The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been shocked this month to discover that prosecutors lie, cheat and steal to win cases and advance their pathetic careers. This sudden, blinding realization is reminiscent of the fictional, French police Captain Louis Renault who was “shocked, shocked” to discover gambling in Rick’s Café Américain in the movie Casablanca.

There have been a few indications that judges know that prosecutors play games even if the press does not. Two years ago Chief Judge Alex Kozinski worried about “an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land.” Kozinski was referring to a Supreme Court decision in a case titled Brady v. Maryland which requires prosecutors to disclose, or discover to the defense, everything they know about a case including evidence that would tend to prove an accused man is innocent.

Prosecutors never play fair, of course, and Kozinski seems increasingly unable to ignore that ugly fact

Eric McDavid

The first case that came to Kozinski’s attention this month was an appeal of an “ecoterrorism” case against Eric McDavid. McDavid was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2007 and was released after serving nine years on January 8. He was the victim of an FBI “sting” that used a 19-year-old, paid snitch named “Anna.”

Anna assembled the group of “terrorists,” organized their meetings, taught them how to make bombs, drove them to the store to buy bomb-making materials, harassed them when they weren’t sufficiently militant, slept with McDavid, told him she loved him and encouraged him to love her. “I think you and I could be great, but we have LOTS of little kinks to work out,” she wrote him in one love letter.” In another she wrote “I hope in Indiana we can spend more quality time together, and really chat about life and other things.”

Defense attorney Mark Reichel described Anna as an agent provocateur but he couldn’t prove it because the government hid evidence and then lied about it. At McDavid’s trial an Assistant United States Attorney named Ellen Endrizzi told the judge McDavid “has throughout his papers said there was a romantic relationship [but] he has provided no facts of that.” McDavid couldn’t provide the love letters because Endrizzi had them locked up in a subterranean vault in her private office in hell. In her closing statement she told the jury “There are supposedly love letters. We’ve got evidence of one. Supposedly Mr. McDavid is falling all over himself for Anna. But you have testimony that Anna rebuffed him.”

McDavid’s lawyers filed a Freedom Of Information Act request for the missing evidence. Some of it eventually surfaced three years after McDavid went to prison. Most of it still remains secret. For example the name of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation remains a state secret. The government has said it innocently “misplaced” the evidence. A long, legal wrangling followed the FOIA disclosures and McDavid was eventually released after he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge with a sentence that amounted to half the time he had already served.

Johnny Steven Baca

But, what really got Kozinski’s attention this month was the appeal of a convicted “murderer” named Johnny Steven Baca.

Baca was accused of murdering same-sex companions John Adair and John Mix in 1995. Adair was a doctor and according to police he identified Baca as the shooter before he died. But the case against Baca was always weak. Paul Vinegrad, the Riverside, California Deputy District who prosecuted Baca enlisted the aid of a jailhouse snitch named Daniel Melendez who, in return for a promise of leniency from another prosecutor named Robert Spira, testified that Baca had confessed his crime when the two were locked up in the same cell.

Melendez said Baca had confessed he didn’t like the victims’ homosexuality and that he had been part of a scheme with Adair’s son to get rich. “The plan was for defendant to kill the doctor and his companion while they were together so that it would look like a love-triangle murder, then they could take the insurance proceeds.”

The problem was that Melendez was lying, Spira knew he was lying and then Spira lied under oath about that. Worse, the California Attorney General seems to have known about it and withheld evidence that would have proven the perjury from a California appeals court.

The case wound up in the federal appeals court because Baca is still locked up.

At a hearing on the matter earlier this month Judge Kozinski wondered why Melindez and Spira hadn’t been prosecuted for perjury. It was a good question and the court posed it to California Attorney Kamala D. Harris – a vacuous and unscrupulous woman whom President Obama has proclaimed to be the most beautiful attorney general of them all (above) and who recently announced she is running for the United States Senate.

Earlier this month a Deputy Attorney General named Kevin Vienna answered the court on behalf of Harris with a three page, prolix letter that boiled down to, “There have been extensive discussions of this matter at the highest level of our office.” Vienna promised the court that Harris might have something more to say later this month.

Maybe mañana. Maybe at a campaign appearance.

On January 16, soon to be ex-Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder announced what most of the press interpreted to be “reforms” in civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture is a procedure that allows police to seize cash, cars, suspected contraband and property from anyone without first proving the commission of a crime or a connection between the seized property and a crime.

For example, if your home is raided by Swat in the middle of the night based on an unproven tip from a compensated and anonymous accuser, and in the process of killing your pets, humiliating your women, terrorizing your children and wrecking your home Swat finds a month’s living expenses in cash in your sock drawer, the police are likely to seize that cash and use it to fund more Swat raids. And you will never get all your money back. And, it will probably be at least months and possibly years before you get any of it back.

Many reasonable people see civil asset forfeiture as inherently evil and un-American and they saw Holder’s “reforms” as indicative of the Obama Administration’s reasonableness.

What Holder announced a week and a half ago was that from now on federal police would only seize “property that directly relates to public safety concerns, including firearms, ammunition, explosives, and property associated with child pornography.”

The Washington Post broke the story and reported that Holder had “barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.”

But it was, as it now turns out, simply a public relations stunt. Holder’s order did not forbid asset seizures by state and local police forces even in cases where local and federal police “are collaborating.” Most forfeitures are made by local police. All policing in the United States is ever-increasingly federalized. For years the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been hiding behind local police to discourage public scrutiny of cases against motorcycle clubs.

Now another shoe has dropped.

The Journal Report

In separate reports published by the Wall Street Journal and the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday and today, the sophistry of Holder’s hollow words about asset forfeiture become obvious.

The Journal reported this morning:

“The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents.

“The primary goal of the License Plate Tracking Program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.”

The secret national vehicle database program began as a federal program along the Mexican border in 2008. Data collected by the program has been available to local police since 2009. Currently, networks of state, local and federal license plate readers are fully integrated. The information is stored at the “El Paso Intelligence Center” and any police force in the United States can request information about any vehicle. One redacted email quoted by the Journal states “Anyone can request information from our (license-plate reader) program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user….”

ACLU

In its report on the License Plate Tracking Program, the ACLU also noted that the government program is “in addition to the corporate license plate tracking database run by Vigilant Solutions, holding billions of records about our movements.” The ACLU report by Bennett Stein and Jay Stanley is based on “documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act.” The DEA records “are heavily redacted and incomplete, but they provide the most complete documentation of the DEA’s database to date.” The DEA would only provide “documents that are undated or years old” so the current extent of the tracking system remains a matter of speculation.

