As well as the dramatic roadside arrest of the three men, a suspected gangland assassination on a street with a toddler just metres away from the fatal shooting has occurred this month in another display of complete disregard for public safety.

“Fundamental to the organised crime and serious crime that you’re seeing play out at the moment is the amount of drugs that are coming into this country,” he said. “It’s astronomical what our seizures are now.

“It’s border control drugs, heroin, meth, cocaine, MDMA. That’s what’s really driving the crime.”

The increased arrival of illegal firearms on our shores has also changed the game.

“It’s not just drugs coming into the country, it’s also a significant amount of firearms that are being imported. Our gangsters now are getting access to firearms that are cutting edge,” Cook said.

Criminals have made good use of ever-changing technology; they recruit hitmen on encrypted apps, they pay in Bitcoin, they spy on each other using Airtags and they protect their residences with facial recognition technology.

“When you put [firearms and drugs] together with the use of telecommunications at the moment, the underworld is really leaps and bounds ahead of where it was five or six years ago.”

The shifting criminal landscape has also allowed the rise of a new type of criminal activity – finding and hiring contract killers online.

The three men arrested last week had no ties to their would-be victim, police said in announcing the arrests, but they were motivated to murder for money. None of the trio had any organised crime links.

Looking to limit their liability and concentrate their efforts on Sydney’s lucrative drug market, the contemporary organised crime network is now outsourcing in what has been branded “Airtasker for crooks” by senior police.

“You’re seeing the rise now of contract criminals who are basically in a marketplace online, taking contracts for all different types of crimes,” Cook said.

These contracts concern police, he said, partly because they are often taken by amateurs with no regard for collateral damage.

“The people who are now engaging in this crime, some of them are not very good at it … they’re taking on contracts that they can’t do, which makes them vulnerable and their families vulnerable. Or they carry out the contracts that they’re being given and they kill the wrong person.”

Sydney plumber John Versace and teen Luke Manassa are among those killed this year whom investigators suspect may have been murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

“People have been killed because the amateurs who are trying to do this and trying to be gangsters are just getting it wrong,” said Cook.

The non-stop publication of violence online has also made sweeping changes to the underworld, he said.

“What’s changed is the nature and the context that organised crime’s operating in. And I think we’re seeing more on CCTV, we’re seeing more online, we’re seeing more streamed violence. We’re seeing people who are capturing the pieces of the organised crime that’s playing out on the streets.”

This has twin impacts. It frightens the community, despite the overall decline in crime, and, chillingly, it numbs viewers to violence.

“On one hand, it’s extremely shocking for the community – it creates fear. That’s not based on increased numbers – that’s based on increased exposure that the community is getting to this violent thing.

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“But it’s also desensitising a lot of young people to this level of violence … [and they’re] thinking that they can be gangsters, taking these contracts and executing people. If they’re being desensitised to this violence, we’ve got a significant problem there as well, because that’s only going to grow young people into gangsters,” Cook said.

The Minns government introduced so-called “post and boast” legislation last year. Aimed at cracking down on regional crime across the state, the new laws outlaw boasting on social media about stealing cars or breaking into homes.

Cook says posting about crime has escalated from stealing a car to content creation around the most serious crimes.

“The fact that this is being recorded … we’re seeing live stream now with recordings of murders and attempted murders,” he said.

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