Mongols Motorcycle Club patch holder David Martinez, told Judge Renee F. Korn he was not guilty at his arraignment at the county courthouse in downtown Los Angeles yesterday. Korn denied him bail anyway which probably tells you all you need to know about the ever darkening relationship between the American people and what is ironically still called “American Justice.”

Martinez is accused of “murdering” a police officer named Shaun Diamond. Diamond was part of a gang of militarized police who broke into Martinez’ home in the middle of the night. The entry was probably illegal in and of itself. In California, police cannot simply break into someone’s home without announcing their presence and giving the residents a reasonable amount of time to pull on their pants and open the door. That didn’t happen here. The cops simply shouted that they were there and then broke down the door. It is the sort of thing police lie about all the time.

The raid was part of an ongoing investigation of the Mongols. It was one of seven simultaneous raids on homes occupied by Mongols members. Based on a secret statement made by a confidential informant the police were looking for a gun. The rationale behind using Swat to serve the warrants is that Mongols are very scary so police must dress and act like Star Wars Stormtroopers. The actual point of these terrifying and destructive raids is to punish people police officials distrust or dislike without the impediment of due process.

Friendly Fire

Sometime in the deliberately befogged seconds after the police combat team broke in Martinez’ door and threw a bomb into the home, Officer Diamond, who was standing outside, was shot in the back of the head. The notion that Martinez, standing inside his home behind his parents, somehow murdered Diamond who was standing outside the home on the porch behind other Swat members, is blatantly absurd. Every lawyer who has heard the police version arches his eyebrows. The idea that Martinez was acting out of malice rather than fear is at least questionable.

Diamond was probably a victim of friendly fire and that is, for reasons both vain and cynical, impossible for authorities to admit. The press isn’t about to question the official story. The most basic truth about being a crime reporter for a daily paper or a television or radio station is that the police are your primary source. Police reporters parrot police because without the cooperation of the police, crime reporters must learn to say. “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order please.” So media in Los Angeles and throughout the United States have perpetuated the cock and bull story that a “Mongols gang member” “gunned down” a cop who was “only trying to serve a warrant.”

A month ago, fledgling television star Steve Cook, who lives 1,400 miles from Los Angeles but is still widely considered to be an authoritative source, wrote about Diamond’s death and Martinez’ arrest: “This represents the exact reason why I do what I do. Believe any propaganda that you wish but the cold hard reality is that these are CRIMINAL organizations and serve no legitimate purpose. The Mongols have a history of violence dating back to the 70’s not to mention their involvement in drugs, theft, extortion etc. They are a Motorcycle Gang not a Motorcycle Club.” Unfortunately, Steve Cook is part of the problem. Cook’s opinion about the Mongols is the same lurid fantasy that rationalized the violent, military style raid on Martinez home in the first place.

Something’s Happening Here

There were riots last week in Ferguson, Missouri after a white cop named Darren Wilson got away with shooting and killing a large and scary black teenager named Michael Brown. There were demonstrations last night in New York after a white cop got away with choking out and killing a large and scary black man named Eric Garner. The President, who is black, has described those two incidents in racial terms, as an escalating conflict between American police and “communities of color.” In response to that racial crisis, the leader of the free world has promised to very slightly slow the unprecedented, federally sponsored militarization of American police. In addition to white racism, Obama thinks police need better training as soldiers and he has asked Congress to authorize $263 million to pay for that training and for body cameras.

Obama’s statements about the need to throw even more money at the cop industrial complex coincide with the release of a 19-page report clumsily titled “Review: Federal Support For Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition.” Among other things, the report notices:

“Between FY2009 and FY2014, the federal government provided nearly $18 billion dollars in funds and resources to support programs that provide equipment and tactical resources to state and local LEAs. LEAs can acquire equipment through various programs administered by the Departments of Justice (DOJ), Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), Treasury (Treasury), and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).1 DOJ, DHS and ONDCP directly fund equipment purchases through multiple grant programs. DOD manages the transfer of excess equipment and also helps LEAs obtain new equipment at lower DOD prices. Additionally, DOJ and Treasury fund equipment purchases and other law enforcement activities through the equitable sharing component of the federal asset forfeiture programs.”

“The bulk of the equipment transferred from federal sources to LEAs is fairly routine—office furniture, computers and other technological equipment, personal protective equipment and basic firearms. But federal agencies also transfer, or fund the purchase of, military equipment, including high powered weapons and tactical vehicles. Although such tactical equipment constitutes a small percentage of the total material that flows from the federal government to LEAs, it is nonetheless substantial. For example, under the DOD 1033 program, only 4 percent of the property provided to LEAs last year was “controlled property” (property listed on the Department of State Munitions Control List or Department of Commerce Control List). However, this 4 percent translates into 78,000 pieces of controlled equipment transferred from DOD to LEAs. To date, approximately 460,000 pieces of controlled property are currently in the possession of LEAs across the country.”

Whether he was a good cop or a bad cop Shaun Diamond did not have to die on October 29. He would probably be alive if he had simply walked up Martinez’ door at breakfast time, knocked, waited and served his warrant. Whether he is a good guy or a bad guy, David Martinez doesn’t deserve this murder charge.

Lawyer Withdraws

Martinez won’t be home for Christmas. His former attorney, Tom Medrano quit on him yesterday. As reported here last month, Medrano couldn’t work out a fee payment agreement with Martinez. The Mongols Motorcycle Club probably will not be able to help Martinez pay for his defense. In previous federal cases against the Mongols and other motorcycle clubs, federal investigators have characterized legal defense funds as “racketeering acts” that prove motorcycle clubs are criminal conspiracies. Those accusations are a kind of Catch-22 that are intended to prevent club members from getting a fair trial.

A temporary public defender named Mearl Lottman told Judge Korn yesterday that her office would need another month to sift through the “voluminous discovery” in the case. Officer Diamond’s autopsy report, which might explain how Diamond was shot in the back of the head isn’t part of that discovered evidence. The autopsy report remains sealed. The press won’t begin to know the basis for the charges against Martinez until an evidentiary hearing is convened on January 7. Until then the news in the case will remain that Martinez is a scary gang member who callously murdered a hero.

The Martinez case suggests big stories about big issues. Like, when the hell did Los Angeles become Fallujah? Does more force and less finesse really make cops safer? Doesn’t the maintenance of law and order really depend more on the consent and cooperation of the people than the overwhelming firepower superiority of the police? Just how dangerous are the Mongols anyway? Are “Islamic radicals” really “joining bikie gangs to fund possible terror plots” as Australia’s Daily Mail alleged yesterday? Is that why America is at war with motorcycle clubs?

And maybe the big question, when did the American Fourth Estate, whose alumni include Bat Masterson, Stephen Crane and H. L. Mencken, become so gutless? “I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie,” Mencken once wrote. “I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.” Until at least January 7, America’s press will conspire with America’s police to keep America ignorant about the circumstances of Shaun Diamond’s death. America deserves better than that. So does Shaun Diamond. So does David Martinez.

Eagle Nation Cycles in Neenah, Wisconsin and four individuals have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Neenah, its police department, its police chief, one of the city’s police captains and the judge who signed the search warrant that authorized a Swat raid on the shop in September 2012.

“The warrant laid out claims against Eagle Nation, claiming the facility was being used in a complex drug manufacturing and distribution operation in conjunction with the Hells Lovers motorcycle gang and suggested activities and persons in the facility as if it were an episode of the television series, Sons of Anarchy,” the suit alleges.

The Swat Raid

The complaint states: “On Friday, September 21, 2012 shortly after 1:00 PM members of the Neenah Police Department, the Neenah Swat Team and the LWAMEG (Lake Winnebago Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group) executed the warrant for ‘Eagle Nation Choppers’ on all of the facilities located at the 206 Main St. business complex. Supervising the raid was Neenah Police Chief Kevin E. Wilkinson. The hyper-militarized force parked an arnored tank-like vehicle outside of Eagle Nation, stormed the building, bombarding the occupants with assault weapons drawn, screaming profanities and abuse, all while wearing plain clothes (ununiformed) and facemasks. None of the initial officers that entered the building were wearing marked police uniforms. Several of the Officers involved in the raid, including Captain Long would have known that such force was wholly unnecessary, given their close personal and long-standing working relationship with (bike shop owner Steven) Erato and Eagle Nation Cycles.”

The warrant was issued after members of the Metropolitan Enforcement Group “observed an alleged drug exchange take place in the alleyway located behind Eagle Nation Cycles…and Gords Pub…. After pulling the car over that was involved in the exchange, MEG determined that a small heroin sale took place.”

“Officers claimed that the target went into Eagle Nation.”

“Inspection of the location reveals that from where affiant was standing, it is a physical impossibility to see the rear entrance of Eagle Nation. This would be known to anyone even remotely familiar with this area of Neenah, Wisconsin.”

Neenah in The News

Neenah has a population of about 25,000. The Neenah Swat Team and its many implements of war including a “nine-foot-tall armored truck…intended for an overseas battlefield” was the subject of a feature story by Matt Apuzzo in the New York Times Last June titled “War Gear Flows to Police Departments.”

“When the military’s mine-resistant trucks began arriving in large numbers last year, Neenah and places like it were plunged into the middle of a debate over whether the post-9/11 era had obscured the lines between soldier and police officer,” Apuzzo wrote.

In the Times feature, Police Chief Wilkinson defended the militarization of his department. “I don’t like it. I wish it were the way it was when I was a kid,” he said. But he said the possibility of violence, however remote, required taking precautions. “We’re not going to go out there as Officer Friendly with no body armor and just a handgun and say ‘Good enough.’”

Eagle Nation Cycles and the other complainants are seeking $50 million in punitive damages, $200,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in lost income.

More and more with the passage of time, State Attorney Angela Corey (above) and Assistant State Attorney Brian Brady’s  official account of the homicide of Black Piston Zachariah “Nas T” Tipton by Iron Order prospect Kristopher Stone looks like a whitewash.

Stone shot and killed Tipton outside Nippers Beach Grille last June 26. After stonewalling the public and the press about their investigation for 134 days, Corey and Brady announced Stone would not be charged “with any crime.” Brady explained that Stone had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by multiple opponents, that the Black Pistons were “muscle” for the American Outlaws Association and that the attack was the fruit of the Iron Order’s refusal to pay a “tax” to the Outlaws

In the State of Florida’s official summation of the shooting titled “State Attorney Review Justifiable Homicide and Justifiable Use of Deadly Force By A Citizen,” witness statements collected by investigators in the hours after the shooting were interpreted and summarized in a way that seemed to provide Stone with an airtight alibi.

The report includes summaries of statements made by eleven witnesses including Stone and another Iron Order prospect named Tim White. One of the witnesses cited in the State Attorney’s official disposition of the homicide was a woman named  Darlene Forkel. Using legally obtained documents, The Aging Rebel has compared three successive versions of what Forkel told police and concluded that Corey and Brady glossed over what might have been the most significant factor in deciding whether to charge Stone with murder.

Version One

In a signed, hand written statement given to police at 11:15 p.m., about three hours after Tipton was fatally wounded, Forkel said:

“Myself and boyfriend arrived at nippers around 8 p.m. We drove up and down road to find parking for bike. There were two ladies ahead of us on bikes also and five guys passed us the other way as we were getting ready to park. We walked inside and I said Hi to some friends. I was there about seven or eight minutes and I realized I left my phone on my bike. I walked to the front and was going to the left. There were two men fighting on the ground to the right between two bikes. I continue to walk left and heard a sound like a firecracker and as I turned back to the right the man on the left was standing but off balance and falling backwards and the man on the right had a gun and shot more shots as the man on the left was falling. The man on the right moved to the head of where the man was laying on the ground. The man had blood on his nose and mouth area. He was holding his face and other men past him came walking to him and someone asked what he did and he stated he shot him. There was a couple of men near the man that shot the guy. All were wearing Iron Order vests. There was a lady came from behind me and ran to the guy that was shot and began CPR and a man also from behind me and began helping her. There was now a crowd around the shooting area and I walked back inside to where my boyfriend was and let him know what had happened.”

Version Two

Forkel wrote her statement at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department. The official account of the Forkel’s interview differs from her written statement in both subtle and obvious ways. That report of the interview states:

“Forkel stated she arrived to Nippers approximately seven minutes before the altercation. Forkel advised she and her boyfriend parked their motorcycles near the Nippers valet stand (which was located east of the altercation). Forkel said after parking their motorcycles they walked down the sidewalk in front of Nippers, and entered the restaurant through the front doors. Forkel stated she did not notice any altercation before entering Nippers. Once inside Nippers Forkel noticed she had left her cell phone on her motorcycle, and she went to retrieve it by herself.

“Forkel stated when she excited the front doors of Nippers she immediately observed two males fighting approximately 20 feet to the southwest of her location. Forkel said she observed one male laying on his back on the ground, and the second male was on top. Forkel advised she observed the male on top was repeatedly striking the male on the ground over and over again with right fists. Forkel advised she turned and began walking east toward her motorcycle, and at this time her back was to the two males fighting. Forkel said she took about three steps, and that is when she heard the first gun shot. Forkel advised she immediately turned around and she observed the male that was on top coming off the male that was laying on the ground. Forkel stated she observed the male that was on top falling backwards, and the male that was on the bottom stand up and fire approximately four to five shots at the male that was falling backwards. The male that was being shot at fell to the ground and did not get back up. Forkel said she then observed a group of males approach the shooter, and they were all wearing Iron Order vests. Forkel advised the shooter was also wearing an Iron Order vest. The male that was shot was also wearing a vest, but Forkel could not say if there was anything on the back.