The ACLU report states:

“With its jurisdiction and its finances, the federal government is uniquely positioned to create a centralized repository of all drivers’ movements across the country — and the DEA seems to be moving toward doing just that. If license plate readers continue to proliferate without restriction and the DEA holds license plate reader data for extended periods of time, the agency will soon possess a detailed and invasive depiction of our lives (particularly if combined with other data about individuals collected by the government, such as the DEA’s recently revealed bulk phone records program, or cell phone information gleaned from U.S. Marshals Service’s cell site simulator-equipped aircraft.) Data-mining the information, an unproven law enforcement technique that the DEA has begun to use here, only exacerbates these concerns, potentially tagging people as criminals without due process.”

Asset Forfeiture Primary

One DEA document obtained by the ACLU describes “asset forfeiture” as a “primary” goal of the program. The released documents also show:

The DEA had deployed scores of license plate readers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey by 2010.

Partnership agreements between the DEA and local, state and regional law enforcement agencies remain secret so there is no way, at this point, for the press or for Congress to know how that information is being used.

The DEA is also inviting federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around the country to contribute location information to the database. For example, the documents show that local and regional law enforcement systems in Southern California’s San Diego and Imperial Counties and New Jersey all provide data to the DEA. The program was “officially opened” to these partners in May 2009. Other agencies are surely partnering with the DEA to share information, but these agreements are still secret, leaving the public unable to know who has their location information and how it is being used.

A Memorandum of Understanding between the DEA and Customs and Border Patrol guarantees the two police entities will provide shared  license plate reader data to each other as well as local law enforcement and prosecutors and “intelligence, operations, and fusion centers.” Customs and Border Patrol recorded 793.5 million license plate reads between May 2009 and May 2013.

The released memorandum clarifies yet another lie the Obama Administration told in February 2014. At that time, the Department of Homeland Security, of which Customs and Border Patrol is a part, announced it had “decided” it did not “need” a national license plate database. The plan became controversial when Homeland Security advertised for contractors to help assemble a National License Plate Recognition Database. At the time, the announcement was universally interpreted to mean that Homeland Security was announcing that such a would not be assembled because the American people found the concept of such a database to be repugnant. However, the reason Homeland Security abandoned the plan was efficiency and an intent to prevent redundancy. The database was already extant and had been for five years.

El Paso Virginia

The ACLU found that the El Paso Intelligence Center database is actually located in Merrifield, Virginia on the edge of the Washington beltway. An undated presentation obtained by the ACLU revealed the database held 343 million records.

The documents also reveal that the records are being data mined “to identify travel patterns” and the report wonders, “Are we all suspects if we drive on a certain road?”

The released information does not reveal the number of license plate readers operated by the DEA; their locations; the cost of the program; the number and types of arrests that have resulted from the program; the failure rate, or mis-hits, generated by the program; or whether the federal government has integrated its data with Vigilant Solution’s National Vehicle Location Service.

You can read the ACLU report here.

The city of Sturgis, South Dakota is desperately trying to convince a million motorcycle enthusiasts to attend this year’s Black Hills Rally. The rally dates this year are August 3 through 9 and it is officially the 75th rally.

An Indian dealer named Clarence “Pappy” Hoel started the rally 77 years ago in 1938. But the rally was cancelled in 1942 and 1943 on account of a war and gas rationing so that makes this one number 75. About 416,000 people attended last year. That’s 30 percent less than the estimated 604,000 riders who attended in the most crowded rally in 2000.

Million Bikers To Sturgis

This year there is an endless chant that a million bikers, including their personal entourages will attend. It is a theoretically possible attendance goal. There are eight million registered motorcycles in the United States. About half of them are Harleys or other V-Twins. Maybe half of them are ridden more than 3,500 miles a year. That amounts to two million riders who might actually make the trip. If only a quarter of them go to Sturgis this year carrying a passenger the little town in the Black Hills will host a million guests.

That assumes everybody who can ride to Sturgis has the money to pay for it. The Rapid City Ramada still has rooms available for $339 a night. The Rapid City La Quinta still has rooms for $494 a night, plus tax and all that. On the way there, a night at the Motel 6 in Grand Junction will cost you $75. Ahh, but the ambiance!

We Grow Old

There is also the fact the pool of bikers who would be inclined to ride to Sturgis is growing older and smaller. Harley-Davidson has been jumping through hoops the last couple of years to find a younger and “less traditional” customer base. “Exactly,” Sturgis Police Chief Jim Bush told Rapid City television station KOTA Sunday. Bush calculates the average age of bikers to be “around 50-years-old.”

“Anniversaries tend to draw more people usually,” Chief Bush managed to say with a straight face. “And, if that’s the case, the average biker is 50, this is probably the anniversary they’re going to attend if they’re going to attend one. I think that fact alone may drive a lot of people.”

His logic seems to be that if you only go to Sturgis every quarter century or so you might lose interest by the time you are 75. After all, shouldn’t every real American try the Legendary Steak Tip Dinner at the Loud American Roadhouse (no colors policy strictly enforced) at least once?

Who Knows

The million biker attendance number has been thrown around a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago Christina Steele who does public information and planning for Sturgis said, “The 50th was a huge year. So was the 60th. You hear a lot of estimates, anything from 850 to 1.3 million. Who knows?”

Steele doesn’t know where all the visitors will be sleeping. “We’ve heard a lot of businesses reporting that they’re already booked.” Even in the down years, like last year, virtually every motel room and campground within 150 miles of Sturgis is booked. Not every biker wants to commute to Main Street every day from Cheyenne. Or Fort Collins.

But Steele remains upbeat. “The price of gasoline is awesome right now,” she said. “So if that continues to hold throughout the summer a lot of people who maybe wouldn’t come otherwise still may just hook onto that RV and come on out.”

And then they, whoever they are, can say they finally did Sturgis and mark it off their lists.

Nick Mead, the British documentarian who spent more than four years and a small fortune making a film about former Hells Angel George Christie, has killed the project because he came to doubt Christie’s credibility.

The film, titled The Last American Outlaw, had secured two distribution deals for all formats including theatrical, DVD, television and downloads. A year ago Mead called the documentary “the film the government doesn’t want you to see.”

The movie was last screened at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is Pilton, England in May 2014.

Most of the film was shot while Christie was under indictment for conspiring to firebomb two Ventura, California tattoo shops named “Scratch the Surface” and “Twisted Ink” in July 2007. Christie was one of the founders of the Angels’ Ventura charter and he was voted out in bad standing from the club in 2011. Throughout the production, Christie maintained that he had “retired” from the club.

Out Bad

In the course of a tape recorded, multi-day interview in October 2013, Christie told The Aging Rebel he had been expelled from the Angels. And, he explained his estrangement from his old club like this:

“They asked me to think about it. I came back on Friday. I went to the meeting and they were confused because they thought I was just stepping down as president. I told them I was leaving the club. I said my mind is made up. I had my stuff waiting at the house. I said anybody who has anything to say to me say it to me now. Okay, out in good standing. We love you brother. You’re going to stop by aren’t you? You know you’re always welcome. The door is always open.”

