(This
column was published in the North
Shore News on
April 4, 2001)
One battle in biker war won
By Leo Knight
IT'S
been quite a week for law enforcement in the efforts to keep a
lid on the bubbling cauldron of organized crime.
In
a week that saw police strike a body blow to the "Mom"
of all operations against the Hells Angels in Quebec, Calgary
police struck at the operations of the Hells Angels in that city
as well. Both operations had local angles demonstrating that
things like the biker war in Quebec is not "their"
problem, but truly a national problem.
The
North Shore News devoted both the front page and its lead
editorial on Friday to the arrest of Richard Gemme, whom RCMP in
Quebec describe as the alleged accountant for the Quebec Nomads
chapter, led by the infamous Maurice "Mom" Boucher.
While
the raids in both Quebec and Alberta were spectacular, both in
their respective size and results, the sheer size and duration
of the investigations are also spectacularly big.
In
Quebec, the investigation took almost three years and the cost
is in the millions of dollars.
Over
2,000 police officers were involved in the raids on 280
locations hit simultaneously last Wednesday.
Seized
by police in the raids were 20 buildings including seven houses,
50 vehicles, 15 of which were motorcycles, $8.6 million and $2.7
million US in cash, three stolen vehicles, 70 weapons including
five machine guns and a grenade launcher, 120 kilos of hash and
10 kilos of cocaine.
Boucher
was already in custody awaiting trial for the murder of two
corrections officers.
After
Wednesday's raids, the stakes have been raised. Boucher now
faces 13 additional murder counts.
Those
additional counts and the other charges faced by the bikers are
supported by a staggering one million pages of text defining the
evidence accumulated in the lengthy investigation.
Warrants
are still outstanding for several people including Walter
Stadnick. A longtime Nomads chapter member who has been living
in Hamilton, Ontario, for the past several years, according to
police Stadnick has been running the gang's operations in the
lucrative Golden Horseshoe of southwestern Ontario.
Calgary's
raids, independent of the Quebec investigation, were the
culmination of about one year of full-tilt investigation.
They
arrested eight full-patch members and 29 associates. Their raids
yielded 11 kilos of cocaine, over 2,000 Valium tablets, 585
morphine tablets, four kilos of marijuana, half a kilo of
methamphetamine, 11 long-barrelled weapons, five handguns and an
Uzi sub-machine gun with a silencer.
Additionally,
members of the Organized Crime Agency of B.C., who were
prominent in the arrest in North Vancouver, also took down a
full-patch member and a prospect in Salmon Arm for the Calgary
file. Police also seized a substantial amount of cocaine and
methamphetamine destined for Alberta from the Lower Mainland.
These
arrests by police in Quebec, Alberta and B.C., together with the
fruits of the search warrants, should aptly demonstrate that the
Hells Angels are organized crime. And in a big way, not just a
bunch of guys who like to ride motorcycles, as their propaganda
machine likes to spout.
Lest
anyone reading this think "Well, that's it then":
understand this: all of this is nothing more than a victory, a
battle won.
It's
a single battle in a long-term war.
In
the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, so does organized
crime.
The
big question in all of this is who will move to take over the
billion-dollar business? Will the Nomads be able to run their
distribution networks from inside Bordeaux jail? Or will the
remaining gang members from the other six Quebec chapters be
able to pick up the pieces?
What
about the Bandidos? Since they patched over the Rock Machine and
expanded into Ontario they are certainly a force to be reckoned
with.
Then
there's the Angels' partners in the narcotics importation. In
Quebec, the narcotics trade was the work of the so-called
"Consortium" -- an unholy alliance of the Italian
Mafia, the bikers and the West End Gang, whose roots were the
Irish mob but have since expanded their horizons, influence and
power. Are they likely to stand back and do nothing now that
their ability to distribute their drugs has been taken out of
the equation by police?
Whatever happens, it is clear the police have struck a major blow against the operations of the Hells Angels. But it is only a single battle in a much bigger war. And there are many more battles to be fought.
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