“When the group of males approached the shooter Forkel heard him say ‘I shot him.’ Forkel said the shooter was a white male with short hair, blue jeans, wearing a blue bandana, an Iron Order vest, in his 20’s, five feet nine, and 190 to 200 pounds. Forkel further stated she observed blood on the shooter’s face. Forkel stated she observed the shooter walk over to a light pole lean against the pole. She later observed police officers place the shooter into hand cuffs, and walk him toward a police car. Forkel advised she then went back inside Nippers and told her boyfriend what happened. Forkel stated she and her boyfriend do not know either the shooter or the victim.

“Forkel willingly filled out and signed a witness statement. I have nothing further to add to Forkel’s interview.”

Version Three

The third account of Tipton’s death is both the briefest and is the final, official version of Forkel’s statement. It reads:

“Darlene Forkel was a patron at Nippers. She was exiting Nippers to get her phone on her motorcycle. She saw men fighting on the ground. One man was on top repeatedly striking the man on the ground (Kristopher Stone). She says the shooter was on the ground and pushed the deceased off him and shot at the same time. She heard four to five shots. Afterwards she heard the shooter say “I shot him” as he had blood on his face.”

The most important legal question the three versions of Forkel’s statement raise, is whether Zachariah Tipton was standing and backing away from Stone the first time he was shot or, instead, was on top of Stone and assaulting him. It might seem trivial, but it is the bright and shining line that separates murder from self defense. If Tipton was in fact standing and backing away from Stone when Stone shot him, as several informed sources speaking on condition of anonymity have told The Aging Rebel since last July, Stone should have been charged with murder. The official account never suggests that Tipton might have been backing away when he was shot although that’s what Forkel stated. “…the man on the left was standing but off balance and falling backwards and the man on the right had a gun and shot more shots as the man on the left was falling.”

A second question parallels the first one. If, based on eyewitness statements, there was probable cause to believe that Tipton had stopped hitting Stone and was backing away when he was killed, why did Angela Corey and Brian Brady cover that up?

Jon “Murf” Murphy, who enjoyed motorcycles, cars, guns, steamed crabs and beer, lost his long battle with cancer on November 11.

Jon Murphy was a 40-year-long member of the Baltimore chapter, which is the mother chapter, of the Chosen Sons Motorcycle Club. He was a past president of the club and a long standing member of the club’s Board of Directors.

He was an avid outdoorsman. He liked to argue politics.

Murf is survived by his wife, Sunnie and his son, Jon Jr. No funeral arrangements have yet been made.

He was a Republican to the end.

 Requiescat In Pace

Entrapment is as American as cherry pie, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

A three judge panel overturned the dismissal of a case against two men named Antuan Duane “Rat Tone” Dunlap and Joseph Cornell “Baby Flip” Whitfield who had been charged with conspiring to rob an entirely imaginary cocaine stash house. The imaginary crime was invented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

It is a standard technique of the Bureau to entice financially vulnerable men to participate in crimes invented by the ATF. In at least some of these stings, the ATF runs credit checks on potential entrapees to verify their financial vulnerability. Over and over, the men are offered a standard fee of $1,000 for agreeing to a few hours of low risk work. In some cases, men are unaware of what sort of illegal deal they will participate in until literally seconds before the actual crime is underway. Typically the victims of these stings are asked to provide “security” for drug deals or drug robberies. ATF agents or other undercover agents provocateur play the parts of the robbers and the robbery victims, or the drug sellers and the buyers. The ATF supplies the men to be entrapped with guns and body armor. Typically the ATF supplies tens of kilos of cocaine or methamphetamine as theatrical props. During one recent “sting “ in Las Vegas the ATF rented a private airstrip and supplied a private plane and pilot. A federal prosecutor in Los Angeles named Reema El-Amamy once described these stings as “guerilla street theater.”

There Might Go Judge Wright

In 2007, a lawyer named Andrew Carlon coined the term “The Sadistic State” to describe such entrapments. Carlon described the Sadistic State as “a state that has decided that, since its unique function is the power to punish, it must pursue punishment as an intrinsic good, independent of desert (or, indeed, of the other, more consequentialist aims of punishment), transforming itself into a punishment machine.” Undeserved punishment, Carlon argues, “reduces to sadism” and leads to a state “which wields power, most fully realized through the infliction of pain, as an end in itself, the human beings in its power merely means to that awful end.”

Last March, Judge Otis D. Wright, a black, former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy whose rulings generally favor prosecutors, seemed to have been genuinely touched by the sadism demonstrated in the entrapment of Dunlap and Whitfield and ruled that it amounted to “outrageous government conduct.” Wright wrote that a “reverse-sting operation like this one transcends the bounds of due process and makes the Government the oppressor of its people.”

Three Wise Fools

The appeals court was neither touched nor convinced as Wright had been. Judges Atsushi Wallace Tashima, William A. Fletcher and Jay Bybee ruled that the ATF entrapment did not meet “the extremely high standard necessary to dismiss an indictment for outrageous government conduct.”

The three judges also ruled that because the appeals court had been wrong before it had no choice but to continue to be wrong. “We have previously held that similar reverse-sting operations, if properly conducted, are a permissible law enforcement tactic” the three judges ruled. “While we, like the district court, question the wisdom of the government’s expanding use of fake stash house sting operations, we are bound by our court’s prior decisions holding that when such sting operations are conducted, as in this case, within the guidelines established by our precedent, they do not violate due process and cross the line into outrageous government conduct.”

Robert “Snap” Litzenberger, a former member of the Enforcers Motorcycle Club, which describes itself as a law enforcement and military motorcycle club, was sentenced to three years in a Florida prison last Friday for an aggravated battery on March 13, 2011. Judge Leah Case also sentenced Litzenberger to serve ten years probation after his release and to pay $16,845 in restitution to his victim after his release with a minimum payment of $100 a month.

The case didn’t go to trial for 44 months because Litzenberger asked for multiple continuances. He filed for a dismissal of the prosecution twice, citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law. He went on trial on November 6. A five women and one man jury found him guilty after deliberating for an hour the next day. He has been free on bail for the last month.

The Crime

Litzenberger attacked a college student named Robert Kuehl in the parking lot outside the Pirates Cove Hotel in Daytona Beach Shores. Kuehl, his friend Tyke Sealock and Kuehl’s 26-year-old sister were trying to find a desk clerk so they could check in when they were accosted by at least six Enforcers in the parking lot.

When Litzenberger grabbed Kuehl’s sister and tried to kiss her, Kuehl told the men to stop. After the sister, a local lifeguard, broke free and rushed into the hotel to seek help, the pack attacked Kuehl and Sealock. As three Enforcers threw Sealock through a window and beat him, Litzenberger pulled Kuehl to the ground from behind and place kicked him in the mouth. “I woke up, both my eyes were closed, in an ambulance,” Kuehl testified yesterday.

The Alibi

Litzenberger’s lawyer, W. Bryan Park II, argued at trial that Kuehl had threatened to “stick” Litzenberger. No knife was found at the scene. Park told the jury that a member of the Enforcers, for some reason, must have picked up Kuehl’s knife and carried it from the crime scene.

He argued that Litzenberger had acted in self-defense. “We have a drunk person who’s threatening to kill people,” Park said.

“Common sense says you don’t poke the bear,” Park told the jury. “You don’t stir the hornet’s nest. You got a guy who’s made some threats. You don’t want to give him another opportunity to come through with his threats.”

The Good Guys

The Enforcers MC now has 37 chapters in the United States and Canada. The mother chapter is in Palm Beach County, Florida.

The club was founded by an ex-cop named Richard “Rosco” Sessa, who says he has been riding motorcycles since he was eight-years-old.

According to the club, “At age 19 Rosco joined the largest club in the world, the police force. After 15 years of hard core ‘street level police work’ Rosco continued to pursue his dream and decided to form his own club, the Enforcers MC. Our colors (red and silver) are taken from the ‘Swordsmen’ from the medieval days. They were the enforcers of the law then. Hence Enforcers MC, the Enforcers Motorcycle Club consists of, but is not limited to members of current and retired Law Enforcement Officers, Armed Forces Personnel, Public Safety personnel, and some good friends who complete the ‘Family’ of our club.”

Three crooked politicians named United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates (above), Assistant United States Attorney Lawrence R. Sommerfeld and Special Assistant United States Attorney Erin E. Sanders have nothing better to do than to continue to try to punish a couple of motorcycle enthusiasts named Sean King and Howard Brown – apparently because King and Brown refused to be human props in the stage managed spectacle of Yates, Summerfield and Sanders’ war on motorcycle clubs.

You have probably read this before. If you have, you probably can’t believe you are reading this again. Deal with it. Federal “justice” happens.

King, Brown and an American Outlaws Association regional club officer named Larry McDaniel were all prosecuted, not once but twice, for obstructing a federal proceeding after McDaniel ordered that patches and other items in the clubhouse of the Cleveland, Georgia chapter of the Black Pistons Motorcycle Club should be repossessed. McDaniel had learned that the chapter had been infiltrated by an undercover FBI agent and additional informants. Brown was the Georgia President of the Black Pistons. King was an Outlaws patch holder. Both men helped collect club insignia from members of the Cleveland chapter.

A federal judge dismissed the original case against the men after deciding that none of them had actually committed a crime. Then the government indicted the men again for obstructing the investigation. The government persisted even after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that FBI investigations are not court proceedings in August 2013. A judge dismissed part of the indictment last May. The rest of the indictment was dismissed in late September after a judge ruled the prosecution had failed to prove its case before a jury at trial. One of the defense attorneys said, “The Government’s legal foundation for this case was based upon a gross extension of the statutory language beyond reason.”

What Is Reason

Of course the case was beyond reason.

The point in a federal case like this one is not to arrive at justice, or lawfully punish someone for committing a crime. The point of cases like this is to short circuit the Fifth Amendment and the ancient concept of due process by using prosecution as a form of punishment. Victims targeted by the government are punished with home invasion, assault, slander, public shaming, pretrial incarceration and draconian fines that take the form of bonding fees, asset forfeiture and attorney fees. King and Brown both had to pay about $15,000 up front in order to secure actual, competent council – rather than some two-bit pettifogger who survives by ingratiating himself to narcissists like Yates, Summerfield and Sanders. And the ordeal is never speedy. This case has been going on for 28 months, not because it is a complicated but because Yates, Summerfield and Sanders intend to advance their careers by denying their victims justice.

In October, the two wronged men filed a motion for the reimbursement of their legal fees, citing a law called the Hyde Amendment which authorizes federal judges to reimburse innocent defendants “where the court finds that the position of the United States was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.”

Outlaws Memorabilia

The government replied to the motion last month in a shameless, sophistical document that complained that because King and Brown had behaved legally the government ““was not able to bring the additional charges or indict the new targets it had anticipated it would charge.” The motion complained about “the contempt for law enforcement permeating throughout the outlaw club.” Finally the motion argued that the government need not “justify its prosecution.”

King’s lawyer, Adam M. Hames, replied to the government’s reply last Friday. Largely, he argued that, in this one case, prosecutors had clearly misbehaved.

One of the more interesting passages in his rebuttal, a recitation of fact that reinforces the argument that prosecutions are intended to punish without due process, reads: “Finally, yesterday the Government agreed to return a significant amount of the property seized from the Atlanta Chapter Clubhouse. Such evidence included pictures of deceased members, memorials to deceased members, patches, mirrors, clocks, t-shirts that were for sale, club jewelry, a Santa Claus riding a motorcycle, and other memorabilia. None of these things had any evidentiary value at all. Yet they were seized by the FBI and kept for two years without any real justification. None of these items were or could have been admissible by the Government in their case against these defendants. However, some of this evidence was exculpatory, but was not turned over.”

Yates Ambition

The motion filed last October might not be enough to reimburse King and Brown for a small part of the grief they have endured over the last two and a half years. A Georgia attorney who has looked at the case told The Aging Rebel:

“This motion has only a slight chance of actually being successful. No one remembers anything like this since the Richard Jewel case and that predated the Hyde Amendment. Even if Judge Story grants the motion, I do not know if the Government will write a check or appeal. The Government has a long time in which to make that decision. The local Assistant United States Attorney has to write a memo to the local Deputy U.S. Attorney. If he wants to proceed he has to write a memo to the U.S. Attorney for the District. If they still want to proceed, the U.S. Attorney has to write a  memo to the head of the criminal division. If the criminal division wants to proceed then they run it past the Attorney General and the Solicitor General. As you can imagine this process takes time. Given Ms. Yates ambition to move up at Justice, I would expect that the leaning would be towards appealing any award of fees or costs.”

Seven members of the Rockford charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club pled not guilty Tuesday to the same set of charges against them that were dismissed last August.

Richard L. Todd, Robert A. Bell, John R. Savalick, Tomasz Lech, Aloysius J. Balice, Christopher L. Lawson and Jose P. Vielma Jr. are charged with armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping of a child younger than 13, unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle, aggravated battery with a Taser, aggravated battery with a knife, aggravated battery with an ax handle and mob action. Prosecutors originally charged fourteen defendants in July 2013. Seven of the original defendants pled guilty to lesser charges and were sentenced to two years probation.

