And so, the GSU is in the crosshairs - in ten days we should know whether the actions of its officers on Taylor's Alley on Wednesday night were excessive.
For the GSU - which has endured many, many complaints since its formation just over a year ago - this one is different because it is an official investigation.
But, in that year, the unit has also made a record number of interdictions, and gun and drug seizures, while giving the police department a no-nonsense, rough and ready Unit.
And part of the unit's policing strength comes from its tight internal discipline and forward planning - which is built up in regular briefing sessions where they discuss latest intelligence, operations and targets.
7news has obtained a clandestine audio recording of one of these briefing sessions, which happened in the latter part of August of 2011.
It gives a valuable insight into the tactics and hard-charging nature of the unit. We'll share a brief portion of that recording with you tonight.
We stress that we did not arrange for, or solicit this recording - it came to us from the streets. We have checked it out and believe it to be genuine - and we have identified the officer whose voice is on it as being a mid-level member of the GSU.
The briefing was given on the day of Charles Woodeye's funeral - he was a George Street Affiliate - who was murdered on August 15th.
IT shows the unit declaring war on the George Street Gang for an act of disrespect against authorities.
We now know that war culminated in the events of August 26th when all hell broke loose in the George street area - as the GSU rained down on everyone in the vicinity of the George street base. In the end there were many injured with broken limbs and bruised bodies - as well as bilious sentiments towards the police.
Well, a few days before that - this GSU briefing shows that the unit had declared a war on George Street.
Again, the voice leading the briefing is delivered by an intelligence officer of the GSU. First he speaks about a war on George Street and then about the plans for the Woodeye funeral:..
Voice of GSU officer
"What happened is that up to yesterday, the boss says that he will be embarking on, as he puts it, a 'War against George Street' because he finds it as a disrespect for them to have pulled up in the area and opened fire like that. Apparently the police and the GSU were in the area, and they still did something like that. So he finds it as a challenge, like they don't care."
"Anything that walks or crawls or runs on George Street that is what we will deal with. Anything outside of George Street, we still will deal with it but the main focus will be like before, the way we started: We will hit George Street. We don't have a specific code name for the operation, but we will class it as an operation to target George Street."
"The target today is the funeral of Charles Woodye at 2pm. The boss says that he wants us to work the funeral -not to escort the funeral, but to drag out people from out the procession if we believe that they have anything illegal. Drag out the vehicles and search them, he says; he will take the heat. He says he doesn't mind taking the heat, but we just have to bring it on them. So we will have a detail this afternoon."
Police did execute a search during the Woodeye funeral - much to the distress of family members.
Again, the recording came to us hand delivered, from an anonymous source. We called the GSU commander Marco Vidal for comment and explained in detail what we were going to air, but he had no comment.
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