OPERATION DO NOT ANTAGONISE

Bob Waites, Assistant Commissioner of the New South Wales police, has revealed that the following order was issued at 10:45 PM on December 11, 2005, following the initial violence at Cronulla:

"Cars of Middle Eastern persons are not to be approached, just advise … registration number and location."

Much of the police radio traffic is unavailable for scrutiny due to a unique communications fault:

A technical failure meant that two of nine police radio channels were not recorded on the nights of December 11 and 12, when revenge attacks occurred. The digital recording system had been installed for the Olympics, and its only known failure had been on these two nights.

The public has been assured that the technical fault will not hinder police investigations:

Police said last night that the radio glitch was not a major problem. While car registration numbers of possible revenge attackers were not on tape, phone operators had taken them down by hand. They had 200 registration numbers from the nights of December 11 and 12, and none had been lost.

The head of Strike Force Enoggera, Superintendent Ken McKay, said he was sick of the investigation into the revenge attacks being politicised and he promised there would be arrests.

Lots of arrests will do doubt occur soon.

Meanwhile, overnight:

About midnight two groups of males had an altercation in Bondi before one of the groups left the scene.

A short time later, those males described as Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance returned to the scene in two vehicles and again attacked members of the other groups, this time with knives and bottles, before driving away.

As a result six males, aged in their late teens and early twenties have suffered multiple wounds to their necks, legs, backs and arms.

The perpetrators will be arrested soon, right?

In tangentially related news:

The rape gang ringleader Bilal Skaf could be a free man when he is 41 after the High Court upheld a ruling that he was not in the worst category of rapists.

Skaf, now 24, was originally jailed for up to 55 years for a number of attacks in south-west Sydney, but a series of appeals has cut his sentence to a minimum of 22 years, with a parole date of February 2023.

There's more on Skaf and the Sydney rapes here and here.

Update: Two men have been arrested over the multiple stabbings.