“Two weeks later I get the phone call…. ‘Your status has changed to out bad no contact….. Well there’s people who think you might influence the club. The club got raided last Friday night and we think you had something to do with the raid.’”

“So that’s it. After forty years. That’s it? A phone call. I don’t even get to come and defend myself. He says, ‘No, that’s it. It’s a done deal all over the world.’ I go, ‘Okay. Let me tell you now. If any of you guys approach me I’m gonna assume it’s on. Because I know what out bad no contact means.’”

Plea Deal

During his most recent legal trouble, Christie faced two charges that carried minimum sentences of 30 years each and another charge that carried a mandatory sentence of life. He went on trial in January 2013. According to a knowledgeable source speaking on condition of anonymity, most of Christie’s defense would have examined the means and methods used to entrap and bully members of motorcycle clubs. Both former Mongol Al Cavazos and former Bandido President George Wegers were prepared to testify on Christie’s behalf. The judge in the case, George H. Wu, practically begged the adversaries to reach a plea deal. The two sides agreed to a deal on February 1, 2013.

The next day Christie issued a written statement that read:

“The man that law enforcement  is pursuing no longer exists. Like the Western outlaws of old he walked into a new century and vanished. He is gone, and I ask you to let him rest in peace.

“It’s true, for forty years I rode with the Hells Angels. Thirty-five of those as one of its leaders and spokesmen. Although I am no longer a member or participant in that lifestyle, it is hard to separate my past from the present for many people, as well as the man from the myth, and that includes myself at times.

“Over time I have tried to become smarter, wiser and more tempered. I’ve not always taken the correct turns in life but when I have realized I was off course I have always tried my best to once again find true north.

“Several years ago I made a decision to not just relinquish my office, but to end my tenure as a club member: A difficult personal decision I knew would arouse suspicion in many. Through providence, I found myself on a road down which I was no longer willing to take my wife and young son.

“As a leader, you can either fish each day for your men or teach them to fish for themselves. I thought I had taught them the art of fishing. I made a mistake in judgment as their leader. And, as I slowly let go of power it created a vacuum. That set off a power struggle that created a series of events that brings me before the court.

“Although I did not personally direct anyone, I accept that if I am truly guilty of anything it is a lack of leadership. So I stand here before you ready to accept the punishment for the crimes I’ve pled guilty to and once again find true north.”

Christie was sentenced by Wu in August 2013 to serve a year in prison. Since then, virtually every document filed in the case has been sealed including all the motions to seal.

Mead decided to spike the film after he was unable to verify details of Christie’s plea agreement.

Mead Says

In a written statement this morning, Mead said:

“I wanted this to be a film based on hard facts and truths. Unfortunately I no longer believe in this film nor it’s subject matter. As a filmmaker you only have so many films in you and each one is sacred. Making films for me has never been about the money, but about the truth of the moment. This has become a film I can no longer stand by and be proud of .

I always have been and remain very respectful of, as well as inspired by, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and this continues.”

Eastern TV

Christie was released from federal prison last fall.

Since his release, he has been negotiating to appear in a six part reality television series about his life to be produced by a New York production company named Eastern TV. The series would be cablecast on The History Channel.

Eastern TV has previously produced the television series Crazy Hearts Nashville, Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, When Robots Rule, Apocalypse Island and Cocaine: History Between The Lines.

In a casting notice last year for the as yet untitled show, Eastern wrote:

“Are you a man with miles of hard road behind you, ready to ride toward a bold new horizon? Read on…

“We’re looking for a family man who has spent years in loyal service to his motorcycle club and wants to kick start a new life starring in a brave new series commissioned by a major cable network. If you’re an outlaw with a heart of gold your greatest adventure might be about to begin…by sending us an email.”

“You need to be hard and uncompromising, with a personality big enough to fill the screen. Your family is as important as you are. If you’ve got a little girl you can’t say ‘no’ to and a wife who knows exactly how to tell you ‘no,’ we’re off to a great start. You need to be ready to put the outlaw years behind you and make a new start at something totally different. It’s great if you know what you want to do next, but if not, having the desire is enough: we can help with the rest.”

For George Christie, what is next will not include Mead’s documentary.

The custom motorcycle business is alive and well! Just don’t expect to make any money at it. And it is not really about motorcycles. Consider, to start, the Arch KRGT-1.

The Arch, pictured above, weighs 538 pounds dry and is powered by a 124 cubic inch S&S Cycles, Twin Cam, V-Twin engine that makes about 121 horsepower. It looks fast. The foot controls are nicely kicked out. The seat looks comfortable. The rear view mirrors are fashionably tiny. It features a Baker six speed transmission, dual front brakes and a five gallon gas tank that is probably good for 200 miles between fill ups. According to the manufacturer, the gas tanks are hand made and each one takes 60 hours to construct.

Not that the size of the tank matters. It is purely a bar hopper. There is no place to put a woman or hang saddlebags.

Blah, Blah, Blah

That is because, “An Arch provides strength, connection and passage. Strength that comes from meticulous design and engineering. Connection between modern and classic, style and performance, custom and production. Passage from canyons to cities, down freeways to destinations bound only by the rider’s desire.” You’re guess is as good as mine about what that last passage of corporate double talk means. I think it means, “You’re not going to ride this thing to Sturgis.” Maybe it means, “If you can afford this you can afford to fly it to Sturgis.”

Because the Arch costs $78,000. There is a wait to get one and the bike is the dream of actor Keanu Reeves. Reeves, who may be most famous for playing a good natured moron named Ted, describes himself as “the voice of the long-time everyday rider.” Reeves first motorcycle “was a Kawasaki 600 Enduro, followed by the beginning of his Norton affair and the first of many he’d own over the years. Often away from home and his Norton’s, he got in the habit of buying a bike when filming on location and selling when the shoot was done. He’s owned a Suzuki GS1100E, Suzuki GSX-R750, 1974 BMW 750, a Kawasaki KZ 900, an ‘84 Harley Shovelhead, and a Moto Guzzi among others.”

The KRGT-1 has been on the market since September. It remains a mystery how many people have actually bought one. Some people are probably mystified about who might buy one. But Arch is worth mentioning now because it epitomizes the idea of motorcycles as symbols of brands.

Reeves collaborator in his motorcycle company is Gard Hollinger who is described by Arch as having grown up, “up in Los Angeles during the tail end of the mid-century modern movement, bombing around the Hollywood Hills on dirt bikes past buildings seemingly dropped from outer space. In fact he spent his formative years living in such a structure; a Lautner-designed piece up on Mullholland known as the Garcia House.”

