, aka ‘The Gangbuster’, was involved in some of Australia’s most intense gang operations.
Early in her career in the ’90s, Deb was deployed to lead a gang task force in Cabramatta, Sydney.
The task force was low-budget and Deb didn’t have much experience to draw on at the time, so she decided to approach gang leaders of the 5T gang to find where to start.
Hear how former detective Deb Wallace came face-to-face with leaders of the 5T gang on this episode of the Crime Insiders podcast:
She said the gang at the time had an oddly “amicable” relationship with police.
The leader of the 5T gang, Tri Minh Tran, was murdered in 1995. There was speculation that Tran wanted to move away from selling heroin.
“He was concerned his own community would start using it. He could see the signs of the youngest street runners starting to taste the heroin,” Wallace told Crime Insiders.
Those who relied on him for distribution saw it as a threat to their business Wallace said, and this could have led to his murder.
After his death, Wallace approached gang leaders in the Cabramatta area, and told them about her newly-appointed position.
“As much as I thought I knew this – I had been locking them up for five years – did I really understand them? So I went out and approached them,” Wallace said.
What 5T gang leaders said next left police shocked.
“They said, ‘Our leader is dead, so we are a snake without a head.’ But then they said, ‘You know what? Three things will happen to us as senior gang members. We will get killed, go to jail because you used to do your job and lock us up, or if we’re lucky to survive the first two, we may just grow up and grow out. You may cut the grass, but there’s always weeds to come through.“
The gang leaders referred to a younger generation of 5T members that were following in their footsteps.
Wallace said the group originally came from refugee camps, arrived to Sydney without family, and that’s how they were bonded. But the younger street runners, Wallace said, were deciding not to go to school and their situation was worsening.
Wallace said the gang leaders told her, “The challenge for you to stop the cycle is to give the ones coming through education. Because with education, there’s hope. With hope, they get a job, and then they go on not to do crime.“
Hear what Wallace did next on Crime Insiders, taking you beyond true crime. In groundbreaking interviews, explore the world of policing and forensics through stories from the world’s most experienced and decorated experts.