Witness Safety

State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato alleged that on June 27, 2013 the defendants confined an unnamed Rockford man to the charter club house and hit him with an ax handle, punched him, struck him with brass knuckles and a hammer, Tasered him and stabbed him. Police claimed the men cooperated to steal the victim’s wallet, keys and truck and that they detained an 11-year-old girl while the victim was assaulted. The investigation started after the victim went to a hospital for treatment and police have never specified a motive. The victim appears not to have cooperated with the prosecution.

Prosecutors asked Judge Joe McGraw to delay trial last summer so the state could strengthen its case against the men. When the judge refused the state declined to prosecute. At the time Deputy State’s Attorney Jim Brun made an incomprehensible statement that: “As I indicated, the State’s Attorney’s responsibility is to provide a fair trial to all, so we’re certainly not going to rush a case to trial just to say everyone has their right to due process and everyone has their right to a fair trial and part of that is to protect our, all our witnesses so that is part of our decision making process that we deployed at this time.”

His boss, Joe Bruscato, issued a statement the next day that the charges were dropped because he had “to consider the safety of all witnesses.”

More To Come

Criminal defendants in the United States have a Constitutionally guaranteed “right to a speedy and public trial” so the state’s move to dismiss should have ended the case. But Bruscato refiled the charges on September 30. The dismissal last August was a blatant attempt to overrule Judge McGraw and get the continuance the judge said they couldn’t have. So far, the strategy is working.

All seven defendants remain free on bond. McGraw said the men can meet with one another for “lawful purposes” and that they cannot associate with known gang members. There is a motion hearing in the case on January 21. The defendants will probably move for a dismissal of the charges. The prosecutor will probably argue that the Hells Angels is a criminal gang.

Members of the Rebels Motorcycle Club are cooperating with prosecutors after a brawl and gunfight between Rebels and members of the Leathernecks Motorcycle Club six weeks ago in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a small town northwest of Pittsburgh.

The Rebels is the largest motorcycle club in Australia. The club recently began establishing chapters in the United States and currently has chapters in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Georgia.

On the club website, Rebels Motorcycle Club United States says: “We are a traditional ‘old school’ motorcycle club founded on the values of brotherhood, loyalty, respect and honor. We are not simply a club, but a group of men who share in the biker lifestyle that we love and live within the bonds of brotherhood. As such, ‘brother’ is not simply a word thrown around, but a dedication to our fellow club brothers, supporting them and their families anyway possible. We value our women, our families and our club. Rebels MC is the largest, multi-ethnic 1% motorcycle club in the world, having charters in several countries and many chapters in the United States. We have a tradition of judging men based on their character, not on their skin color, religion or political views. We hold fast to the idea that respect is given to those who deserve it, not to those who demand it!”

According to informed sources, the Pennsylvania chapter of the Rebels is comprised of former members of the Satan’s Syndicate Motorcycle Club and the Iron Order Motorcycle Club.

October 13 Brawl

Members of the Rebels began cooperating with police on October 13, the night of a brawl outside the Double J Saloon on Brighton Avenue in Rochester. According to published reports and other sources, between 25 and 35 members of the two clubs engaged in mutual combat. Two of the combatants, a Rebel named J.D. Lambert and a Leatherneck named Cory Robert Howard (booking photo above and video below) produced firearms. Lambert is a former member of Satan’s Syndicate and has a previous conviction for aggravated assault.

According to local police, Howard fired into the ground, slightly wounding Lambert in the leg and ankle and announced, “Next one is going in you.” The same police report says Howard then shot Lambert in the buttocks.

According to witnesses, “dozens” of shots were fired by members of both clubs.

Leatherneck Charged

Howard was taken into custody at the scene. A member of the Rebels then positively identified Howard at the local police station as the man who shot Lambert. Howard was then charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure and disorderly conduct.

Howard was deployed to Iraq twice during seven years in the Marine Corps. He is a veteran of the Second Battle of Fallujah and he was seriously wounded in May 2007. He spent five months at the Brooke Army Medical Center burn unit before being reassigned to the Wounded Warrior Battalion East at Camp Lejeune where he was medically retired. Howard now lives in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

According to sources, multiple members of the Rebels attended Howard’s preliminary hearing this Monday at the Beaver County Courthouse. The same source said members of the Pennsylvania Rebels have agreed to testify against Howard.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office had a busy Sunday.

Two local motorcycle clubs, a three piece patch club and a one piece patch club, had a brief and non-violent disagreement at the David Mann Chopperfest at the County Fairgrounds Sunday afternoon. Local deputies as well as Ventura Police and the California Highway Patrol responded by stopping admission to the mostly mellow, mostly artistic event before overrunning the fairgrounds brandishing attack dogs and orange, beanbag shotguns.

There were no arrests.

Bogus Cases

Ventura County has a well established history of hostility toward motorcyclists and of pursuing bogus cases against them. About an hour after the Chopperfest panic, County Sheriff’s, including the Sheriff’s Gang Unit, and Highway Patrolmen contrived a traffic stop of a dozen Hells Angels and a chase car returning from the Ventura charter’s annual toy run.

According to a widely reprinted press release issued the next day by a Sheriff’s Sergeant named Kevin Donoghue and a Captain named Don Aguilar:

“On December 14, 2014, members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club were attending a Christmas Toy Drive event at the Deer Lodge in Meiners Oaks. Approximately a dozen motorcyclists wearing Hells Angels Motorcycle Club patches were observed driving south on Maricopa Highway towards North Ventura Avenue. Traffic violations were observed by deputies and an enforcement stop of the motorcyclists was initiated. The motorcyclists were stopped as they turned onto Baldwin Road from North Ventura Avenue.”

Merry Christmas

The Deer Lodge is about 15 miles north of Ventura and the Maricopa Highway is the kind of  picturesque road everybody likes to ride. It was a cool, cloudy day.

Four men were arrested. The release identifies them as Noah Tedesco of  Riverside, California; John Saucedo of Orange, California; Stefan Amann of Orange, California and Thomas Holt of Harbor City, California. All four live at least 100 miles south of Ventura.

According to Donoghue and Aguilar’s release: “During the subsequent investigation, the following items of contraband were located: two concealed loaded firearms, methamphetamine, and a weapon described as “brass knuckles”. Tedesco was arrested for possession of methamphetamine while in possession of a firearm and being a prohibited person from possessing a firearm. Saucedo was arrested for carrying a loaded firearm in his vehicle. Holt was arrested for possession of brass knuckles. In addition to those violations, Tedesco and Amman were arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance. All subjects were booked into the Pre-Trial Detention Facility.”

The sputtering trial of three Hells Angels named Timothy R. Bianchi, Nicholas F. Carrillo and Josh L. Johnson in Lake County, California is starting to look like a permanent institution.

The three men are accused of seriously beating a Vago named Michael Anthony Burns at an Indian Casino called Konocti Vista in Lakeport, California in June 2011. Burns insists he suffered the injuries to his face and head during a fall. The Lake County Sheriff, a zealot named Francisco Rivero (photo above), refused to believe Burns and instead saw a way to attack what he regards as the great and terrible threat posed by outlaw motorcycle clubs.

Saving Lakeport

The fight came just a month after Rivero somehow convinced himself that a pack of 150 Hells Angels was on its way to attack a party of fifty or so Vagos. Shaken by what he imagined, Rivero ordered every cop in Lake County to proceed “Code Three” to a town called Middleton, thirty miles south of Lakeport, where the assembled forces of good would meet the invading army of Hells Angels and stop them as Charles Martel stopped the Moors at the Battle of Tours. “Code Three” is cop-phonics for what police do when they turn on their lights and sirens and see how fast their cars can go.

Rivero ordered Highway 29, which is the only road in and out of Lakeport, closed. That day, three cruisers narrowly avoided a Smokey and the Bandit moment at the intersection of Highways 29 and 175. The 175 is the twisting mountain road that connects Highway 29 to the 101 Freeway and the dangerous outside world – to Healdsburg and Astoria and eventually godless places like San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. Snipers were deployed. Eventually, after a tense couple of hours, it turned out the Hells Angels were all spirits and had melted into air, into thin air.

And then three of them reappeared at the Konocti Indian Casino!

Still Saving Lakeport

The tale of the vanishing Hells Angels of 2011 was retold at Bianchi, Carrillo and Johnson’s trial last week. A Lakeport Police Department Lieutenant named Jason Ferguson was there the day the massive pack of Angels disappeared. And the day Burns was beaten Ferguson saw another group of 50 bikers. He is pretty sure some of them were Angels and he heard the ones that were Angels yell something at Burns as Burns rode by. “I didn’t hear the specific verbiage, but my opinion was it was not positive. It was negative,” Ferguson told jurors last week.

Most of the rest of the trial so far this month has been dedicated to establishing that the defendants are Hells Angels and although technically it is not illegal to be a Hells Angel it should be. A prosecutor named Art Grothe showed the jury a sign found in one of the defendants’ homes that read, “The meek shall inherit the earth when we’re through with it. Hells Angels World.” Grothe then entered a copy of the sign into evidence and then he displayed it at the front of the courtroom for most of a day. Then the trial recessed.

Soon an “Outlaw Motorcycle Gang and Expert Testimony Instructor” named Jorge Gil-Blanco will testify for a week. He is expected to say over and over again that it should be illegal to be a Hells Angel. There is as yet no estimate of how long this trial will continue or what it has cost so far or how much it will eventually cost or when, if ever, it might end.

The Supreme Court of the United States chipped another little piece off the Fourth Amendment Monday.

The ruling is not as contemptuous of civil liberties as it has been widely reported to be but it did create a curious division between the obligations of citizens and police under the law. Every citizen knows that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” What the Supremes decreed at the beginning of the week is that police may now use ignorance of the law as an excuse.

Any mommy who has ever tried to fight a ticket in traffic court knows that police both lie and exploit a cynically informed view of the letter of the law. What’s most frightening about the Court’s decision in Heien v. North Carolina is that the cops are now officially encouraged to lie about what is in their heads.

The Traffic Stop

The case began with a traffic stop near Dobson, North Carolina on the morning of April 29, 2009. A Surry County Sheriff’s Sergeant named Matt Darisse began following a car he thought looked suspicious. Darisse thought that car looked suspicious because, as he sat by the side  of the road and the car sped past, the sheriff thought the driver looked “very stiff and nervous.” He followed the car until he invented a pretext to stop it. When the car braked Darisse saw one brake light was out and that became his legal reason to make the stop.

While writing a ticket for the brake light, Darisse decided the driver was nervous. He asked the usual question about whether the driver and the owner in the back seat (Heien) were carrying contraband. He asked for permission to search the car. It is standard operating procedure in those situations to demand a consent search under threat that the police will summon a drug sniffing dog. The two men said he could search the car. Eventually, in the side compartment of a duffle bag, Darisse and another cop found a sandwich bag containing cocaine. Had he  simply not consented to the search Heien might have avoided arrest and probably would have prevailed eventually. But he told Darisse to go ahead.

The Fourth Amendment

After he was charged, Heien objected that the search violated the Fourth Amendment. That clause states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Although that Amendment seems unambiguous, over the last two centuries the Supreme Court has found it to be full of nuance. One of those nuances is called the “vehicle exception” which is actually an elaboration of a Fourth Amendment exception that allowed warrantless searches of ships at sea. The reasoning behind the ship exception was that if the Coast Guard took time go back to land to get a search warrant, the suspect ship could just sail away. In 1925, the Court applied that exception to searches of the cars of suspected bootleggers. In the days before radio, the Court thought bootleggers could just drive away if police had to go back to town to get a warrant. So, for the last 80 years, car searches have been considered to be “exigent searches” and police only need “probable cause” to execute them. The vehicle exception allows police to act as both judge and arresting officer.

Ignorance Of Law

What is noteworthy in the Heien decision is that the two men in the car hadn’t broken any traffic law in North Carolina. It is actually legal to drive in North Carolina with only one taillight but Sergeant Darisse didn’t know that. And the Supreme Court thought that was reasonable.

Following Heien, police are now free to invent their own traffic laws on the spot in order to make any traffic stop “lawful.” One may now be stopped for riding a vehicle with only two wheels because an arresting officer can argue that when he was at the police academy he was taught that motorcycles were illegal. As Justice Roberts, who wrote the opinion, explained, “The Fourth Amendment requires government officials to act reasonably, not perfectly, and gives those officials ‘fair leeway for enforcing the law.’”

“The Fourth Amendment prohibits ‘unreasonable searches and seizures,’” Roberts continued. “Under this standard, a search or seizure may be permissible even though the justification for the action includes a reasonable factual mistake. An officer might, for example, stop a motorist for traveling alone in a high-occupancy vehicle lane, only to discover upon approaching the car that two children are slumped over asleep in the back seat. The driver has not violated the law, but neither has the officer violated the Fourth Amendment. But what if the police officer’s reasonable mistake is not one of fact but of law? In this case, an officer stopped a vehicle because one of its two brake lights was out, but a court later determined that a single working brake light was all the law required. The question presented is whether such a mistake of law can nonetheless give rise to the reasonable suspicion necessary to uphold the seizure under the Fourth Amendment. We hold that it can.”

Sotomayor

The Court ruled that the stop was legal by a vote of seven to one.

The lone dissenter was Justice Sonia Sotomayor who wrote that “the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties…has already been worn down.”