What these guys are really about and the reason they talk like that is because they are building a brand.

Branding

The idea of motorcycles as art, as something entirely symbolic, began at the peak of the Harley boom in 1998 when the Guggenheim Museum in New York opened an exhibition called Art of the Motorcycle. Now, uniquely beautiful motorcycles are being used to publicize high end brands.

A Danish bike builder named Lauge Jensen has been building art bikes for years. Last month he announced a V-Twin production motorcycle called the Viking Concept which sells for about $50,000 depending on the relative value of the dollar and the euro. Jensen probably won’t sell many of them and it doesn’t matter. He is one of the heirs to the Lego fortune. What he seems to be doing is enhancing his own personal brand.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that a Los Angeles custom bike company and “lifestyle brand” named Deus Ex Machina has lost money on custom bikes built for celebrities Orlando Bloom, Ryan Reynolds, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Jason Mraz. Deus Ex Machina (which is an ironic Latin term from classical drama that means “God from the machine’) was founded by an Australian millionaire named Dare Jennings.

Jennings doesn’t expect to make money from his motorcycles. “That’s why we make clothing,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d go broke.”

The motorcycles are mostly symbolic – a component of Deus “branding.” In Los Angeles, Deus sells jeans for  $259 and hoodies for $220. The same shop sells surfboards, wet suits, motorcycle helmets, boots and gloves. The shop calls itself an Emporium of Post Modern Activities,

“It’s a lifestyle experience,” a Deus executive told the Times. “If we build a strong community, sales will come with that.”

It doesn’t seem to be much different than what Harley-Davidson has been doing for decades; using the symbolic value of overpriced motorcycles to sell clothing. You can decide for yourself what it all means.

The Aging Rebel has legally obtained multiple audio tapes from multiple sources that suggest that George Christie, former president of the Ventura charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, began cooperating with police in April 2008 after he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and cocaine.

There is no smoking gun that proves Christie debriefed with police. There is evidence that Christie was significantly more conversational with police than most Hells Angels.

The non-duplicate tapes amount to about 110 minutes and include long conversations between Christie and Ventura County Sheriff’s Detective Mike Harris and Ventura Police Department Detective Terry Medina. Some of the tapes are recordings of intercepted telephone calls. All but one of the tapes is undated. That single tape is dated April 25, 2008. Another tape contains a reference to Doc Cavazos, who was President of the Mongols Motorcycle Club until August 2008.

Most of the conversations amount to what is legally called “consensual contacts.”

Gonna Be A Problem

The day of his 2008 arrest, Christie asks, “Is this gonna be a problem.”

“We can’t over look the fact that you have coke or meth and you have a lot of cash there,” a policeman replies. “At the minimum it is possession and under the influence. That’s a lot of pills.”

“I got a four year old and a fifteen year old.” Christie replies. “This is it for me.”

““It won’t take much to do you for sales,” a cop says.

I’m Talkin’ To Law Enforcement

During a taped telephone conversation the day after Christie’s arrest he volunteers:

““I like to get along with everybody. I talk to Tom. I talk to Doc…. The contraband I got caught with yesterday? Maybe I can work out some kind of community service.”

Christie describes himself to police, “as a Hells Angel who’s been politically involved at the top for the last 20 years.” At one point during that conversation, he asks his daughter to quiet down and adds, “I’m talkin’ to law enforcement on the phone.”

“How can I get a hold of you,” Christie asks during one conversation.

The detective replies, “Six-seven-seven-eight-seven-seven-one.”

If We Can’t Trust Somebody

Ironies abound in the tapes. During one exchange, Christie is arguing that the Ventura charter has a rule against motorcycle thefts and Christie tells Harris that the Ventura Sheriffs must have similar rules. Harris replies, “We work on the assumption we can trust everybody. If we can’t trust somebody they’re gone.”

Long portions of the tapes are a cat and mouse game between the police and Christie about the Ventura charter’s possible involvement in motorcycle thefts. Christie’s son, George Jr., was caught with a motorcycle that contained, at least, stolen parts. The younger Christie bought it from another club member and sold it to a third club member. The bike remained in George Christie, Sr.’s possession.

George Christie, Sr. insisted that members of the Ventura charter were forbidden to steal bikes and if anything like that happened, it happened behind his back. “What does Georgie need to do,” Christie asked. “I don’t want to see my boy get in trouble. But if he bought that bike knowing it was hot….”

Harris confronts Christie, saying “You could not give the bike back legally so you decided to keep it as long as you could.”

In bargaining on behalf of his son, Christie seems to criminally implicate another club member. Christie tells the detective, “Georgie’s bike is stolen? He got that from another member. I’m not even gonna mention his name. You know who he dealt with. I’m talking off the record here I hope.”

Christie also tells detectives he has “short term memory loss” as a result of a motorcycle accident.

Plomell

“You know you had a tap on your phone right,” Harris asks, then mentions a “call from Plomell about a Mongols motorcycle they wanted to steal.” Christie replies that he knew about the tap.

Plomell is former Ventura charter member Jared Ostrum “Crash” Plomell. The Aging Rebel has heard the recorded conversation between Christie and Plomell about stealing a motorcycle that belongs to a Mongols member. The motorcycle was not actually stolen. Plomell was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2010 for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and for an illegal gun sale. Plomell, according to an informed source, eventually became a cooperating witness.

The public record contains many volumes of information about the legal woes of the Hells Angels Ventura charter after about November 2007 when Plomell was stopped for a routine traffic violation by Ventura County Sheriffs. Plomell is no longer a member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

At one point in the tape recordings, Harris tells Christie, “I’ve been after you for a long time dude. You know why. A lot of people have poured their hearts out to you and have copped to a lot of dirty deeds to you.”

Last Case

Christie was expelled from the Hells Angels in 2011 and was indicted in December of that year along with four other men for conspiring to extort money from Ventura County, California tattoo parlors and for conspiring to fire bomb two Ventura tattoo parlors called Scratch the Surface and Twisted Ink. At the time of the arsons, Christie owned a tattoo shop called The Ink House. The principal accusers against him seem to have been Crash Plomell and James David Ivans, Jr.

Christie faced life imprisonment on the charges and went to trial in January 2013. Five days into the trial, at the conclusion of voir dire, Christie reached a plea deal. His sentencing was delayed until August 2013. He began a one year sentence in October 2013. Since Christie reached his deal, virtually every document filed in the case has been sealed.

While he was under indictment, Christie and his last case became the subject of a documentary by the British film maker Nick Mead. The film had been completed and had secured distribution. It was previewed at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is Pilton, England last year. Last week, Mead announced that he was washing his hands of the film.

In a written statement, Mead said, “I wanted this to be a film based on hard facts and truths. Unfortunately I no longer believe in this film nor it’s subject matter…. This has become a film I can no longer stand by and be proud of.”

