Title: Re: Fears of 'another Cronulla riot' 20 years on
Post by Baronvonrort on Dec 11th, 2025 at 12:02pm
Brian Ross wrote on Dec 11th, 2025 at 11:17am:Bwhine will never mention this Quote:Assistant Commissioner reflects on Cronulla's day of shame
"It was probably the biggest police operation, as it turned out, not just the daytime events, but the revenge attacks that followed and the intensity of the political and media interest in it."
Speaking on the eve of the 20th anniversary, Goodwin has revealed there was much about the riots and the subsequent revenge attacks that was never revealed.
Tensions in the area had been simmering for months, with groups of young Middle Eastern men from Sydney's southwest travelling to Cronulla Beach.
"We need to make a very strong point," Goodwin stresses.
"The ones that were causing trouble down here were little gangsters that were well known by the police in their own area, who were escaping, probably, police attention on a weekend, coming to the Cronulla area because they were so well known in their own area, and they were coming out to Cronulla and (making) some very, very offensive comments to young women."
When two Cronulla lifeguards were assaulted and hospitalised, locals were incensed."Like any riots around the world, there's always a flash point, and that flash point was an assault on the lifeguards by some of these young Lebanese men from the western suburbs," Goodwin says.
"I well knew the possible retaliatory attacks and what might occur.
"The revenge attacks started, and they built up to a point where we had… it went on for weeks.
"The violence that was exhibited and that the police dealt with was probably, I'd say, at least ten times, possibly up to a hundred times, worse than anything that occurred on the day at Cronulla."
Goodwin describes it as mobile rioting.
"We had groups of up to 50 carloads of young men who were rampaging through the suburbs.
"We had roadblocks, and we had suburbs shut down, and we literally took off the street truckloads of weapons, you know, from cars and people, and we're talking baseball bats, knives, guns.
"I remember seeing a picture that was shown by some of the operational police of a billiard leg table that would have had a hundred nails sticking out the end of it."
Beachside suburbs were targeted.
"These were short, sharp, intense visits to suburbs and just trashing entire suburbs, smashing windows, stabbing people, and batting, baseball batting people, and then they're out again."
Crates of Molotov cocktails were seized and police learned of plans for mass attacks at Sydney shopping centres.
"We had very strong information and intelligence that there was going to be a drive-by shooting and a hand grenade thrown into the beer garden the following weekend at Northies, which is the popular hotel at North Cronulla," Goodwin recalls.
New emergency lockdown legislation and specialised rapid response teams of riot police and highway patrol eventually gained the upper hand.
Goodwin and then police minister Carl Scully have set the record straight in their book The Cronulla Riots.
"We've had even academics write it up, and it's all in the school curriculum, and it's everywhere, and it's all the white, racist bogans of the Cronulla area," Goodwin told me.
"There's nothing to do with the revenge attacks.
"There's nothing to do with the buildup to it, which is really the whole circumstances of the big picture."
"The issues that the police were dealing with were off the Richter scale, like I had never seen in my police career."
https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/assistant-commissioner-reflects-on-cronullas-day-of-shame/d5080d14-a216-49c8-8c40-6f07c7ac86af |
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The Police said they foiled a revenge plot to do a mass shooting at Westfield Miranda by these Lebanese muslims. Dr Jamal Rifi a lebanese spokesman said he saw assault rifles in a car boot with the Lebanese mob wanting to do drive by shootings he told them not to do it. The Police set up road blocks going into Cronulla for a couple of weeks to stop car loads of Lebanese muslims going into Cronulla for revenge attacks. The Police said the revenge attacks were 10-100 times worse than what happened with that day at Cronulla. We had the Sydney gang rapes done by Lebanese muslims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_gang_rapesThe biggest problem with Cronulla was it targeted all Lebanese when it was just the Lebanese muslims causing trouble. The Maronite Christians from Lebanon have never caused any trouble.
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