NEARLY 40 years have passed since the murder of Donald Mackay blew the lid on Mafia entrenchment in Griffith, but the city is struggling to escape its past.
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Allegations are still rife the city at the heart of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is a hotbed of operations for several major players in the Calabrian Mafia.
Not only has a major investigation by the ABC’s Four Corners and Fairfax Media this week unearthed parts of Griffith’s history that many would like to forget, but it has also suggested parts of what a police assessment of the Mafia terms its “board of directors” continue to operate out of the city.
The Four Corners segment on Monday reopened wounds caused to Griffith’s past by figures such as Bob Trimbole, former immigration minister Al Grassby and convicted drug importer Pasquale Barbaro, reliving in detail a number of notorious incidents from the murder of Mr Mackay to a bungled plot last decade that ended in Australia’s largest ever ecstasy bust.
“It is very hurtful for Griffith, we’re not very proud of our history over this particular issue,” mayor John Dal Broi said.
“We’re pretty well ashamed over some of our history, but time goes on and families and children grow.”
Decades later, police in Griffith are still having to keep tabs on Mafia-related organised crime.
“The reality of organised crime within Griffith is recognised by the Griffith Local Area Command,” Griffith police Superintendent Michael Rowan said. “Strategies that have been employed over a number of years and that will continue are the focus on drug cultivation and supply by these networks.”
Superintendent Rowan said efforts to tackle organised crime in the city needed the community’s help. He is urging people who have information police may be interested in to come forward.
But while the Calabrian Mafia continues to draw a long shadow over Griffith, both Cr Dal Broi and Superintendent Rowan stress it is only the misdeeds of a very select few who are sullying the town’s name.
“It needs to be recognised that the criminal element are only a small part of the community and it is those people who are targeted by police in the Griffith LAC,” Superintendent Rowan said.