“I always have been and remain very respectful of, as well as inspired by, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and this continues.”

Cory Robert Howard, a member of the Leathernecks Motorcycle Club, remains charged today with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure and disorderly conduct. He is free on bail.

Howard, a disabled veteran of the Iraq War, was charged after a brawl between five members of the Leathernecks and about 25 members of the Rebels Motorcycle Club. At least two members of the Rebels brandished firearms. Numerous sources have stated that at least one member of the Rebels brandished an unloaded AK47 which he was unable to load. Numerous sources have stated that a Rebel named J.D. Lambert, who was wounded, fired three shots during the altercation last October 13.

Rebels Cooperating

The Aging Rebel ignored the incident until December when it appeared that members of the Rebels were cooperating with law enforcement in Howard’s prosecution.

That cooperation seemed at odds with a proclamation on the Rebels national website which states, “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.” 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. Club members wear a one percenter diamond.

This page considered the cooperation between Rebels involved in the October 13 incident and local police to be newsworthy and reported that cooperation in a story titled “Rebels Cooperating” published on December 12, 2014. That story led with the sentence, “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.”

Rebels Respond

Supporters of the Rebels Motorcycle Club responded by attacking this site and its author.

One Rebels supporter who identified himself with the handle “Still Waiting” wrote: “Rebel – first you make baseless accusations based on enquirer esq whatever it is you do, art? It’s certainly not journalism. Then when given ample time you are asked to show, display, post any of the evidence you have. Anything other than he said she said…. Like I said, the accuracy of your reporting is on par with other journalists who make their ‘leads’ from the smoke of their cigarettes. I’m sure your book will be as wildly successful as your first. Regardless it certainly belongs in the fiction genre.”

Bogolea, Hartley And Lambert

In general, this page does not disclose its methods or the means by which it obtains information. The Aging Rebel protects sources. Without further elaboration, The Aging Rebel believes the following to be absolutely and unequivocally true.

Dwayne “Hobo” Bogolea, a member of the Rebels Motorcycle Club and a former member of Satan’s Syndicate, “was interviewed and gave a voluntary statement” to Sergeant Dawn Shane of the Rochester Borough Police. “Bogolea stated that Cory, a short guy with a little beard and is from Pittsburgh is the person who was shooting at him and JD.”

A member of the Rebels named Scott Hartley, “identified the shooter as Cory Howard” “He supplied a verbal and written statement.”

“The shooting victim has been identified as James Lambert III.” “Lambert stated” to Sergeant Shane “that Cory Howard had pulled a gun and waved it around at everyone.” “Lambert…stated that Howard fired shots at his girlfriend inside her van.”

In the aftermath of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, members of a loose confederation of cattle rustlers and other entrepreneurs called The Cowboys killed Morgan Earp and maimed his brother Virgil. It wasn’t entirely idle malice. The Earps had killed three Cowboys – Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton.

The dispute wasn’t as black and white as it is usually portrayed. The Earps were guns for hire. They came to Tombstone to run card games and get rich. They wound up as muscle for the Eastern and European millionaire’s who ran the boomtown’s mines. The Cowboys represented the way things had been in Southern Arizona, down on la linea, before the big money moved in.

After his brothers were ambushed, Wyatt Earp organized a federal posse with the intention of hunting down and killing every Cowboy he could find. What happened next was called the Vendetta Ride. It lasted 27 days, from March 20 1882 through April 15 and its victims included Johnny Ringo and William “Curly Bill” Brocius. After Earp got his fill of blood, he escaped the law in Arizona by fleeing to Colorado, Alaska and eventually Los Angeles where he spent his final days watching western movies and polishing his reputation.

There is a more modern, slightly less dramatic and longer lived version of the Vendetta Ride happening right now in Los Angeles. Police are trying to hound the Mongols Motorcycle Club out of existence as revenge for the death of Pomona Swat Officer Shaun Diamond last October 28.

Anniversary Party

A Mongol named David Martinez was charged with Diamond’s murder after Diamond and 13 other militarized police broke into Martinez’ home at four in the morning. That case isn’t as black and white as it has been widely described either. Diamond, according to numerous police spokesmen, was shot in the back of the head. The Swat team had just thrown a flash bang grenade into the Martinez home. In the last 102 days prosecutors have not made public any evidence that Martinez did what he has been accused of doing. The raid on the Martinez residence was one of seven simultaneous raids that morning that was looking for evidence that could be used to reinforce a RICO case against the Mongols club as a whole – all Mongols, not just those who have been convicted of crimes.

The Mongols have been around since Vietnam. The club celebrated its forty-fifth anniversary last Saturday night at a place called the House Lounge in Maywood, California which is on a narrow street in a mostly industrial section of East El Lay not far from the Los Angeles River. Other clubs that are friendly with the Mongols came to party with them and it was a peaceful assembly except for the police.

Safety Stops

A multi-agency task force that included hundreds of California Highway Patrolmen, police from at least a half dozen area departments and federal investigators stopped and harassed everyone entering and leaving the party. A witness described the stops as maliciously “degrading.” Police found excuses to ticket most of the attendees. Many cars and motorcycles were seized for what seem to have been manufactured excuses. Every vehicle was illegally searched. At least one pack was run off the road. The harassment wasn’t confined to Mongols. The harassment wasn’t confined to men. As is almost always the case with these sorts of things, the police told their victims they were ensuring their safety. The stops were technically legal in California because the victims included motorists. If the victims had only been motorcyclists the “safety stops” would have been technically illegal.

A long time and reasonable member of the club who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “They made it clear to certain brothers that this was a direct result of what happened to the cop in the Martinez case. Obviously they are making a point and aren’t going to stop until they get what they want and that’s to strip our club of our trademarks. It’s been tough for our club. Hopefully they won’t kill any of us in the process.”

Given the entirely malicious nature of last weekend’s safety enforcement exercise, it is starting to look like that is what Los Angeles area police intend to do: Find some excuses to kill some Mongols. Then, maybe, run off to Colorado.

Patrick Eberhardt, a member of the Cave Creek charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and a second generation Hells Angel, was murdered about 10:50 p.m. Saturday. Eberhardt died as he was riding on Bell Road in Phoenix near 15th Street, about two miles east of the Steel Horse Saloon.

An unidentified club hang around and friend of the murdered man was riding next to him in a pack of about six motorcycles. The hang around was seriously wounded in the incident and is expected to survive. An unknown shooter or shooters opened fire on the pack as it approached 15th Street from the east., heading toward the Steel Horse and Route 17. Bell Road was closed between 12th Street and 16th Street until 9 a.m. Sunday.

A Phoenix police spokesman named James Holmes has been vague about details of the murder. “When officers arrived they found two young white males in their 20’s in the roadway both suffering from gunshot injuries,” Holmes said. Eberhardt was pronounced dead at the scene.

