Innocent bystanders caught up in Sydney’s gangland war | 7.30 [3:34-6:48]

And an elderly couple was targeted in two separate drive-by shootings within 24 hours. How concerning is that this is really spilling into the community? Very concerning. Concerning for the community as it should be and very concerning for us that these people perpetrating these acts don't really care about who's inside these premises. The head of the New South Wales Crime Command told 730 young people, including teenagers, were being recruited online to carry out gangland hits. We've seen recent examples about where young men are willing to shoot people in the street with these children and others and all this collateral damage that could ultimately occur and we've seen wives and children attacked for the purpose of getting to someone else. Things have changed dramatically. Once upon a time, it used to be all done in-house, where you would never, what we would say now, outsource to a third party or even use a broker to outsource to a third party. I was constantly at that way because it keeps them one or two steps removed from the actual crime. Police investigations have revealed, in some cases, inexperienced criminals are bidding for underworld contracts, via encrypted apps. Is there greater risk for things to go wrong when you have an inexperienced criminal carrying out these things? Yes, we've seen innocent people who were coming home being shot or stabbed because those young criminals don't get their target correct and they don't seem to care about this. In February, the worst fears of police were realised when an 85-year-old widower named Chris Bagsarian was kidnapped from his home in the northern suburbs of Sydney. Mr Bagsarian's family are not involved in any criminal world but I'm a million percent confident that they have the wrong person. Eleven days later, the pensioners body was found near a golf course. Police! Search work! Open the door! Two men in their 20s were arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder. Neither Jared Andrews nor Daniel Stevens had any record of committing serious crimes. Certainly, from what I can gather, my client was no mastermind in respect to his involvement in this particular matter. Last week, police arrested and charged a third person with murder. It's alleged 23-year-old Declan James Donnelly was the ringleader of the botched kidnapping. As a former hostage negotiator for eight years, I can never recall anyone ever being accidentally kidnapped. Vince Early is a former detective who spent nearly 29 years in the New South Wales Police Force. This is something that hasn't happened in the past and that single event would have been a seismic shift in the way elderly people viewed crime and how they view crime within their own personal safety within society.