She dissented that “giving officers license to effect seizures so long as they can attach to their reasonable view of the facts some reasonable legal interpretation (or misinterpretation) that suggests a law has been violated significantly expands” police authority.”

There was a half day of testimony last Friday in the Lake County, California trial of three Hells Angels named Timothy R. Bianchi, Nicholas F. Carrillo and Josh L. Johnson. The three men are accused of beating a Vago named Michael Anthony Burns at a tattoo convention in Lakeport, California in June 2011. The fight lasted about a minute.

The jury heard from two witnesses. The first was an emergency room physician named Steve Schifflett who testified that Burns had facial bruises, a cut lip and a possible broken nose. Burns declined to have his nose X-rayed. Someone had already stitched his lip by the time Schifflett saw him.

Burns has always maintained that he suffered the injuries in a fall. He refused to testify during a pretrial hearing.

Burns

The second witness was Burns himself and he refused to testify again. That was prosecutor Art Grothe’s only point.

Grothe told the jury the Vago would refuse to testify and then he showed them the Vago not testifying. Burns doesn’t have a lawyer and he has refused to invoke his Fifth Amenment right against self incrimination. All he said Friday was, “I refuse to answer that question.”

The third time Burns said that, after Grothe’s third question, the prosecutor told the jury, “I think we’ve established a pattern here.”

When the trial next resumes, the prosecution will call self styled biker authority Jorge Gil-Blanco to the stand. Gil-Blanco, a San Mateo County Deputy Sheriff who may or may not know where the start button is on a Harley, has somehow made a career out of testifying about the styles, mores and alleged criminality of motorcycle clubs. He is expected to testify that outlaw motorcycle club members never testify for the prosecution  – even against their assailants. Jurors may have to guess the logical implications of that beyond the fact that many motorcycle club members are cynical about the criminal justice industry. The point of the trial seems to be to put on an expensive show that in and of itself will punish the three Hells Angels for being Hells Angels.

A defense attorney named Michael Clough called Grothe’s examination of Burns “a charade.”

Gil-Blanco will begin his testimony January 7 and he may testify for up to a week.

The Show Must Go On

The decision to prosecute the three defendants seems to have more to do with attention whoring by a local sheriff named Francisco Rivero and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation than with public safety or the righting of any wrong.

The case against the three Angels was initially investigated by a Lake County Sheriff’s Sergeant named Gary Frace. Frace didn’t think there was much to prosecute and he closed the case. That prompted Rivero to reopen the “investigation” and order his internal affairs unit to investigate Frace.

Eventually, after a federal investigation that lasted more than a year, Bianchi, Carrillo and Johnson were charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and a “gang enhancement.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a six page report last Friday titled “2013 Motor Vehicle Crashes: Overview” accompanied by six pages of statistical tables.

Normally that wouldn’t qualify as what eyewitless television programmers call “breaking news.” But except for the merry pranks and hollow threats of Pillsbury Doughboy body double Kim Jong-un this is a pretty slow news week. So yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a feature titled, “Uneasy Rider: Boomer Deaths in Motorcycle Crashes Rise.” The story was subtitled “More Older Riders Take to the Road, but Reflexes Aren’t as Fast.”

The Journal piece is mostly blather. The story is personalized with the tales of Benjamin Garrett III who died after a Mustang turned in front of him and Randall Dowell who was hit by reckless driver in Ohio and lost a leg. The Journal mostly worries that motorcycles are more dangerous than cars and encourages readers to worry, too. It cites last Friday’s NHTSA report as a major factual source.

James Hedlund

The Journal feature also leans heavily on the debatable opinions of “traffic safety consultant” James Hedlund who proclaims that older riders are more vulnerable. “Their reflexes and their vision aren’t as good as they were,” Hedlund says. Nor, he asserts, are older riders, who are Harley-Davidson’s core customers, as generally robust as younger riders. “The same impact will cause more damage to a 55-year-old than a 25-year-old.” The Journal doesn’t question or try to prove anything Hedlund says. The Journal’s writer, Steven Turville, simply assumes that Hedlund is an authority on gerontology as well as traffic safety.

In fact, Hedlund is not entirely comfortable with the idea of people riding motorcycles. “The way to make a motorcycle safe is to put four wheels and a body on it,” he said. And according to the Journal he favors “mandating helmets for all riders in the 31 states that don’t have such laws.” The Journal doesn’t acknowledge the possibility, that mandatory helmet use is an issue about which informed people can disagree.

Gawker

The Journal did a sloppy job. The paper ran an ill-informed editorial masquerading as a news feature. But the fallout from the Journal piece is going to be worse than it should be because the United States is now a nation held together mostly by propaganda and paranoia and because later yesterday the webzine Gawker ran a slightly snarky response to the Journal story titled “If You Buy a Motorcycle, You Will Die” Gawker, in case you’ve never heard of it before, calls itself “the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip” and its slogan is “today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news.” Gawker is much more influential in television newsrooms than it probably should be.

“You’ll get that beautiful chopper, you’ll take it out on the open road, you’ll open up that throttle and feel the wind in your hair and a heart-bursting sense of freedom and declare that you’ve never felt more alive,” Gawker explains. “Then you’ll get distracted or hit a pebble or feel a momentary wobble in your front wheel driving over some oil and before you even know what’s happening you’re sliding along the asphalt right into a fucking guardrail and you’re dead.”

“Don’t take my word for it,” the Gawker writer, an astoundingly important and influential guy named Hamilton Nolan (Batman above) argues. “Look at the cold hard facts: old folks like you are going out and buying motorcycles and then launching themselves over the handlebars and straight into hell, now more than ever.” Then Nolan quotes from and links to the Journal piece to substantiate his “cold hard facts.”

Twist the story a little more and you might be able to imagine what television is about to make of Gawker’s version of the Journal’s version of what NHTSA actually said.

Actually, NHTSA didn’t say what both news outlets allege it said. It didn’t imply what either the Journal or Gawker said it implied and in some cases NHTSA said the opposite.

Here is what the report said.

What NHTSA Said

“A particularly notable decrease was seen in the number of motorcyclists who lost their lives in 2013, down over 6 percent from 2012—318 fewer motorcyclists’ lives lost. Although the fatalities and injuries decreased from 2012 to 2013, the total number of crashes that occurred on the roads increased slightly – primarily a result of an almost 3-percent increase in crashes that resulted in no injuries, only property damage.”

Four thousand nine hundred eighty-six motorcyclists died in 2012. Four thousand six hundred sixty-eight motorcyclists died in 2013.

“One notable decrease was the 6.4-percent decrease in the number of motorcyclists who lost their lives on the roadways in 2013 – 318 fewer motorcyclists. This was the first decrease in motorcyclist fatalities since 2009, the only other decrease since 1997.”

“As was seen with motorcyclist fatalities, the number of injured motorcyclists also decreased in 2013 by an estimated 5,000 from 2012 (not statistically significant), or 5.4 percent.”

“Motorcyclist fatalities now take up 14 percent of total fatalities, compared to nine percent 10 years ago.”

“Motorcycle riders showed the greatest decrease in the number of alcohol-impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes from 2012 to 2013, dropping 8.3 percent or by 117 riders. This was both the greatest percentage drop and the greatest drop in actual alcohol-impaired drivers.”

“There was a large decrease in motorcyclist fatalities for the 50- to 69-year-old population: 190 fewer fatalities in 2013 than in 2012 (60% of the total decrease for motorcyclist fatalities).”

“There were 11 times as many unhelmeted motorcyclist fatalities in States without universal helmet laws (1,704 unhelmeted fatalities) as in States with universal helmet laws (150 unhelmeted fatalities) in 2013.”

Harley-Davidson announced this morning that Harley is now the “official motorcycle” of the annual Black Hills Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

The annual rally was started by an Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company dealer in Sturgis named Clarence “Pappy” Hoel. Hoel formed the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club in 1936. The first Black Hills Rally was held on August 14, 1938. The rally was suspended in 1942 due to gasoline rationing. This year’s rally will be held from August 3 through August 9.

According to an agreement between the motor company and the city of Sturgis, Harley will be the official motorcycle of the rally through the year 2090. As part of the agreement, Harley will help fund a Harley themed plaza near the corner of Second and Main Streets. The plaza will be partly constructed with 75 bricks removed from Harley’s headquarters in Milwaukee. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “The open-air pavilion will have ample motorcycle parking and allow visitors to take their pictures with the word ‘Sturgis’ spelled out in stones set in the hills behind the town, above their heads.”

Money

Taking photographs is now mostly free in Sturgis during rally week except for taking photographs of women dressed in paint and photographs taken from one of the two Main Street photo towers. Admission to the photo towers costs five dollars for five minutes. The cost to photograph women dressed in paint is usually negotiable.

The rally provides a windfall for the economies of South Dakota and Wyoming as well as motel and restaurant owners  located on interstate highways throughout the western United States. The city of Sturgis, with a population of 6,883 made about $1.13 million from the rally last year.

The new plaza will provide a venue for special events, concerts and weddings. “It will be a gathering point in the city. It’s not just for the rally,” Harley spokeswoman Jen Hoyer said.

Onward And Upward

Attendance at the rally peaked at an estimated 633,000 people in 2000. Last year about 442,000 people spent at least one day at the rally. Sturgis city public information officer Christina Steele is very optimistic about attendance at this summer’s rally. “You hear a lot of estimates,” she said. “Anything from 850 to 1.3 million. Who knows?”

“For decades, Harley-Davidson has been the motorcycle of choice for Sturgis,” Sturgis Mayor Mark Carstensen said. “Today it gives me great pleasure to solidify its importance by making it the official motorcycle of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.”

“Harley-Davidson riders have attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for decades,” Harley president and Chief Operating Officer Matt Levatich said in a press release. “This new agreement will help fuel many more years of freedom, independence and rebellion for this iconic gathering.”

The Lakeport, California trial of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club resumed last week.

Technically, only three members of the club named Timothy R. Bianchi, Nicholas F. Carrillo and Josh L. Johnson are on trial. They are accused of beating a Vago named Michael Anthony Burns in Lakeport in June 2011. Burns has maintained since the event that he sustained his facial injuries in a fall.

But Art Grothe, the minor league politician who has pursued the case is prosecuting the three defendants for felony aggravated assault because that is the only way he can also subject the men to what lawyers call a “186.22 Prosecution.” That is the section of the California penal code that makes it a crime both “to actively participate in any criminal street gang with knowledge that its members engage or have engaged in a pattern of criminal activity” and mandates a prison sentence for anyone who “commits a felony for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with any criminal street gang, with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members.”

Grothe’s theory is that motorcycle club are criminal street gangs and that Burns was beaten because he was a Vago and the Vagos and the Hells Angels compete in the business of being criminals. Apparently, Grothe thinks he can convince a jury that that the three defendants beat Burns because there just isn’t enough crime in Lakeport for the two “criminal street gangs” to share. Also when you use the “power words” “outlaw motorcycle gangs” and “biker gangs” and “criminal enterprise” and so on you can draw more attention to yourself than when you use words like “fist fight” or “beating” or “assault.”

Passion For Narcotics

Grothe’s cynical ally in this trial is “recognized outlaw motorcycle gang” authority Jorge Gil-Blanco, who is the very happy man in the photo above from 2011. Gil-Blanco has previously testified against members of the Vagos, Misfits, Soul Brothers and Hells Angels Motorcycle Clubs including a prosecution of the late Mark Guardado. He testified for three days last week and his testimony included the claim that he has been investigating the Hells Angels since 1980.

Some versions of his actual resume, and there are many versions, downplay that.

“I started my career as a police officer in January of 1973 with the Los Angeles Police Department,” Gil-Blanco states in one version of Jorge Gil-Blanco: The Man, The Myth, The Biker Expert. “After a year and half, I moved to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department where I first started working Narcotics in 1975. Since then, (sic) my passion to work in the Narcotics field was ignited. During my career with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, I worked as a Narcotics Investigator, Patrol Deputy, Custody Deputy, and Court Security Deputy. After 4 years with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department I moved to the San Jose Police Department where I spent over 26 years, retiring in July 2004. During my career at the San Jose Police Department, I worked as a Patrol Officer, Training Officer/Instructor, FTO, Academy Instructor, Narcotic Investigator (SJPD & DEA Task Force), Criminal Intelligence Officer, Burglary Prevention Investigator, Parks Patrol Officer, and Personnel Officer (Background Investigator/Recruiter). After two months of retirement, I realized that I still had work to do, so I went to work for the Dixon Police Department where I was a Narcotics Investigator for one year, assigned to the Solano Narcotics Enforcement Team (SOLNET). I was then recruited to work for the Western States Information Network (WSIN), where I am currently employed as the Training Coordinator.”

No Patch, Card

Last week Gil-Blanco sparred with a defense attorney named Jai Gohel who has cross examined the biker expert in other cases. Gohel made much of Gil-Blanco lack of formal training. Apparently Harvard does not yet offer a degree in outlaw bikers. Gil-Blanco has only an Associates Degree in photography from Santa Monica College. The implication was that the expert’s knowledge is based on cop gossip and there is a legal technicality called the Harvey-Madden-Remers Rule that actually makes cop gossip, unsubstantiated by objective fact, inadmissible as evidence.

At one point, Gohel asked Gil-Blanco what a Hells Angels membership card looks like and the expert said he couldn’t remember. A more pertinent question might have been to ask Gil-Blanco how much he was getting paid for his testimony.

