Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (33 page)

Hells Angels will deal with Hispanic, black and other ethnic gangs — as with the West Toronto Chapter's gun- and drug-running relationship with the Mount Olive Crips or the Montreal Hells Angels' close association with the Master B street gang — but not nearly as easily. Shared languages, cultures and even friends and family give more diverse gangs an edge on the increasingly isolated Hells Angels.

This, of course, makes perfect sense in California (particularly in the south) and other southwestern regions where non-Hispanic whites are a minority. The same could be said of Toronto and many parts of Canada that are becoming increasingly diverse. And many of these immigrant communities — like those before them — have brought their own crime organizations with them.

A related reason why Hells Angels have ceded large areas of the United States to other biker gangs has to do with who their suppliers and employers are. Traditionally, bikers such as Hells Angels have depended on the traditional Italian Mafia to supply them with drugs and tasks like extortion, loan-sharking and protection rackets.

But the Mafia is shrinking both in size and scope. Law enforcement would like to take credit for this, but a big part of it has been demographics. As Italian and Irish families become further removed from the immigrant experience, the lure of organized crime has diminished.

Taking their place are gangs from other regions: East Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe and, in particular, Latin America.

It's safe to say that the Latin American gangs — especially the Mexican drug cartels — are better armed, better trained and more determined than any other criminal organization before them. Among them, they have turned much of Mexico into a war zone, with government troops occupying many border towns, while violence — including the beheadings of rival gang members and those in law enforcement — rages. At the heart of the violence are a number of former special operations officers from police and the military who were taught about urban combat by American, Israeli and other experts but then left their employers for the higher pay and added prestige of the cartels.

As Mexico became increasingly lawless, U.S. authorities stepped up border security. The cartels adapted in a number of ways. Instead of sending large shipments over the border, they sent small shipments over with illegal immigrants — paid a pittance or forced to do it, and always sworn to secrecy — carrying small amounts of drugs or the basic ingredients of manufactured drugs over the border with instructions to collect on the other side.

Since importing finished products like methamphetamine is a felony, while smuggling key components like pseudoephedrine (the active ingredient in most decongestants) is a misdemeanor, the cartels have gradually moved their drug manufacturing over the border. Throughout the American West, there are secret drug-making factories staffed by illegal immigrants who manufacture methamphetamine quickly and efficiently.

This has become a huge problem for Hells Angels. They have been dealing meth on a large scale since the 1960s. But they and their increasingly small network of independent methmaking operations — what American cops often call “Beavis and Butthead labs” because of the kind of people who run them — simply can't compete with the volume, quality and prices offered by the Mexicans.

Nor can they compete with their ferocity. Despite their reputation for violence, Hells Angels are no match for the battle-hardened, well-armed soldiers and commandos the Mexican cartels have at their disposal. As one New Mexico-based agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) told me: “Once the Mexicans show up, those guys [Hells Angels] scramble to get out of town.”

But since much of the drug-buying public (and those involved with other vices like prostitution and illegal gambling) are English-speaking, the Mexican cartels usually rely upon bikers to serve as their retailers. Every once in a while, there will be a deal between the Hells Angels and Latin Americans (particularly in Canada), but the cartels are increasingly turning to gangs with Spanish-speaking members, including previously all-white organizations like the Outlaws and Bandidos.

Although the Latin American immigrant population of Canada is still relatively small, the country — especially British Columbia — has caught the attention of the Mexican cartels. The primary draw has been BC Bud, a particularly powerful strain of marijuana grown in the province. Through the use of such specialized farming technology as aeroponics and halogen daylight simulators, farmers in B.C. have been able to produce unprecedentedly huge crops of marijuana with a much higher THC content than ever seen before.

While it sells for a small premium on the domestic market, it sells for a much higher amount across the border and is even reported to be traded on a one-for-one basis for cocaine in Miami. Because of this, authorities have intercepted BC Bud traveling into the U.S. not just in the traditional ways, but in school kids' knapsacks, hot-air balloons, ocean-going kayaks and even purpose-built tunnels constructed under the border. That kind of profit margin has led to many different gangs attempting to get a piece of the pie (which authorities estimated to be worth $6.3 billion in 2008), and the Mexican cartels have moved in with force.

Not only has the volume and potency of BC Bud led to decreased sales of Mexican- and U.S.-grown marijuana, but the cartels have also found that it is actually much easier to move product over the Canadian-U.S. border than it is over the heavily defended U.S.-Mexican border.

So far, Hells Angels have managed to keep a lid on B.C. They have done so largely by staying off the front lines and dealing with smaller (often racially mixed) gangs like the United Nations and the Red Scorpions. But they are in a precarious position. In fact, it's a scenario not unlike the one that occurred in Montreal in the 1990s that gave birth to the Rock Machine because it pits an insular gang that makes rules against street-level dealers and smaller gangs who have their own ideas about how best to profit from the distribution of drugs.

Back then, a few dealers who did not want to deal with Hells Angels and their rules teamed with bar owners and disgruntled bikers like the Cazzetta brothers and Paul Porter and the Mafia to form an alliance that eventually fought a long and bloody war with Hells Angels for the streets of Montreal. The Mafia was Hells Angels' primary supplier, but they did not want to have one single avenue of sale; instead they played the Rock Machine against Hells Angels. By having them both sell drugs in direct competition with one another, it increased the Mafia's volume and selling price.

