Merrylands has emerged as Sydney’s biggest cluster of shootings, with eight homes targeted in the suburb over two years. The pattern has placed one western Sydney pocket at the center of a violence wave that youth workers say is now reaching children as young as 15.
That is why George Pedersen is using language he says he never expected to need after 24 years as a youth worker. At the Merrylands Youth Centre, where young people once tended to drift toward petty crime, he now deals with stabbings and kidnappings. “It’s next level,” he said. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it.”
Pedersen’s warnings land in a suburb that has spent the past decade becoming synonymous with organised crime because of its connection to the Alameddine crime family. The network has long been based in Merrylands, and much of its leadership has fled Australia or been arrested as police scrutiny has intensified. In that vacuum, younger people have been pulled into Sydney’s underbelly and hired out as subcontractors for shootings and firebombings aimed at rival gangs.
Police and court activity have not slowed that pipeline. Detectives working under Taskforce Falcon have arrested hundreds of teenagers and young men, yet Premier Chris Minns has admitted the high arrest rate does not seem to be stopping kids from getting involved in crime. He said the scale of arrests has been striking, but the pattern keeps repeating, with young offenders showing a recklessness that belies their age and experience.
That helps explain why Merrylands is more than a postcode in this story. Taskforce Falcon was established last year at the height of violence tied to the fracturing of the Alameddine network, and officers have since watched alleged members of G7 take contracts from networks on either side of conflicts. The result is a criminal market that prizes youth, speed and distance, allowing overseas-based figures to keep directing violence in Sydney even as local arrests stack up.
Pedersen said the payment offers are part of what keeps drawing teenagers back. “They get dragged into areas they shouldn’t because they’re offered money to do the things that they shouldn’t,” he said. For Sydney, that is the unresolved problem: arrests have not broken the supply of young subcontractors, and Merrylands remains the place where the violence is being felt most sharply.