Both USA Today and the Daily Mail reported yesterday that at least 50 American police forces, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals Service, have been using a device called Range-R (pronounced ranger) Radar to conduct warrantless searches of homes for at least two years.

The Range-R is manufactured by L-3 Communications Holdings, a Torrance, California company that manufactures command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance software and products and avionics for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, various intelligence agencies and NASA. The Range-R was developed as a military product. According to USA Today, L-3 didn’t begin marketing the device to police forces until 2012. According to promotional materials distributed by L-3, the company has been marketing the device to police forces for at least five years.

L-3

According to an L-3 brochure published in 2010:

“L-3’s Range-R is a lightweight handheld radar system designed to detect people through walls. Within seconds, Range-R informs the user of the presence of moving or near-stationary personnel and the distance, or range, to the person. Range-R provides vital intelligence necessary to safely undertake a wide variety of law enforcement and search and rescue operations.

“Range-R detects even the slightest movements, including those of normal human breathing, with a probability of detection greater than 95 percent, while maintaining a false alarm rate (FAR) of less than 5 percent. With an effective range of up to 50 feet, the system can ‘see’ through walls, floors and ceilings constructed of reinforced concrete, cement block, wood, brick, adobe, glass and other common non-metallic construction materials.”

The device costs $6,000. The Marshalls have admitted to buying 30 of them.

According to the brochure, five years ago L-3 was selling the device to:

“First Responders: Hostage situations, stand-offs, natural disasters and burning buildings are a few examples of scenarios where Range-R’s see-through-the-wall technology can be utilized to locate persons hidden from view – without putting the lives of first responders in unnecessary danger. Range-R enables police, SWAT, emergency medical teams, firefighters and other special operations teams to efficiently and effectively allocate their precious time and resources when split second decisions must be made.

“For example: police and/or SWAT units can determine the presence and location of assailants or hostages in a building. Search and rescue teams can locate injured people inside buildings. Firefighters can quickly determine whether people are trapped in a building. With near immediate analysis and results, Range-R provides first responders with critical information that may make the difference between life and death.”

Denson

Police use of the device came to light in a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a case titled United States v. Steven J. Denson. The ruling was filed on December 30, 2014. In that case, the government appealed the suppression of evidence obtained during a warrantless search in Wichita, Kansas. The Tenth Circuit explains:

“Steven Denson was on the lam. After his conviction for armed robbery and a spell in prison he quit reporting to his probation officer as his sentence required. For a time, Mr. Denson appeared gone for good. But authorities weren’t quick to give up their search and eventually they found his name on a residential Wichita utility account. With an arrest warrant in hand they showed up at the listed address. When a handheld Doppler radar device and other evidence suggested Mr. Denson might be present inside the house, the officers entered. Quickly they found Mr. Denson along with a stash of guns, guns he lacked the right to possess by virtue of his felony conviction. This led Mr. Denson to plead guilty to a federal firearm charge. At the same time, he preserved the right to appeal the district court’s denial of his Fourth Amendment motion to suppress. Exercising that right now, he seeks reversal….”

The appeal was brought by an Assistant Federal Public Defender named Timothy J. Henry on Denson’s behalf. A three judge panel ruled that the search did violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires all search warrants to be approved by a judge. The original intent of the Amendment was the historic notion that “a man’s home is his castle.”

Kyllo

Although L-3 has been selling the device to “first responders” and Swat for five years, no court seems to have heard of it until recently. In the decision, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch wrote:

“The government brought with it a Doppler radar device capable of detecting from outside the home the presence of ‘human breathing and movement within.’ All this packed into a hand-held unit ‘about 10 inches by four inches wide, 10 inches long.’ The government admits that it used the radar before entering – and that the device registered someone’s presence inside. It’s obvious to us and everyone else in this case that the government’s warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions. New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights.”

Gorsuch also cited a 2001 ruling by the Supreme Court in a case titled Kyllo v. United States. In that case, the government used a thermal imaging device outside the Florence, Oregon home of a man named Lee Kyllo. The government suspected Kyllo was growing marijuana inside and the device indicated an unusual amount of heat, presumably from broad spectrum light sources, was leaking out his house. In that case a majority of the court, with Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting, ruled the use of the device to spy on Kyllo was illegal. In the Court’s ruling, Judge Antonin Scalia wrote, “Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment ‘search,’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”

Militarized Police

Although the Tenth Circuit did not address the issue, the widespread deployment of military devices like the Range-R to increasingly militarized police departments raises a basic question: Where exactly is the line between martial law and “civilian” militarized police forces? Since the War on Global Terror began a dozen years ago. militarized police have routinely short circuited the concept of due process to conduct warrantless searches and punitive raids on people the police distrust or of whom they disapprove.

In a landmark Supreme Court decision from 1866 titled Ex parte Milligan, the Court ruled:

“The nation began its life in 1776, with a protest against military usurpation. It was one of the grievances set forth in the Declaration of Independence, that the king of Great Britain had ‘affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.’ The attempts of General Gage, in Boston, and of Lord Dunmore, in Virginia, to enforce martial rule, excited the greatest indignation. Our fathers never forgot their principles; and though the war by which they maintained their independence was a revolutionary one, though their lives depended on their success in arms, they always asserted and enforced the subordination of the military to the civil arm.”

“Martial law … destroys every guarantee of the Constitution.”

“Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one or the other must perish.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

JORGE GIL-BLANCO

Expert Qualifications:

Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

Law Enforcement Experience and Assignments

January 1973 to September 1974 Los Angeles Police Department Patrol Officer

September 1974 to April 1978 Sacramento Sheriff’s Department
Narcotics Investigator and undercover work Patrol Deputy
Custody Deputy
Court Security Deputy

April 1978 to July 2004
San Jose Police Department Training Officer / Instructor Field Training Officer Academy Instructor
Narcotic Investigator (DEA Task Force) and undercover work Criminal Intelligence Officer – Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs Patrol Officer
Burglary Prevention Investigator and undercover assignments Parks Patrol Officer
Personnel Officer (Background Investigator / Recruiter) Narcotic Investigator and undercover assignments

November 2004 to December 2005
Dixon Police Department / Solano County Narcotic Enforcement Team Narcotics Investigator

January 2006 to April 2009 California Department of Justice
Department of Law Enforcement / Western States Information Network Regional Coordinator

 May 2009 to July 2012 California Department of Justice
Department of Law Enforcement /Western States Information Network

Law Enforcement Coordinator/Training Coordinator
October 2012 to Present
San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Gang Intelligence Unit
Deputy Sherif

Specialized Training

August 2008
How to Prepare for Expert Testimony on OMG – 16 hr Course RMIN
Phoenix, AZ

June 2002
Racial Profiling Train-the-Trainer Course Museum of Tolerance
Los Angeles, California

July 2001
Drug Recognition Expert Course
California Highway Patrol @ Carlsbad Police Department

March 2000
Force Option Simulator Instructor Course West Covina Police Department

February 1998
Field Training Officer Course
South Bay Regional Training Consortium

September 1996 Baltimore, Maryland
Criminal Investigative Technology, Inc. Advanced Telephone Analysis Course

May 1996 Lincoln, Nebraska Pen-Link Ltd.
Call Analysis Training School for Law Enforcement

March 1995
Electronic Surveillance Course California Department of Justice

November 1991
Interview and Interrogation Techniques Course FBI – San Francisco

June 1991
Sacramento, California
Protection of Public Officials (VIP Protection) California State Polic

November 1990 Sacramento, California
Basic Elements of Criminal Intelligence California Department of Justice

September 1990 Sacramento, California
Drug Identification and Influence: Trainers California Department of Justice

November 1988
San Jose, California Background Investigations
South Bay Regional Training Consortium

Specialized Experience in Investigation of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

August 2013
Consulted with Kern County FBI Gang Task Force re Hells Angels “Delano” Mike Pefta funeral event.

Consulted with Alaska State Police re Hells Angels arrested for possession of methamphetamine case,

July 2013
Consulted with Essex County DA Office re Hells Angels & Red Devils assault/extortion case.

Monitored Hollister Rally.
Monitored San Mateo County Henchmen MC party in Belmont.
Monitored Hells Angels British Columbia 30 year Anniversary Run in Langley, BC.

June 2013
Consulted with San Bernardino SO re Diablos MC assault case.

May 2013
Consulted with Kern County SO re Hells Angels South Run held in Lake Isabella.

March 2013
Consulted with Santa Barbara SO re Vagos arrested for possession of concealed firearms with a gang enhancement.

February 2013
Arrest of Hells Angels Daly City Prospect for Possession of Controlled Substance.
Consulted with AUSA (Los Angeles) on Hells Angel George Christie case.

January 2013
Monitored Sacramento Easyrider Show.
Consulted with Santa Cruz DA re People vs. Hells Angel Miki Macias case.
Consulted with Palm Springs Police re Mongols arrest on weapons charge.

November 2012
Worked Henchmen MC event at their clubhouse in Belmont, CA.

September 2012
Consulted with Riverside DA Office re Orange County HA James Bradley Case.
Consulted with San Mateo DA Office re Daly City HA Donnie Lopez Case.

August 2012
Consulted with Las Vegas DA Office re Bandidos and Down & Dirty Me’s re assault on Flaming Knights case.
Consulted with San Joaquin SO regarding CA Nomads homicide investigation.

June 2012
Consulted with San Joaquin SO regarding CA Nomads homicide investigation.
Monitored Alky Haulers MC event in San Mateo County.
Consulted with Santa Clara County DA re HA case (Bettencourt).

May 2012
Consulted with San Joaquin SO regarding CA Nomads homicide investigation.
Consulted with Turlock PD re HA / Norteno homicide case.

Consulted with San Diego DA regarding HA assault case (Thorsgard).

April 2012
Consulted with Clark County DA regarding HA wedding chapel case in Las Vegas.

March 2012
Consulted with San Joaquin SO regarding CA Nomads homicide investigation.

January 2012
Consulted with US Attorney’s Office regarding former Ventura HA President George Christie case involving Arson of Tattoo Parlor competitors.
Monitored Sacramento Easyrider Show.

December 2011
Consulted with San Diego DA regarding Dago HA case involving 9 HA member and 2 Associates case re Aggravated Mayhem, Torture, Kidnap, Robbery, Auto Theft, Conceal/SelllWithhold Stolen Vehicle, and Perjury by Declaration.
Consulted with Sonoma DA regarding Sonoma HA member Russell Lyles who was arrested for possession of a deadly weapon (whip).

November 2011
Consulted with Ventura SO regarding OC HA Michael Pena arrest for possession of a deadly weapon.

October 2011
Consulted with Kern DA regarding OC HA Michael Pen a case involving stolen firearms. Reviewed evidence seized pursuant to search warrant at San Jose Hells Angels member John Gonzalez at Campbell PD.
Consulted with Sparks PDre Hells Angels vs Vagos shooting/homicide in Sparks, Nevada.
Monitored Vagos Operation Simple Green “takedown” in San Bernardino. Reviewed items of evidence as they were being processed at the command post.

September 2011
Consulted with Sparks PD, Washoe SO, and San Jose PD re Hells Angels vs Vagos shooting/ homicide in Sparks, Nevada.

August 2011
Monitored search warrant service at the Sonoma Hells Angels clubhouse. Related to Lake County SO investigation of Hells Angels members Tim Bianchi, David Dabbs, Josh Johnson, and Nicolas Carillo. The investigation involved the assault of a Lake County Vagos member and an associate.
Monitored search warrant service at the Dago Hells Angels clubhouse. Related to DEA & San Diego PD investigation of Hells Angels Dago members Billy Castellano, Brian Haag, Kirtith Nielsen, Michael Ottinger, Stephen Sanders, Troy SchoIder, Jason Vanmeter; Sonoma County Hells Angels member David Dabbs; former Dago Hells Angels member Dustin Harroun; Dago Wrecking Crew president Shane Sanders; and Hawaii Wrecking Crew president Aden Stay. The various charges include: Aggravated Mayhem; Kidnap for Ransom, Reward or Extortion; Buy/Receive/Conceal/Sell/Withhold Stolen Vehicle; Torture; Robbery; Unlawful Take and Drive a Vehicle; Perjury by Declaration; and that all committed these felony offenses for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang with the specific intent to promote, further and assist in criminal conduct by gang members within the meaning of PC 1 86.22(a)(1).

July 2011
Consulted with Gridley PD regarding a California Nomads Hells Angel in possession of a loaded .and concealed firearm.
Monitored Mongols National Run in San Diego County. Monitored Hells Angels Canada Run – Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Consulted with Santa Cruz SO regarding San Jose Hells Angel in possession of a loaded and concealed firearm.

June 2011
Consulted with Lake County SO regarding a Hells Angel assault on a Vagos member.

May 2011
Monitored HA South Run – San Diego.

April 2011
Monitored Santa Cruz HA Thugs Bunny Run.
Consulted with Santa Clara County DA and Santa Clara PD on Benencourt/Rojas Case.

February 2011
Consulted with Roseville PD regarding Vagos case.

January 2011
Consulted with Bonner County, Idaho prosecutor regarding Hermanos MC case.
Consulted with Lake County DA regarding Misfits MC case.

December 2010
Consulted with Santa Clara PD regarding officer that was arrested for providing information to Hells Angels member.
Consulted with Kern SO and DA regarding Hells Angels homicide case.