Nobody Knows Anything

“They are wearing insignia for Hells Angels,” Holmes said. “We don’t know if they’re actual club members or associates, but they’re obviously distraught as to what happened to their friends. We’re not getting a whole lot of assistance from them because they don’t know.”

“Unfortunately, they’re not able to tell us a whole lot based on the fact that it was dark and we don’t know where those shots came from,”

Yesterday morning, Homes said “We’re not getting any indication they were involved in anything last night before this shooting with anyone so it’s a big mystery to us.”

“We have no motive no suspects,” the spokesman said. “But what we do have is lots of business in this area and we’re looking for people who might have been in the area and seen what happened around 11 o’clock and who might not have talked to our police officers.”

Holmes said police are investigating whether the murder was “gang related.”

“Considering the fact you do have the MC, and they have rivals, they have things that go on with them,” Holmes said.

The FBI sent out a self-congratulatory email last Friday announcing that the final defendants in the great Black Pistons racketeering case of 2012 had been sentenced.

The case of which the Department of Justice is so proud used “An undercover agent posed as a drug dealer from Florida who was looking to expand his drug dealing into North Georgia. He was introduced to members of the motorcycle clubs by a club member who was working as an informant for the FBI.”

“The undercover agent conducted actual and ruse drug deals in which he either bought methamphetamine from motorcycle club members or recruited club members to assist him in moving what they were led to believe were significant quantities of methamphetamine or cocaine from North Georgia to Tennessee. The undercover agent also obtained firearms from convicted felons and engaged two defendants in discussions about making an unregistered explosive device for him.”

The case very much epitomized the transformation of the United States of America into a sadistic state: A nation that can’t do very much about national problems and that exists mostly to trick people into committing victimless crimes so its army of inquisitors can throw law books at them.

Forty Month Prosecution

Twenty-two men were arrested on various federal charges when the case was announced in August 2012. Five more men were eventually charged with something.

Two defendants took their chances at trial and were convicted. One of those men was sentenced to four months in prison for selling a gun to a convicted felon. Another defendant, who was 63 at the time of his conviction, got five years in prison for “conspiring to aid and abet and aiding and abetting the possession with intent to distribute cocaine.” He needed money and he was entrapped in a drug sting,

Five men beat the case in court. The best known of those were Outlaws Regional President Larry McDaniel, Outlaw Sean King and Black Pistons State President Howard Brown who were all charged with conspiring to impede a federal investigation. What the men actually did was impede an ongoing entrapment by telling the members of a Black Pistons chapter they couldn’t call themselves Black Pistons anymore.

One defendant made bail and he is still in the wind.

Plea Deals

Nineteen of the defendants were eventually bludgeoned into taking plea deals. In the federal courts, almost everybody gets bullied into taking a plea deal. Federal justice is never fair.

Two men pled guilty to possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and were each sentenced to ten years in prison. Another man pled guilty to “conspiring to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute.” He did not actually possess methamphetamine but he dreamed that someday he might get rich in the get quick rich scheme the FBI used to temp him and he earn five and half years in prison for his dream

Six men between the ages of 22 and 60 pled guilty to conspiring to aid and abet the possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. Conspiring with an FBI agent provocateur. Conspiring. They were sentenced to between two and five years in prison.

One man pled guilty to possession of a firearm during an imaginary drug trafficking crime and he got five years he prison.

Six men confessed to “using a communication facility in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.” They confessed to talking about an imaginary crime on the telephone and they received sentences of up to three and a half years in prison.

One defendant confessed to conspiring to sell a firearm to a convicted felon. He got five years.

Another man who possessed a firearm with an obliterated serial number got a year and a half.

Two men pled guilty to “conspiring to make and transfer a destructive device” and they were sentenced to two and three years in prison.

“These sentencings close a comprehensive investigation into drug trafficking and illegal gun and explosives offenses by members of motorcycle gangs operating in North Georgia,” Acting United States Attorney John Horn bragged. “The case reflects our commitment to make sure the communities in North Georgia are safe, and prevent gang members involved in drug and gun offenses from establishing a foothold there.”

It has been 107 days since a Mongol named David Martinez was arrested on suspicion of murdering a validated Swat goon named Shaun Diamond.

It is very rude to refer to Diamond as a Swat goon. Ninety-eight days ago at his funeral Diamond was remembered as a “stern, compassionate,” “devoted father” and “committed officer.” California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who intends to become a United States Senator, called Diamond “a mentor both within the department and the greater Pomona community” and claimed that the Golden State would be “forever grateful for his service.”

Harris’ words were spoken to console Diamond’s grieving family. Martinez’ family was in court today. They are in court every time Martinez appears. And, they also seem passible although no Senatorial candidates have yet come forward to console them.

Swat Goons

At the moment he was fatally wounded, Diamond was one of fourteen Swat goons breaking into Martinez’ home in the middle of the night – more than five hours after the moon went down and more than three hours before the Sun stained the eastern horizon. Martinez’ mother, father, wife, two children and his sister were inside at the time. The raid was a federal operation carried out by local Swat teams.

Federal police forces use local Swat teams to disperse responsibility for the damage Swat raids do.  Last Fall a federal judge in San Diego named Gonzalo P. Curiel ruled that a Hells Angel named Maurice Peter “Pete” Eunice could not sue the Drug Enforcement Administration for property damage caused by a very violent and blatantly punitive Swat raid because he had not challenged the validity of the search warrant and because it was the El Cajon police who had actually inflicted the damage while the DEA Agents only watched and laughed.

The Martinez raid was, officially, the means used to serve a search warrant for a gun that may or may not have been used in a shooting months before. A retired judge named Maral Injejikian issued the warrant five days before the raid. She issued it on the basis of an affidavit that remains more secret than the extraterrestrial alien colony near French Frigate Shoals. The raid was game planned over the course of at least five days but the public is not allowed to know why.

It was a dynamic entry Swat raid, which is to say it was a home invasion and takeover, because Martinez and his family were considered by “authorities” to be so dangerous to police officers that they could only be controlled by militarized goons. It was the same sort of entry prison guards use when they burst into the cells of uncooperative convicts. That was the sort of service Shaun Diamond was performing when he died and for which we should all be “forever grateful.” It was one of seven simultaneous raids in search of, probably, the same gun. Martinez wasn’t holding the gun.

No Fifth Amendment

It was, in what most Americans agree is our consensual reality, a punitive raid. Prosecutors and police avoid being “handcuffed” by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution by simply inflicting punishment on people who are guilty of imaginary crimes. Martinez was guilty of the imaginary crime of belonging to the Mongols Motorcycle Club. His mentally challenged sister and his father, who was wounded during the police assault, were guilty of the imaginary crime of being related to him. So they were all punished for real.

