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Has the Apex gang been mortally wounded?

Nino Bucci
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Has the Apex gang been mortally wounded, less than a year after a brawl at Moomba thrust them into the spotlight? 

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane appeared to suggest as much during a press conference on Sunday.

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More than 20 people were arrested and police used capsicum spray to break up a fracas in Federation Square during White Night.

Mr Leane was speaking about a fight that had been organised to erupt during White Night, which had finished earlier that morning, when he was asked whether Apex was responsible.

"I'm not sure Apex even still exists," he said.

"It still exists in the media ... but the young people have moved on talking about Apex, as far as we can work out."

He then qualified the comments by saying that Apex had never been a gang.

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He said they were a group of mostly 14- to 19-year-olds, who were connected on social media, and were not necessarily based in the same suburbs or from the same cultural background.

Police have previously used similar language to describe the loose collective of teenage offenders, despite far stronger terms being used by Labor and Coalition politicians as youth crime became an issue that could shape the outcome of next year's election.

"They're not a gang...they are a group of young people who come together through networking," Mr Leane said on Sunday.

"I think that the name is still used, some of the young people use it, but...these young people are linked in through Facebook and Snapchat and other measures.

"They're as organised as Facebook is organised. They will talk to each other over the network, but they're not organised in the sense of office holders or anybody else."

The fracas at White Night appeared linked to two groups of youths who were embroiled in either a north-south or south-west rivalry, he said.

A person familiar with the cases of several youth offenders said it was possible that the most serious criminals linked to Apex had been jailed in the past 11 months, seemingly stopping the stream of coverage related to the group.

But he also said that the perception of the group as an organised and vicious gang which terrorised huge chunks of Melbourne, predominantly in the south-east, had been cultivated by the media, and had never been the reality.

It was also inaccurate that most members were African, he said, with youths from a Anglo-saxon, Maori and Pacific Islander, and even Afghani background linked to Apex.

"At most it was 120 to 130 kids, not all known to each other but in overlapping groups, who were from all walks of life, and... were looking for thrills, and then after they got a name started linking it with Apex," he said.

"It was almost a joke to some of them, taking photos with Apex written in cash and stuff like that."

Nelly Yoa, who volunteers with youth offenders, including some linked to Apex, said that some initially welcomed the notoriety of being associated with the group.

But he said that as it became clear that Apex was being directly targeted by police and authorities, and that some offenders even faced deportation, the attraction had waned.

"A lot of the young guys had embraced the name, but it's certainly been dying down."