November 2010
Met with Tulare PD, reviewed evidence seized during investigation of Terrorist Threats/Domestic Violence/Gang Enhancement case involving the President of the Fresno Hells Angels charter.

October 2010
Monitored search warrant service at residence of Santa Cruz Hells Angels member who was arrested on no bail warrant for conspiracy (182 (a)(1) PC). A Santa Clara Police Officer was also arrested on the same charge.
Monitored search warrant service at the Berdoo Hells Angels clubhouse. Related to Kern County Sheriffs Office homicide investigation of Hells Angels Orange county member Mike Pena.
Reviewed evidence photos, video, and reports from Hells Angels vs Mongols assault with a deadly weapon (245 PC) incident from Los Angeles County.

September 2010
Reviewed evidence and reports from Santa Cruz Hells Angel arrest for assault, possession of steroids for sale, felon in possession of a firearm.

July 2010
Monitored Hells Angels USA Run in Gunnison, Colorado.

June 2010
Consulted with CHP regarding Hells Angels vs Mongols incident in Los Angeles County.

May 2010
Monitored Hells Angels South Run in Three Rivers, CA.
Assisted Kern County SO with Hells Angels vs Vago homicide investigation.

February 2010
Reviewed reports and consulted with Lake County Sheriffs Detectives and District Attorney re Misfit member Thomas Dudney and prospect Josh Wandrey home invasiOn/robbery; attempted homicide case.
Reviewed reports and consulted with Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office re Santa Cruz Vago member Thomas Froberg who was arrested after brawl with Hells Angels. Froberg was charged with Disturbing the Peace (415 PC) with a Gang Enhancement (186.22 PC). Reviewed reports and consulted with Tulare County District Attorney’s Office re Mongols member Edward Aguirre who was arrested for Possession of firearms by a felon (12022(a) PC); Possession for Sale of a Controlled Substance (113 79 H&S); Possession of Illegal Weapon (12020 PC); et a1.

September 2009

Reviewed reports and video of aggravated assault of bar employee by Mesa (Arizona) Hells Angels member and prospect. Provided Expert Testimony on the case in Maricopa County, Arizona. (People vs Nathan Sample and Julian Cano).

March 2009
Monitored search warrants served at two Hells Angels’ residences in Ventura County. There were a total of 12 search warrants served on 11 Ventura/Santa Barbara Chapter members and/or prospects. Stolen motorcycles, numerous firearms, gang indicia, and controlled substances were located at some of the locations.

August 2008
Reviewed reports of search warrants served at residences of Hells Angels Oakland President Cisco Valderrama and Sgt-at-Arms Gavan Malone. Both were arrested (along with several other non-Hells Angel members) for Cultivation of Marijuana, Possession for Sale of Marijuana, Possession of Stolen Property, Possession of numerous firearnls (while committing a Felony), Possession of High Capacity Magazines, Possession of Stolen Property, and Theft of Utilities.

July 2008
Monitored search warrant served on Frisco Hells Angels Chapter clubhouse in San Francisco. Reviewed items seized from this clubhouse and two other locations; Sonoma County Hells Angels clubhouse and residence of Sonoma Hells Angels Vice-President John Nelson.
Monitored search warrant served at residence of Merced County Hells Angels President Kellon Brenton in Atwater. Reviewed items seized from this residence.
Monitored Hollister Rally.

April 2008
Monitored search warrant served on the Daly City Hells Angels Chapter clubhouse in East Palo Alto. Reviewed items seized from this clubhouse and residence of Daly City Hells Angels Sgt-at-Arms Rodney Gee.

March 2008
Monitored Hells Angels 60th Anniversary Party in San Bernardino and Yucaipa.

July 2007
Monitored Hollister, Fourth of July Rally.
Monitored search warrant served on the Berdoo Hells Angels Chapter clubhouse in San Bernardino. Reviewed items seized from this clubhouse.

December 2006
Monitored Hells Angel Berdoo Toy Run in Yucaipa.

October 2006

Monitored the Fresno County Hells Angels 15th Annual Panhead Run at the Madera Fairgrounds.
August 2006
Monitored the Top Hatter MC Central Valley Chapter party in Oakdale.

Monitored search warrant served on the Merced County Hells Angels Chapter clubhouse in the city of Chowchilla. Reviewed items seized from this location.

July 2006
Monitored Hells Angels World Run in Cody, Wyoming.

July 2005
Monitored Hollister, Fourth of July event.

April 2002
Interv”iewed San Jose Police Officers and reviewed police reports from officers that were involved in conducting surveillance and arrests at the Annual Blessing of the Bikes event in San Jose.

April 2001
Interviewed San Jose Police Officers and reviewed police reports from officers that were involved in conducting surveillance of the Annual Blessing of the Bikes event in San Jose.

November 1994 to March 1998
Assigned as a cross-designated U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Task Force Agent (TFA). While assigned to the San Jose Resident Agency of the DEA, my main focus was the San Jose Hells Angels chapter. This investigation included both the physical and electronic surveillance of members of the club and their associates. This surveillance took place over 3 years.

November 1990 to November 1994
Assigned as a Criminal Intelligence Officer, with the San Jose Police Department. My duties consisted of gathering, correlating and analyzing information received from law enforcement agencies, both from municipal, state and federal agencies across Canada, the United States, and other international countries, regarding outlaw motorcycle gangs generally and, in particular, the Hells Angels.
From 1990 through 1998, I met and interviewed the following ex members of the Hells Angels:
Terry Norman (ex member Winston-Salem chapter) Charlie Haas interviews (ex member Sonoma chapter) George Kaminski interviews (ex member and Sgt-at-Arms Monterey chapter) Robert Sandy interviews (ex member and vice-president Oakland chapter)
They confirmed the structure of the Hells Angels, their participation in criminal activities and the meaning of certain patches and tattoos such as the Filthy Few, Dequiallo, and P.P.B.S. We also discussed the reason why they provided information to law enforcement.
From 1990 to the present, I have had the opportunity and continue to maintain contact and converse with law enforcement agents who have worked in an undercover capacity as members and/or conducted investigations of the following outlaw motorcycle gangs:
Warlocks, Hessians, Vagos, Outlaws, Pagans, Mongols, Sons of Silence, El Forasteros,  Hells Angels, Bandidos, Misfits, Soul Brothers .
They confirmed the modus operandi of outlaw motorcycle gang members, their lifestyle and their interaction and/or warring with the Hells Angels.
I have had the opportunity to speak with Anthony Tait on a number of occasions. Anthony Tait is an ex member of the Hells Angels who became an FBI source while he was a member of the Hells Angels. Tait subsequently became the West Coast Sergeant-at-arms for the Hells Angels. In these conversations, Tait described the Hells Angels organization, structure, club business, executive role and their criminal activities.

August 1998
Hanford, California – Provided on site comprehensive information and guidance to the Hanford Police Department at a scheduled MMA sponsored “Return to Hanford Run.” There was an expected attendance of 3,000 bikers, including members of the Hells Angels and one of their puppet clubs (Scream City MC currently known as the Fresno Hells Angels).

March 1998
Pursuant to a search warrant, I assisted in a search of the Oakland Chapter of the Hells Angels Clubhouse, in Oakland, California. The Oakland Chapter is considered the “Mother Chapter” or the driving force behind the Hells Angels Organization. It is also the location where the West Coast Officer Meetings (WCOM) are normally held.
Pursuant to that search, I assisted in the seizure of computer documents, including the WCOM notes dated from January 1990 through March 1998. I was able to review all those meeting notes and various other documents that were seized. It gave me an insight into the Hells Angels organization, structure, club business, membership, ideology, and the criminal activities they are and have been involved in.

August 1996
Assisted the D.E.A. Boston office with the investigation of Gregory Dorney, president of the Hells Angels Salem chapter and East Coast representative to the WCOM.

May 1996
Interviewed a cooperating individual who had been arrested for conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute 12 pounds of methamphetamine in Honolulu, Hawaii. Two other suspects that were arrested were Jay Serrano, a member of the Frisco Hells Angels and a member ofa local Hawaiian outlaw motorcycle gang, the Na’ Kua Ana MC.

January 1995
Assisted the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Special Operations Unit in terminating an employee for criminal misconduct. The particular employee was an officer in the Modified Motorcycle Association, San Jose Region and was also affiliated with the Jousters Me. The employee was issuing fraudulent California drivers’ licenses to members of the Jousters MC, who had their drivers licenses suspended. The employee had access to vehicle registration and drivers license data base information for the State of California.
National and International Conferences on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs-
In my capacity as an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Expert and Instructor on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, I have the opportunity to attend a number of national and international conferences on the subject of outlaw motorcycle gangs, as either presenter or attendee. Generally, topics include new trends, specific information regarding outlaw motorcycle gangs, involvement in criminal activity, the meaning of old and new patches and tattoos, updates on gang membership and, in the case of international conferences, overviews of outlaw motorcycle gangs from investigators from different countries. Ex-members of outlaw motorcycle gangs are made available for a question period where investigators can ask about gang structure, gang activity, business etc. These conferences provide an opportunity to discuss outlaw motorcycle gangs with other investigators from around the world.
Specifically, of note:

October 2012
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Criminal Intelligence Service Canada National Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Expert Witness Workshop

September 2012 Scottsdale, Arizona
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 2011
St. Louis, Missouri
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 2010
San Diego, California
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 2009
Nashua, New Hampshire
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

July 2009
Baltimore, Maryland
Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network (MAGLOGLEN) 22nd Annual Gang Information Sharing Conference

May 2009
Everett, Washington
NorthWest Outlaw ~otorcycle Gang Investigators Association (NWOMGIA) Conference

March 2009
Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada Biker Enforcement Unit
Frontline Officer Training Conference on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

September 2008 Des Moines, Iowa
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

February 2008
Rancho Cordova, California
16 hr Indoor Marijuana Grow Investigation Course (Retired RCMP Instructor Les Kjemhus)

September 2007
West Palm Beach, Florida
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

August 2007
Sacramento, California California Department of 1 ustice
Criminal Intelligence Bureau Training Conference (2hr update on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs)

May 2007
South Lake Tahoe, NV
Biker Investigator Association of Northern California Conference

September 2006
San Diego, California
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

February 2006 Stockton, California
Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Presentation by A TF Undercover Agents (Hells Angels; Vagos; Warlocks; Mongols)

September 2005 Laughlin, Nevada
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 2003 Scottsdale, Arizona
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

November 2001 Halifax, Nova Scotia
Canadian Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference

June 2000
Canada Police College, Ottawa, Ontario Expert Witness (HA) Course
April 2000 Calgary, Alberta
Western Canada Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Workshop

November 1999
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Canadian Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 1999
San Diego, California
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

May 1999
Palm Springs, California
Southern California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

May 1998
Palm Springs, California
Southern California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 1997 Laughlin, Nevada
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 1995 Quebec City, Quebec
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

March 1995
Palm Springs, California
Southern California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

October 1994 Calgary, Albel1a
Intelligence Analyst Meeting

September 1994
San Diego, California
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

August 1994
Sacramento, California California Department of Justice
Organized Crime and Criminal Intelligence Training Conference

April 1994 Sacramento, California
Western States Information Network
Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Activities Conference

May 1994
San Jose, California (Hosted/Coordinated)
Northern California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference
September 1993 Chicago, Illinois
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

May 1993
San Jose, California (Hosted/Coordinated)
Northern Caljfornia Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference

October 1992
San Jose, California
Northern California Gang Investigators Association Conference

September 1992 Portland, Oregon
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference

August 1992
Sacramento, California California Department of Justice
Organized Crime and Criminal Intelligence Training Conference

May 1992
San Jose, California (Hosted/Coordinated)
Northern California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference

September 1991 Orlando, Florida
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference
Previous Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Expert Witness Qualification

2013 San Mateo County Superior Court – Jury Trial- Wanted OMG member Orlando Rodriguez. Assault with a Deadly Weapon with a Gang Enhancement.

2013 Santa Cruz County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Hells Angel member Miki Macias (186.22(b) PC participate in criminal street gang; 25400(a)(1) PC CCW within vehicle; 11350(a) H&S possess narcotic controlled substance; 11370.1 (a) H&S possession of controlled sub armed w/loaded firearm; 11550( e) H&S under influence controlled sub, possess firearm; 11364(a) H&S possession of paraphernalia)(No 186.22 holding – judge had issue with “intent” portion of section)

2013 United States District Court Central District Of California (Los Angeles)¬Evidentiary Hearing – Hells Angel member George Christie Jr. and Demons member Kyle Gilbertson (Count 1: 18 USC 1951 (Conspiracy); Counts 2 & 3: 18 USC 1951 (Attempted Interference with Commerce by Extortion); Count 4: 18 USC 844(n) (Conspiracy); Counts 5 & 6: 18 USC 844(i) (Arson); Counts 7 & 8: 18 USC 924(c)(1)(A) (Use of Destructive Device). [Christie pled to 18 USC 1951 (Conspiracy to Interfere With Commerce by Extortion) and 18 USC 844(n) (Conspiracy to Use Fire or an Explosive to Damage or Destroy Real or Personal Property); Gilbertson pled to 18 USC 371 (Conspiracy to Violate 18 USC 1951)].

2013 Washoe County (Nevada) Superior Court – Evidentiary Hearing – Hells Angel member Cesar Villagrana & Vagos member Ernesto Gonzalez and Gary (Murder and Second-Degree Murder with a Deadly Weapon; Affray; Carrying a Concealed Firearm; Felony Battery with a Deadly Weapon) (Cross Examination – Continued from October 2012).