This sort of police state excess is routine on the motorcycle outlaw frontier. Everyone who went to a Mongols party in Maywood, California a week ago was a victim of extrajudicial punishment. Everyone who tried to go to that party was stopped, searched, harassed and victimized. Many had their cars or motorcycles stolen by police. According to someone who could speak authoritatively about the ruined party, “They made it clear to certain brothers that this was a direct result of what happened to the cop in the Martinez case. Obviously they are making a point and aren’t going to stop until they get what they want and that’s to strip our club of our trademarks.”

Mongols Marks

The Mongols marks were the real point of the raid on Martinez’ home. The raid was inspired by two federal prosecutors named Christopher Brunwin and Steven Welk who have been trying to outlaw the Mongols by seizing the club’s name and insignia since 2008. The seizure is blatantly unconstitutional, the two prosecutors know it and in the past they have lied to judges to achieve what no American prosecutor has ever done before: Which is to authorize police who see a Mongol anywhere in America “to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back.” In the summer after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives granted itself the authority to “take” Mongols symbols police broke into cars and invaded homes to “seize” old Mongols calendars, bandannas, family photos and shirts decorated with forbidden combinations of letters like MFFM and forbidden slogans like “Free The M***ols.”

The current incarnation of this draconian ambition is a federal racketeering case called USA v. Mongol Nation. It is inseparable from the Martinez case. The raid on Martinez home was not only intended to punish Martinez for being Martinez but also to search for evidence that might be used against his motorcycle club in Mongols Nation. And in the course of punishing the Martinez’ family and buttressing Brunwin and Welk’s unconstitutional cause, Shaun Diamond, who was wearing body armor and a Fritz helmet, was shot in the back of the head and the police have been lying about it ever since.

Many official spokesman have said, “Diamond was standing behind officers as they smashed through the front door of the home with a battering ram.”

Fox News, in the most subtle account of how Diamond died, reported “Diamond was helping to open the outer door of a home in the 100 block of San Marino Avenue when an interior door of the home was opened and a single shotgun blast rang out. Diamond was struck in the back of the head. Police did not return fire.” But that’s not quite it either. The first thing police did was throw a grenade into the home.

Today’s Episode

After barking inconsistent and contradictory stories for a week after the shooting, police circled the wagons, lawyered up and began to exercise their collective right to not tell the public nothin’. The official silence continued this morning during Martinez’ four minute appearance before Judge Sergio C. Tapia

Martinez’ public defender, Brady B. Sullivan, asked for and was granted a continuance because he just got “discovery” today. He said later that what he meant was that had he “some” but not all the evidence pertinent to the charges against Martinez. For example, he said he had not yet seen Diamond’s autopsy report. He declined to say whether there was evidence that Martinez had even fired a shot, let alone the shot that killed Diamond. Sullivan also asked the judge to release the Martinez’ motorcycle that was seized 107 days ago, and has since disappeared, to his family.

Then Tapia, a new judge who was a public defender just 14 months ago, ordered that Martinez continue to be held without bail and the accused man disappeared back into the belly of the beast. As his stoic family left the court no one rushed to console them.

Martinez next hearing is March 19. The Mongols Nation trial starts five days later.

Thomas Caine White of the Ottawa Hills, Ohio Police Department should be the official national symbol for why all real Americans hate and fear the police.

Not Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri police who shot and killed a teenager named Michael Brown and inspired a month of fires and riots. Not Daniel Pantaleo of the NYPD who choked a hustler named Eric Garner who then died protesting “I can’t breathe.”

Thomas Caine White epitomizes what has gone wrong in the relationship of American citizens and American police.

During a during a routine traffic stop in the early morning hours of May 23, 2009 White gunned down 25-year-old Michael “Biker Mike” McCloskey because McCloskey did not comply with White’s commands quickly enough.

The Traffic Stop

McCloskey and his friend Aaron Snyder had ridden their motorcycles out into the night to distribute Snyder’s business cards and flyers advertising the Bike Nights at a night club called the Omni. They went to the Omni about one in the morning, met a friend named Klint Sharpe and headed back to McCloskey’s home in Ottawa Hills. Sharpe followed the two bikes in his car. When Sharpe turned to take a different route, Officer White pulled in behind the motorcycles. For several moments, McCloskey and Snyder thought the car behind them was Sharpe rather than a police cruiser.

White, a relatively inexperienced reserve officer, lit the two bikes up and called for backup from another cop named Christopher Sargent. McCloskey stopped his Harley but he did not turn off the engine. He might very well have been tipsy. Because it was a bike with a V-Twin engine and because White had left his siren on it is likely McCloskey couldn’t hear what the cop said. While White was still in the cruiser with his lights and sirens on, McCloskey looked over his right shoulder toward White’s vehicle and then looked toward the backup officer arresting Snyder. White got out of the cruiser, drew his pistol and yelled something. White would later explain that he told McCloskey to put his hands up. When McCloskey turned again to glance over his right shoulder McCloskey shot him in the back.

White would later testify that he had seen McCloskey turn with his “right arm and elbow…making a drawing motion to the right,” causing White to believe that McCloskey “was pulling a weapon.”

McCloskey was instantly paralyzed from the waist down but he retained feeling in his legs. His motorcycle fell on him exhaust side down and as his hot exhaust pipes burned through his leg McCloskey begged White and Sargent to pull the bike off him. After Snyder ran to help McCloskey he asked White and Sargent for help and White replied, “He’s your friend. You get the bike off of him.” McCloskey’s burns caused nerve damage. He is now confined to a wheelchair and he remains in constant pain.

Conviction

White was eventually charged with felonious assault with a firearm enhancement. The professional police establishment rallied to White’s defense. His most steadfast defenders since he maimed McCloskey have been the National Fraternal Order of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. At White’s trial a former FBI Agent and professional witness named Urey Patrick told the jury, “If McCloskey had turned off the bike and raised his hands off the handle bars this wouldn’t have happened.”

White was convicted anyway in May 2010. He posted a $100,000 bond and he has remained free while he appealed his conviction. In 2012 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for Ohio did reverse his conviction on the grounds that “the trial court erred by charging the jury on the standard for using non-deadly force in a deadly force case” and that the trial judge failed to properly instruct the jury on the use of deadly force by a policeman. The appeals court also thought that the trial judge should have instructed the jury that it had the option of finding White guilty of “the lesser included offense of negligent assault.”

Prosecutors appealed that ruling in January 2013. Yesterday the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that if White is to be punished for what he did he will have to be tried and found guilty again.