Currently in B.C., one can see the Mexican cartels eclipsing Hells Angels as the primary distributors and exporters of BC Bud and they are reported to be currently seeking other gangs to deal with. Complicating matters is the fact that until recently, Hells Angels practically had a monopoly on cocaine sales in B.C. But the Mexicans have more, better and cheaper cocaine. In fact, they have found it easier to barter cocaine for BC Bud instead of importing the large quantities of cash that would be necessary for such huge transactions. The effect has been to bring down the overall price of cocaine, putting a significant bump in Hells Angels' bottom line. And the bartering has brought cocaine — and its inherent problems — to parts of B.C. that had never seen that kind of thing before.

While the Mexican cartels already deal with a number of ethnic gangs in major Canadian centers, if they want to expand in Canada, it would make sense to employ outlaw biker gangs. While it is, of course, true that previous attempts by the Outlaws and Bandidos to establish themselves north of the border met with eventual failure, that doesn't mean they won't try again.

Keep in mind that Hells Angels were repeatedly rebuffed when they first tried to come to Canada, and, even under the masterful hand of Walter Stadnick, it took many years and some significant failures and some outside help before they could take Ontario.

For now, Hells Angels are pretty much it for bikers in Canada. But another group will almost certainly rise to challenge them. Maybe the Outlaws or Bandidos will take another shot. More likely, a gang who hasn't already been burned in this country will set up shop.

Until recently, my money would have been on the Mongols, but they have hit a massive roadblock. On October 21, 2008, 38 members were arrested after ATF agents infiltrated a chapter and became full-patch members. Two days later, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted an injunction that prohibited club members, their family members and associates from wearing, licensing, selling or distributing the Mongols' logo. The reason she gave was that, according to police testimony, the Mongols had used the logo and names as an identity and as a form of intimidation to help them, among other things, commit crimes. Despite an outcry from the club and free-speech advocates, the injunction held for a year.

While the Mongols have slowly started to wear their patches around the U.S. and started to sell support wear again, their long-planned expansion east of the Mississippi and into Canada appears to have been indefinitely shelved. Still, the guestbook on the Mongols Canada website is peppered with posts from people claiming to be Canadian Mongols, including one who goes by “Irish” (there was a Bandido prospect by the same name) and another named “Red Power.” Before the injunction, media reports as recent as 2007 claimed that the Mongols were setting up a loosely organized puppet gang in Winnipeg made up of former Bandidos associates — many of Aboriginal descent — called Red Power.

There are, of course, always the Outlaws. As the years have gone by, more and more of the original Outlaws have gotten out of prison and more and more of the court-ordered restrictions on the free ones expire. They have regrouped to some extent in Ottawa and Niagara (under the auspices of Mario Parente's old friend Richard “Dooker” Williams), but still appear too small to make a dent in the Hells Angels hegemony in the province. Some knowledgeable sources I've spoken with have speculated that Parente could rejoin his old mates and rally them back into a viable force. They point out that, back in 1988, he told a judge he had quit the Outlaws and had put them entirely out of his life. While it's true that he did do that, it appeared from speaking to him that this time he really meant it when he said he was through with the Outlaws. It was no ploy to get his stuff back from the government; he really was disgusted with the way the Outlaws behaved during his trial.

And in April 2008, another familiar name popped up in Ontario — the Rock Machine. According to media reports, the Rock Machine had re-formed in Winnipeg (there had been a few newspaper ads there that announced it was going to happen) and Edmonton, and that their recruiters had come to Toronto to drum up support.

The recruiter, who refused to be named, said that the Rock Machine had a small probationary chapter in Toronto and another one in Kingston that already had 12 members. The one in Toronto was called Rock Machine Ontario West and the one in Kingston was Ontario East. The recruiter admitted that some of the new Rock Machine had been associated in the past with Bandidos (by then a dirty word in Ontario because of the publicity of the Shedden Massacre), but that most of them were younger and had come from a small Woodbridge-based gang called The Crew or had never been in a motorcycle club before.

One of the more well-known members of the Rock Machine Winnipeg Chapter was a man named Ron Burling. He looked pretty much how you'd expect a biker to look these days. He had a shaved head and a bushy goatee. He was a physically huge man, one of those body-builder types who had grown so muscled that his arms were no longer able to touch his sides. And, except for his face, it looked like every square inch of him was covered in tattoos, even the top of his head. His Facebook profile (49 friends) listed him as a “member of the rock machine nomads,” and he named his employer as “Edmonton Maximum Security Penitentiary General Population.”

Ron Burling

He wasn't kidding. Burling was in prison (in part) for his contributions to a February 8, 2005 kidnapping and assault in Toronto. Burling (a full-patch in Sandham's prospective Bandidos chapter at the time) and Adam Curwin, Billy Joe Ducharme, Daniel Pereira and Jason Michel (all members of a local puppet gang called La Familia) forced a car driven by Adam Amundsen off the road and into a snowbank. Then they approached the car and smashed in its windows. As the 20-year-old Amundsen and his girlfriend attempted to escape, the bikers grabbed the pair and forced them into what some newspapers called a nearby apartment building and others called a crack house. They were held in separate rooms.

Amundsen, the court was told, was a street-level dealer for Bandidos and was also way behind in his drug debts. To encourage him to pay the $6,000 he owed, the bikers beat him with fists and wooden baseball bats for several hours, sliced off a tattoo on his left hand and broke the index finger of his right hand with a sledgehammer before cutting its tip off.