2012 San Joaquin County Superior Court – Grand Jury – CA Nomads Sgt-at-Arms David Sp]an and Prospect Brandon Gann (Homicide; Attempted Homicide; Gang Enhancement)

2012 San Diego County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Dago Hells Angels members Michael Ottinger and Christopher Bain.  (Homicide & Gang Enhancement) – (All held to answer & bound over for trial).

2012 Washoe County (Nevada) Superior Court – Evidentiary Hearing – Hells Ange] member Cesar Villagrana & Vagos member Emesto Gonzalez and Gary (Murder and Second-Degree Murder with a Deadly Weapon; Affray; Carrying a Concealed Firearm; Felony Battery with a Deadly Weapon) (Direct Examination – Cross Continued to January 2013).

2012 Riverside County Superior Court – Jury Trial – Orange County Hells Angels President James Bradley. (Criminal Threats; Gang Enhancements; Illega] Possession of a Firearm; Illegal Possession of Ammunition; Illegal Possession of Steroids) (Found Guilty of all charges and 186.22

2012 San Mateo County Superior Court – Grand Jury – Daly City Hells Angels member Donnie Lopez (Shooting into Inhabited Building; Brandishing a Firearm; Gang Enhancements) (Indicted)

2012 San Diego County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Hells Ange]s members Stephen Sanders, Billy Castellano, Jason VanMeter, Kirtith Nielsen, Michael Ottinger, and former Wrecking Machine member Shane Sanders (Kidnapping, ADW, et a], with gang enhancements) (All held to answer & bound over for trial).

2012 San Diego County Superior Court – Jury Tria] – Hells Ange] member Stephen Sanders (Assault with a Deadly Weapon & Gang Enhancement)(Convicted on all counts)

2012 San Diego County (Vista) Superior Court – Jury Tria] – Hells Ange]s members Brian Haag, Eric Thorsgard and Associate John Wayne (Assault with a Dead]y Weapon; Witness Intimidation; Gang Enhancement) (Hung Jury) (Thorsgard pleaded guilty to PC 245(a)(4) along with his conviction for PC 2020; Wayne pleaded no contest to battery; Haag’s  count was dismissed for a felony plea to another case he had pending for.

2012 Mohave County (Arizona) Superior Court – Jury Trial – Hells Angels members Rudolfo Martinez, Jerry Smith, Dale Hormuth, and Steve Helland (Riot and Participating in a Criminal Street Gang) (Not Guilty).

2012 United States District Court Northern District of California – Jury Trial – Mongols member Christopher Abbett (Murder; Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering Activity (VICAR); use and possession a firearm in furtherance of committing the murder )(Subpoenaed by Defense) Convicted)

2011 Washoe County (Nevada) Superior Court – Grand Jury – Hells Angel member Cesar Villagrana, Vagos members Emesto Gonzalez and Gary Stuart Rudnick (Murder and Second-Degree Murder with a Deadly Weapon; Affray; Carrying a Concealed Firearm; Felony Battery with a Deadly Weapon) (Indicted)

2011 United States District Court Eastern District of Washington – Evidentiary Hearing¬Hells Angels Washington Nomads Sergeant-at-Arms Ricky Jenks (Felon in Possession of a Firearm)(Provided expert testimony on ongoing tensions between Hells Angels and Mongols and duties/responsibilities of Hells Angels Sergeant-at-Arms) (Judge ruled that gang testimony would be allowed at trial) (Jenks pled guilty to Felon in Possession of a Firearm.)

2011 Kern County Superior Court – Jury Trial – Orange County Hells Angels member Michael “Delano” Pefta & Associate Joseph Soto (Acquitted by jury of all counts)

2011 Lake County Superior Court – Jury Trial- Misfits member Thomas Dudney. (Convicted of all counts)

2011 Los Angeles County Superior Court – Grand Jury – Hells Angel member Jess Dyckma (Indicted)

2010 Santa Cruz County Superior Court – Jury Trial – Santa Cruz Vagos member Thomas Froberg. (Acquitted – Self Defense)

2010 Kern County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Orange County Hells Angels member Michael “Delano” Pefta. (Held to Answer)

2010 Clark County Superior Court (Las Vegas) – Grand Jury – Sin City Hells Angels & Associates stabbing/assault on Mongols at wedding chapel with a gang enhancement. (11 HA & 2 Associates indicted).

2010 Santa Cruz County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Santa Cruz Vagos member Thomas Froberg. (Held to Answer).

2010 Sonoma County Superior Court – Jury Trial- Sonoma County Hells Angels Vice¬President John Nelson. (Found Guilty of Battery; Not Found Guilty of 186.22).

2009 Maricopa County (Arizona) Superior Court – Jury Trial- Mesa Hells Angels Prospect Nathan Sample (State v. Nathan Sample, CR2009-030276-002) (Sample found Guilty: Assault, Aggravated Assault, Assisting a Criminal Street Gang. The jury further found that Counts 2 and 3 were committed to further and promote the interests of the criminal street gang, Hells Angels).

2009 Fresno County Superior Court – Jury Trial – Merced Co Hells Angels President Ray Heffington (Ex-Felon possess firearm; possess loaded & concealed firearm; 186.22); members Monahan, Giannotta and Diaz (Defendants Found Guilty of Possession ofloaded & concealed firearms; Not Found Guilty of 186.22).

2009 Sonoma County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Sonoma Hells Angels member Michael Fenton, Associates Kevin Castro and Gerald Witherell (245(a)(1) + GBI 12022.7 + 186.22(b)(1)(c); 242 + 186.22(d)); Michael Fenton (186.22(a)). (Held to Answer)

2009 Sonoma County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Sonoma Hells Angels Vice¬President John Nelson (Assault with a Gang Enhancement). (Held to Answer)
2008 Contra Costa County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Oakland Hells Angels member Mike Musick (Possess Machine Gun/Assault Weapon; Possess Silencer; Possess Sap Gloves; Possess 2 Concealed Knives [12020 PC]; Possess Ballpeen Hammer [12020 PC]; 186.22). (Held to Answer)

2007 Fresno County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – Merced Co Hells Angels President Ray Heffington (Ex-Felon possess firearm; possess loaded & concealed firearm; 186.22); Prospects Monahan and Giannotta (Possess loaded & concealed firearm; 186.22); and Hangaround Diaz (Possess loaded & concealed firearm; 186.22); Members Mendoza and Kohn ([constructive] Possess loaded & concealed firearm; 186.22). (Heffington, Monahan, Giannotta, and Diaz Held to Answer)(Kohn and Mendoza Not Held to Answer)

2004 Kings County Superior Court – Jury Trial – Fresno Hells Angels Hangaround Timothy Lobretto, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery with gang enhancement. (Found Guilty)

2003 Kings County Superior Court – Jury Trial- Fresno Hells Angels members Henry Garcia, George Tristan, David Wendt, and Robert Davis, et aI, Burglary, felony grand theft, second-degree burglary, with a gang enhancement. (Found Guilty)

2002 Santa Clara County Superior Court – Motion to Suppress – Soul Brothers MC member arrested in possession of a stolen, loaded firearm at Annual Blessing of the Bikes Event (March 2002) (Suppression Motion Denied)

1998 Santa Clara County Superior Court – Jury Trial- San Jose Hells Angels Sgt-at¬Arms Steve Tausan Homicide Case (Acquitted)

1998 Monterey County Municipal Court – Preliminary Hearing – Monterey Hells Angels members Robert Serrano, Danny Avila, Danny Mostkovitz, et aI, Armed Robbery Case (Held to Answer)

1998 Santa Clara County Superior Court – Preliminary Hearing – San Jose Hells Angels Sgt-at-Arms Steve Tausan Homicide Case (Held to Answer)

Lectures and Presentations
I have lectured/provided training at workshops regarding the outlaw motorcycle gang phenomenon and provided overviews of club structure, club business, gang member’s criminal activities, organization, identification of members etc. including for:
2013 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Folsom, CA 2013 Regional Counterdrug Training Academy – 2-day class – Tuscaloosa, AL
2013 Regional Counterdrug Training Academy – 2-day class – Meridian, MS
2013 ABC Training Conference – 2hr Class – Milpitas, CA
2013 Hollister Rally Preparation Training – 4 hr OMG Class – Hollister, CA
2013 San Mateo SO Gang Task Force Training Day – 1 hr OMG Update – Redwood City, CA 2013 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Tustin, CA
2012 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – 2 4 hr OMG Classes – Anaheim, CA 2012 California Gang Task Force Conference – 4 hr Class – Garden Grove, CA
2012 San Mateo County Sheriffs Gang Conference – 4 hr Class – Redwood City, CA
2012 Criminal Intelligence Service Canada National OMG Expert Witness Workshop – 1.5hr
Presentation – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2012 Tuolumne/Calaveras Counties LE – 4hr OMG Run Enforcement – Sonora, CA
2012 South Bay Alliance Gang Intel Meeting – 1.5hr OMG update – Redwood City, CA 2012 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VI Training Day – Santa Barbara, CA 2012 Western Vice Investigators Association Conference – 4hr Class – Reno, NV
2012 Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU) Conference – 2 1.5hr Classes – San Diego, CA 2012 San Jose Police Department – 4hr Class – Gang Investigation Unit Academy, San Jose, CA 2012 Ventura County Sheriff s Office – 8hr Class – Ventura, CA
2012 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA 2012 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Rancho Cordova, CA 2011 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – 2 4hr OMG Classes – Sparks, NV 2011 California Peace Officers Association COPSWEST Seminar – 3hr Class – Ontario, CA 2011 Chico Police Department – 8hr Class – Chico, CA
2011 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII TrainingDay – Redding, CA 2011 San Mateo County Sheriffs Gang Conference – 4hr Class – San Mateo, CA
2011 San Jose Police/Campbell Police/Santa Clara Police – 4hr Class – San Jose, CA 2011 Tulare SO Region V Gang Conference – 4hr Class – Visalia, CA
2011 Montana FBI National Academy Alumni Course – 8hr Class – Billings, MT

2011 California Highway Patrol- Amador County – 4hr Class – Jackson, CA
2011 National Asian Peace Officers Association Conference – 4hr Class – San Diego, CA

2011 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Fontana, CA
2011 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – National City, CA 2011 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – Escondido, CA 2011 ABC Training Conference – 2hr Class – Sacramento, CA
2011 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Rancho Cordova, CA

2011 CPOA Riverside – 8hr OMG Class – Murrieta, CA
2010 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – 2-4 hr OMG Class – Anaheim, CA 2010 Monterey Gang Task Force Conference – 4 hr OMG Class – Monterey, CA

2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VII Training Day – Fresno, CA
2010 International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference, San Diego, CA 2010 Regional OMG Training – 8hr OMG Class – Yuba City, CA
2010 Regional OMG Training – 8hr OMG Class – Gonzales, CA
2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Ontario, CA 2010 ABC Training Conference – 2hr Class – Sacramento, CA
2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VI Training Day – Ventura, CA
2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VI Training Day – San Luis Obispo, CA

2010 San Diego Sheriffs Department (Court Security Personnel) – El Cajon, CA
2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – National City, CA

2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII Training Day – Eureka, CA 2010 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII Training Day – Redding, CA

2010 California Narcotics Officer Association/WSIN, Region II Training Day – Sacta, CA

2009 CPOA Solano – 6hr OMG Class – Benicia, CA
2009 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference ~ 2 4hr Classes – San Francisco, CA 2009 CPOA Riverside – 8hr OMG Class – Murrieta, CA
2009 Strategic Training Systems International- 8hr OMG Class – Washington/Baltimore HIDTA 2009 California DOJ, ATC Basic Intelligence Course – 2 hr Gang Intel Class – South Lake Tahoe, CA 2009 San Jose Police Academy – 6hr OMG Class
2009 Mateo County Gang Intelligence Unit Gang Seminar – 4hr Class – San Mateo, CA
2009 Strategic Training Systems International- 8hr OMG Class – Phoenix PD, Phoenix, AZ 2009 Tennessee Narcotics Officer Association Conference – 4hr OMG Class – Gatlinburg, TN
2009 International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference – New Hampshire

2009 Central Valley Intelligence Analyst Association Conference – 4hr OMG Class – Pismo Beach, CA

2009 Strategic Training Systems International- 8hr OMG Class – Henderson PD, Henderson, NV
2009 San Francisco Bay Area Gang Conference – 2hr OMG Class – Milpitas, CA
2009 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII Training Day – Redding, CA

2009 Oregon State Police/California Highway Patrol – 8hr OMG Class – Klamath Falls, OR

2009 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Irvine, CA
2009 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VII Training Day – Fresno, CA
2009 California Highway Patrol, Advanced Criminal Apprehension Program OMG Training- Sacramento, CA
2009 Illinois Drug Enforcement Officers Conference – Two 3hr Classes – Peoria, IL
2009 Ontario Biker Enforcement Unit / Frontline Officer Training Course, Gravenhurst, Ontario 2009 San Jose Police Academy – 6hr OMG Class
2009 California Highway Patrol, Advanced Criminal Apprehension Program OMG Training- Sacramento, CA
2009 Dynamic Solutions for Justice – 8hr OMG Class – Elk Grove, CA 2009 ABC Training Conference – 4 hr Class – Monterey, CA
2008 Hawaii HIDT A Meeting – 4hr Class – Honolulu, HI
2008 Riverside County Sheriffs Gang Conference – 6hr Class – Riverside, CA
2008 San Mateo County Gang Intelligence Unit Gang Seminar – 4hr Class – San Mateo, CA

