5T (gang)
5T was a Vietnamese crime gang active in the Cabramatta and Bankstown area of Sydney, Australia, with sub-groups and ex-members living interstate, in the final two decades of the 20th century. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Vietnam in the immediate years after 1975 following the Vietnam War. Tens of thousands ended up in Southeast Asian refugee camps where they remained for years whilst attempts were made to resettle them in various parts of the world including Australia. Hundreds of  thousands became boat people and tried their luck on the high seas in small, cramped overcrowded boats, in search of freedom. Many of them landed in Australia-with a large proportion settling in Cabramatta in New South Wales. Like many refugee groups who find themselves in a strange new country with limited language skills, no money few job prospects, and given little to none government support, crime soon becomes an attractive alternative to full time work for them. The 5T was the most powerful gang that only limited its membership to the Vietnamese though it had a few other races as associates, with many of its members arriving in Australia as unaccompanied refugee children as boat people. As young, first-generation Vietnamese immigrant gangsters went to war with one another, the suburb of Cabramatta also became the city's murder and drug capital, for approximately a decade and a half. In the end the police finally decimated the gangs in a two-and-a-half-year operation. The gangs were cleared at the end of 2001, following a 15-year reign on the streets of Cabramatta. During that time, Asian street gangs were responsible for the murders of almost 100 and more people, not including overdoses, and thousands arrested for violence and drugs. The rise of 5T
The 5T gang was started by Cabramatta youths who came to Australia with their parents after the fall of the Republic of Vietnam. The formation of the 5Ts began in the mid-1980s. The term '5T', stands for five Vietnamese words starting with 'T'; 'Tình', 'Tiền', 'Tù', 'Tội' and 'Tử', translating to 'Love, Money, Prison, Sin, and Death'. However, 5T also means 'tuổi trẻ thiếu tình thương' which roughly translates to 'childhood without love.' Gang members apparently were tattooed with the emblem consisting of a straight horizontal line and 5 joined vertical lines with members' first and family names starting with the letter T being the horizontal line on top of the name. Tri Minh Tran 
Tri Minh Tran rose to leadership of the 5T gang by the age of 14 in 1989. Born in Vietnam in 1975, Tran arrived in Australia at age 7 as a refugee. By age 11, he had spent six months in a children's institution for carrying a sawn-off shotgun and in the next few years was suspected of the murder of two rival gang members. 5T and heroin trade 
The 5T gang dominated the Cabramatta heroin trade, predominantly at a street level. In January 1988, the Sydney Morning Herald warned, "Criminal gangs in the Vietnamese community are increasingly heavily armed, are moving into drugs and gambling, establishing links with Australian crime figures, and becoming involved in standover rackets in their own community". John Newman first warned of the Vietnamese gangs including the 5T in 1989 in NSW State Parliament, saying, "The Asian gangs involved don't fear our laws. But there's one thing they do fear and that's possible deportation back to the jungles of Vietnam, because that's where, frankly, they belong." Newman campaigned strongly against the crime gangs in Vietnam and received regular death threats before his murder. The street level heroin supply in Cabramatta that sustained the gang and indeed led to its growth, power, wealth and influence in Cabramatta and New South Wales was the heroin supply. The 5T with a gang structure of around 40 fully fledged core members and around 200 and more ‘Associates' prospered as the heroin supply in Cabramatta rapidly increased from 1989 onwards. It is impossible to put a daily average on the amount of heroin that was sold on the streets of Cabramatta, but selling high-grade heroin purchased from the Vietnamese, and Asian importers overseas. Addicts from all across Sydney and beyond began to rush to Cabramatta like birds, eventually numbering in the thousands per day. The "Smack Express" was the name given to the train that ran from Sydney city to Cabramatta station, with thousands from all over flocking like birds to the station everyday for drugs. They were almost never disappointed. The purity of a street deal of heroin in Cabramatta was often three times that of an average shot of heroin sold in the infamous Kings Cross. More than any other gang or individual across the entirety of Australia, the 5T was responsible for expanding the drug trade in Cabramatta and establishing a flourishing drug market on the streets. Supplied by local importers, they sold high-quality and cheap heroin to street dealers, cutting out middlemen to reduce costs and improving the efficiency of the loose-knit distribution networks. They attracted both users and dealers from far and wide. By the end of 1997 a police intelligence assessment estimated that at least 1000 people arrived at Cabramatta station before lunchtime each day to buy heroin. Drug transactions can be realistically measured in the thousands each day. At any time there can be in excess of 100 individual dealers on the street, operating in groups of five to ten and ranging in age from as young as twelve to fifty (although the usual age range is fourteen to twenty-five), both male and female alike. Consequently, the deaths from heroin overdoses began to climb rapidly during the mid 90’s to the 2000’s with as many as over ‘One-Thousand and Sixteen’ deaths by 1999 alone. Children as young as twelve years old were also reported using drugs. Disbandment

In August 1995 the 5T lost its leader when Tri Minh Tran, then twenty-one, and nineteen-year-old member Thanh Hao Nguyen were shot dead by rivals in a 5T-controlled flat in Cabramatta, when Tran opened his front door in McBurney Road, Cabramatta to a gunman. Bullets went through his hands into his nose and face. Each was shot at close range with two .32-calibre pistols. Nguyen was shot twice in the face and head and twice in the stomach. A third member, Hieu Dinh Trinh, who was asleep on the sofa and was shot in the thigh, survived when a bullet bounced off his belt buckle. He was treated for his injuries, but refused to cooperate or say anything to Police in fear of retaliation and not long after ran away from the hospital, and disappeared. No one was charged. The murder of Tran in 1995 sparked a power struggle within the organisation. This was ultimately furthered with the death of the 5T successor. This led to an escalation of violence in the following years, as rival mobs, the 'Madonna's boys' and many street gangs, which were break-away groups of the 5T, challenged the 5T leading to an increase in the murder rate in Cabramatta. This gang warfare eventually led to the NSW Parliament establishing a Parliamentary Inquiry. During this inquiry in 2001, Tim Priest, a police officer based at Cabramatta warned of an upsurge of gang violence in Southwestern Sydney including Asian and Middle Eastern gangs. He was criticised for his comments by then NSW Education Minister John Aquilina and Reba Meagher, Newman's successor as Member for Cabramatta, who labelled him a "disgruntled detective" before being forced to apologise. The successors of the 5T included the Four Aces, Red Dragon and Madonna's Boys (Madonna) [Ro Van Le]. The leader and namesake of the gang, however, was subsequently murdered outside a Western Sydney pub in 1999 shortly after being released from prison, subsequently leading to the eventual demise of the 5T Gang. References

1985 establishments in Australia
Organizations established in 1985
Gangs in Australia
Vietnamese gangs
Street gangs
Organised crime in Sydney
Asian-Australian culture