2008 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – 2 4hr Classes – San Diego, CA

2008 U.S. Attorney’s Eastern District Executive Summit Conference – South Lake Tahoe, CA 2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – El Centro, CA
2008 San Jose Police Academy – 6hr OMG Class

2008 Dynamic Solutions for Justice – 8hr OMG Class – San Jose, CA
2008 Dynamic Solutions for Justice – 8hr OMG Class – San Luis Obispo, CA
2008 RMIN – How to Prepare for Expert Testimony on OMG Cases – Phoenix, AZ
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII Training Day – Redding, CA 2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Tustin, CA 2008 Hollister Police Department – Run Enforcement Training – Hollister, CA
2008 Mendocino County Gang Task Force Training Day – Ukiah, CA
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – National City, CA 2008 San Jose Police Academy – San Jose, CA
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Rancho Cordova, CA 2008 California Highway Patrol, Advanced Criminal Apprehension Program OMG Training-Sacramento, CA
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Cathedral City, CA 2008 Tri-State Commanders Conference – Laughlin, NV
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VIII Training Day – Eureka, CA 2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – Ventura, CA
2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region IV Training Day – San Luis Obispo, CA

2008 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA

2007 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – Reno, NV
2007 .California Narcotics Officer Association, Region VII Training Day – Fresno 2007 International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference
– West Palm Beach, Florida
2007 California Highway Patrol- Coastal Division Training – Santa Barbara
2007 California Highway Patrol – Golden Gate and Coastal Division Training – Salinas 2007 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Stockton, CA 2007 California Highway Patrol – Mariposa Office
2007 Biker Investigator Association of Northern California Conference – South Lake Tahoe, NV

2007 San Jose Police Academy – San Jose, CA
2007 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA

2007 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Ontario
2007 Sonoma County LE Agencies Class – Petaluma, CA
2007 California Highway PatroL=Northern Division
2007 California Highway Patrol – Valley Division
2007 California Highway Patrol – Golden Gate Division

2006 California Highway Patrol – Coastal Division 2006 California Highway Patrol – Central Division

2006 California Highway Patrol- Inland Division
2006 California Highway Patrol- Southern Division 2006 California Highway Patrol – Border Division
2006 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – Indian Wells, CA

2006 Alaska Peace Officers Training Class – Anchorage, AK
2006 WSIN Conference – Vancouver, WA
2006 California Attorney General’s Conference – Sacramento, CA 2006 San Jose Police Academy – San Jose, CA
2006 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region III Training Day – Diamond Bar, CA

2006 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region II Training Day – Rocklin PD, CA

2006 Tulare SO Gang Meeting – Visalia, CA
2006 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – Coachella, CA 2006 Del Norte County SO Biker Meeting – Crescent City, CA
2006 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association, Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA 2005 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association Conference – Reno, NV
2005 FBI District Law Enforcement Executive Gang Workshop – Sacramento, CA
2005 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association Region V Training Day – Diamond Bar, CA

2005 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association Region II Training Day – Marysville, CA 2005 California Narcotics Officer Association Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA

2005 Solano County Narcotics Investigators Meeting – Benicia, CA
2004 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – San Diego, CA
2004 California Narcotics Officer Association Region V Training Day – Ontario, CA 2004 California DOJ GSET Training Class – Vacaville, CA
2003 California Narcotics Officer Association Conference – Sacramento, CA
2003 California Narcotics Officer Association Region VII Training Day – Fresno County, CA

2003 California Narcotics Officer Association, Region I Training Day – Alameda County, CA

2003 Califomia Narcotics Officer Association, Region V Training Day – San Bemardino, CA

2002 CalIfornia Narcotics Officer Association Conference – Anaheim, CA
2002 Central Coast Gang Investigators Conference – Monterey, CA
2002 Western States Information Network (WSIN) Conference – Sacramento, CA 2001 Canadian Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference – Halifax, NS 2000 CISC Expert Witness (HA) Course – Ottawa, ON
2000 Western Canada Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Workshop – Calgary, AL
1999 Canadian Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Conference – Toronto, ON
1999 Intemational Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference – San Diego, CA 1999 Southem California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference- Palm Springs, CA
1998 Southem California Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference ¬Palm Springs, CA
1997 International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference ¬Laughlin, NV
1996 Provided training to Law Enforcement Agencies,inpreparation for the Hollister Motorcycle Festival- Gilroy, CA
1995 Intemational Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference – Quebec City, Quebec
1995 Southem Califomia Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association Conference – Palm Springs, CA
1995 Califomia Gang Investigators Association Conference – Santa Clara, CA

1994 Santa Clara County Municipal Judges Retreat – Carmel, CA
1994 Organized Crime and Criminal Intelligence Training Conference – Sacramento, CA

Ongoing and past presentations regarding outlaw motorcycle gangs

California Highway Patrol Academy – In-service Class (2006 – 2010) West Valley College – Administration of Justice Course – Gangs (AJ032) The San Jose Police Academy

The South Bay Regional Police Academies
The Sacramento Sheriffs Department Training Academy (Gang Course)
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms National Academy, New Professional Training (NPT/SABT) Classes, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco, Georgia – (1999¬2005) (5-10 times annually)

Memberships
California State Anti-Gang Intelligence Network (SAGIN) (2013)
International Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association (lOMGIA) -1991 (ongoing) (2008 voted on Board of Directors)
California Narcotic Officers Association (CNOA) – 1975 (Lifetime member) (2006 became Region II Chair)
Biker Investigator Association of Northern California – 2005 (ongoing) (2007 voted on Board) California Gang Investigators Association – 2010

An academic study released earlier this week portrays the Australian state of Queensland’s Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) laws, aimed at outlawing motorcycle clubs, as a cruel and cynical hoax.

Members of Queensland’s ruling Liberal National Party have portrayed crimes committed by bikers, particularly club members, to be a major public danger in Australia. The ruling party, whose members are currently running for reelection, have claimed that “Criminal Gang laws are keeping Queenslanders safer” and that the VLAD laws have driven a general decrease in crime. The study, by an Assistant Professor of Criminology at Bond University named Terry Goldsworthy, indicates the laws themselves have had virtually no effect on crime in Queensland.

0.6 Percent

Goldsworthy found that club members commit only about 0.6 percent of all crimes in Queensland and that the crimes they do commit tend to be assaults and drug offenses. The new laws have had virtually no effect on robberies, burglaries and vehicle thefts. Queensland’s crime rate has been generally falling for the last 12 years. The VLAD laws went into effect late in 2013.

Goldsworthy says politicians and police are actively engaged in a “media war” and are largely supported by news outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – the corporation that owns Fox News and other Fox outlets in the United States. Fox cablecast the popular television series Sons of Anarchy in the United States. A News Corporation subsidiary bought the film rights to Jay Dobyns memoir of his infiltration of the Hells Angels and publicized the ATF agent on a Fox show called America’s Most Wanted. Fox television affiliates have widely publicized the exploits of a drug dealer and snitch named Charles Falco. In 2011, during a sensational dispute with former Hells Angel Chuck Zito, Sons of Anarchy producer Kurt Sutter wrote: “When it comes to parting with cash, there’s one badass outlaw that makes Zito look like a pussy – his name is Rupert, and Rupe don’t sway. Trust me, Chucky could firebomb our lot and Fox wouldn’t fork over a fucking dime to this guy. That’s why I love them… my parent company is as stubborn and aggressive as I am.”

Media War

Goldsworthy writes, “As part of the bikie war, the police have worked hard to win the media war, wooing and winning over most of the mainstream media, in particular the print sector. This is in alignment with objectives set out by the bikie Strategic Monitoring Team to reduce bad news stories – and their efforts have paid off.”

The study quotes a police report obtained under Australia’s Right To Information law (similar to America’s Freedom Of Information Act) that states: “To improve the results for this indicator there has been substantial media engagement including background briefing with journalists and news directors, the provision of regular enforcement footage and positive messaging through all media outlets. On-line media forums are also regularly conducted allowing direct questions from the public to the Operations Leader for Taskforce Maxima.”

Taskforce Maxima is an Australian police force dedicated to arresting members of motorcycle clubs.

Rupe

The study asserts that “the bikie crackdown has been strongly backed by the Courier-Mail, Queensland’s only major state-wide daily newspaper,” and an outlet of Murdoch’s News Corporation. The study cites an editorial which reads in part, “The Courier-Mail has been unashamedly supportive of the crackdown on outlaw bikie gangs, reflecting genuine fear among Queenslanders who were terrorized by these thugs acting like they ran the state.”

In an editorial published this week, the Murdoch newspaper calls “Newman Government’s VLAD laws a win for law and order.”

The Australian equivalent of Fox News states, “Outlaw motorcycle gangs run sophisticated criminal enterprises. They are violent thugs who prey on the downtrodden and addicted. They peddle drugs and guns and ruin people’s lives. And our police, sanctioned by government inaction, allowed them to run rampant, particularly on the Gold Coast where the party scene lends itself to drugs.”

The editorial continues, “The VLAD laws attracted the usual criticism from bleeding heart civil libertarians and left-wing politicians who should know better. The reality is that Queensland is now a safer place.”

In some cases, the Murdoch media has blatantly lied. Using the Right To Information law, Goldsworthy found out that police believed there were a total of 900 motorcycle club members in Queensland when the VLAD laws went into effect. Yet the Courier-Mail has reported that 1,700 “gang participants” have been arrested since the new laws went into effect.

Gang Participant Robert Wickes

The accusations leveled at the accused “gang participants” have ranged from laughable to petty and cruel. For example, the Vlad laws forbid bar owners from serving motorcycle club members who are wearing patches. And this week, an Australian Vietnam veteran named Robert Wickes was denied entrance to his local bar because he wore a vest that included a patch that identified him as man who served in Vietnam. The patch, above, contains the slogan “duty first.”

The bar said they banned Wickes because the VLAD laws have compelled them to enforce “a blanket prohibition of all attire that might imply membership of a motorcycle group, irrespective of the logo, insignia or colors.”

As this is being written, the trial of Devils Diciples National President Jeff Garvin “Fat Dog” Smith, National Vice-President Paul “Pauli” Darrah and alleged National Warlord Cary “Gun Control” Vandiver is entering its 117th day. The men were indicted 30 months ago. The grand jury that indicted them was convened 17 months before that. The case really began in April 2009 when 18 people connected in one way or another to the Devils Diciples were arrested.

There is no accounting of how much all of this has cost so far. None.

There is never any accounting of how much these big biker show trials cost. Obviously there is overhead for the physical spaces in which cases like this are planned and adjudicated. Evidence must be catalogued and stored. Photocopying probably costs a fortune. There are direct and indirect investigative costs and investigators usually agree that the biggest part of that is the cost of electronic surveillance. The accused have to be apprehended and locked up. Everybody in the courtroom – judges, court reporters, Marshalls, bailiffs, prosecutors, defenders, paralegals, cops, experts and investigators – has to be paid. The people who clean the court have to be paid. The guy who runs the metal detector at the front door has to be paid. The case is probably worth something more than $100,000 to each lawyer for trial costs alone so far. Year by year, the cost of the case has added up. The combined value of the Devils Diciples prosecution to the American economy now probably amounts to nine figures. That’s enough to give 10,000 families $10,000 each.

Outlaw Bikers

The government is trying to prove that over a decade the Devils Diciples behaved as if they were contemptuous of many laws, rules and regulations and followed a code of behavior they shared with other motorcycle clubs. An Assistant United States Attorney named Eric Strauss has tried to give jurors an inside look into “the world of outlaw bikers;” just as Jay Dobyns, Kerrie Droban, Billy Queen, Charles Falco, Jason Hervey and Kurt Sutter have tried to give potential jurors an inside look.

Presuming the jurors in this case have been convinced by Strauss’ evidence, the panel has learned that some “outlaw bikers” like to play slot machines. Members of the club owned 15 slot machines and that was illegal because none of those outlaw bikers owned an Indian casino.

Many outlaw bikers enjoy or may be addicted to methamphetamine – as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy reportedly enjoyed and was addicted to methamphetamine. Sometimes outlaw bikers make the drug in small batches. Sometimes they consume some of what they make, give some away and sell some.

Marijuana

Straus alleges that at one point one Devils Diciple possessed fifty pounds of marijuana, as Cheech Marin once aspired to posessess fifty pounds of marijuana. Marijuana is now completely legal for recreational use in four of the United States and is legal to possess with the pro forma permission of a physician in 19 additional states and the District of Columbia. Prosecutors allege that another Devils Disicple perjured himself in that marijuana case. Strauss discounts the possibility that that club member simply lost his train of thought, became confused and mis-spoke.

Apparently, outlaw bikers can be dangerous. One member of the club “sucker punched” a man in a New York City bar, broke his jaw and knocked him out because he was wearing a patch for a band called the Black Label Society on the back of his leather jacket. The band’s logo intentionally mimics a motorcycle club patch. Another club member wrote the words “Snitches are a dying breed.”

Strauss also accuses the Devils Diciples of being institutionally sexist. Although one of the accusations against Smith is that he ordered the 2003 beating of five club members who had raped the wife of a Hells Angel.

The jury may begin deliberations as soon as today.