Ohio Supreme Court Ruling

In a 38 page ruling the court wrote:

Quoting an Iowa case titled State v. Smith, “An officer, in the performance of his duty as such, stands on an entirely different footing from an individual. He is a minister of justice, and entitled to the peculiar protection of the law. Without submission to his authority there is no security, and anarchy reigns supreme. He must, of necessity, be the aggressor, and the law affords him special protection.”

Citing Wharton’s Criminal Law, “In making arrests for felonies and misdemeanors, an officer could use whatever force was reasonably necessary – including deadly force – if the suspect offered resistance; and in the case of a fleeing felon, deadly force could be used even if the offender presented no imminent threat of harm.”

Citing the United States Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Connor, “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

“The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments – in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving – about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”

Rejecting the notion that White criminally used a firearm the court wrote: “The purpose of a firearm specification is to enhance the punishment of criminals who voluntarily introduce a firearm while committing an offense and to deter criminals from using firearms. In enacting firearm specifications, the General Assembly recognized that ‘a criminal with a gun is both more dangerous and harder to apprehend than one without a gun.’ But in contrast to those who freely choose to use a firearm while committing a crime, a firearm specification is not intended to deter a peace officer from possessing a firearm,”

“We therefore conclude that the General Assembly did not intend the firearm specification to apply to a police officer who fired a gun issued to him to protect himself, fellow officers, and the public from a person he thought was about to brandish a weapon.”

The learned justices continue their deconstruction of justice until any reasonable person would become tired and sick.

McCloskey is still in a wheel chair and he probably always will be.

White is still free and he probably always will be.

Patrick Eberhardt, the Hells Angel who was murdered February 7 as he rode down Bell Road in North Phoenix, will be laid to rest this Saturday, February 21.

There will be a public viewing at the Heritage Funeral Chapel at 6830 West Thunderbird Road in Peoria, Arizona from 9 a.m. until 11:30 a.m.

His club brothers and other mourners will accompany him on his final ride at noon. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Patrick Eberhardt turned 23 just a month before he died.

Requiscant In Pace.

A California Assemblyman named Ken Cooley (above) introduced a bill last week that would require police officers to be given additional training to convince them they shouldn’t profile motorcycle riders.

Cooley told the Sacramento Bee that the bill is intended “to ensure that anyone entering law enforcement in California knows the ground rules to apply the law fairly without regard for irrelevant factors of, ‘I’m on a bike’ or they’re dressed a certain way….We recognize that this issue is a much bigger issue right now than the motorcycling setting but it is an important issue of people being secure in their persons and the administration of traffic laws.”

It is a bipartisan bill, sponsored by five Republicans and three Democrats. If you want to support or comment on it, it is Assembly Bill 334 titled: “An act to add Section 13519.17 to the Penal Code, relating to the profiling of motorcycle riders.”

No No

“The bill would require all local law enforcement agencies to adopt a written policy designed to condemn and prevent the profiling of motorcycle riders and to review and audit any existing policies to ensure that those policies do not enable or foster the practice of profiling motorcycle riders.” And the state of California would pay for whatever that costs.

The proposed law defines “profiling of motorcycle riders” to mean “using the fact that a person rides a motorcycle or wears motorcycle paraphernalia as a factor, without any individualized suspicion of the particular person, in deciding to stop and question,
take enforcement action, arrest, or search a person or vehicle, with or without legal basis under the California Constitution or the United States Constitution.”

The bill also requires that the California “Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training shall ensure that the profiling of motorcycle riders is addressed in the course of basic law enforcement training and offered to law enforcement officers in conjunction with existing training regarding profiling.”

California Dremin’

Excluding its helmet law, California is among the friendlier states to bikers. California was among the first states to prohibit motorcycle only checkpoints in 2012. Since then four more states – Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia – have prohibited the practice. Illinois and New Hampshire have prohibited the use of federal funds for those checkpoints and eleven states prohibit all safety and sobriety checkpoints.

California is also the only state so far that tolerates lane splitting. A Texas Bill, H.B. 813, that would allow lane splitting in the Lonestar State, was recently introduced by state Representative. Sergio Muñoz Jr.

Three members of the Salem, Massachusetts charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club pled guilty to racketeering earlier this month in a hardboiled case reminiscent of the Boston tales of the late George V. Higgins.

Former Salem Hells Angels Robert DeFronzo and Mark Eliason and former Red Devils Motorcycle Club member Brian Weymouth pled guilty February 5 to Conspiracy to Commit Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering; Maiming in Aid of Racketeering; Assault with a Dangerous Weapon in Aid of Racketeering; and Assault Resulting In Serious Bodily Injury in Aid of Racketeering. Former Salem charter vice-president Sean Barr pled guilty to the same four counts last Friday, February 13. All four men will be sentenced in May.

The Enterprise

The indictment, filed in January 2014, describes “the Hells Angels Salem Organization” as a “criminal enterprise” and alleges the “purpose of the enterprise included…preserving and protecting the power, territory and profits of the enterprise through the use of intimidation, violence, including assaults and murder, and threats of violence; promoting and enhancing the enterprise and its members’ and associates’ activities; keeping victims and potential victims in fear of the enterprise and in fear of its members and associates, through violence and threats of violence; providing financial support and information to members and associates, including those who were incarcerated for committing acts of violence or other offenses; providing assistance to other members and associates who committed crimes for and on behalf of the enterprise; and providing assistance to other enterprise members and associates, in order to hinder, obstruct and prevent law enforcement officers from identifying the offender, apprehending the offender, and trying to punish the offender.”

Since, typically, this case was never contested in court, the truthfulness of the account of most of what happened relies on the veracity of three anonymous witnesses and an FBI Agent named Jeffrey E. Wood. Witness One was a former member of the Red Devils. Witness Two was his wife or girlfriend. Witness Three was a Hells Angels hang around who was friendly with the other two witnesses. Those four people allege:

Out Bad

A former Salem Angel named Ferdinand ‘Freddy’ Parrott was expelled from the club with the status “Out Bad No Contact” for “allegedly leaving a fellow Hells Angel broken down on the side of a highway in rival, Pagans Motorcycle Club, territory.” Everybody involved in the case seemed to know to stay away from Parrott and to punch him in the mouth if they ran into him.

Nevertheless Parrott showed up at Witness One’s stepdaughter’s sweet sixteen party one Saturday night in September 2012. A number of Red Devils were there and they let the Out Bad Parrott stay rather than kicking him down and out. The next day a member of the Salem charter allegedly told Witness Three that Witness One has “fucked up bad and didn’t take care of business. He will be dealt with as a rat.”

On Monday Barr, who worked with Witness One at a construction company, told the witness that he and the other Red Devils who gave Parrott a pass had until Friday to find him and beat him.

Thursday night, at the Red Devils’ weekly meeting, that club reprimanded the members who had been at the sweet sixteen party. They were told to find and beat Parrott. The chapter vice-president who had been at the party was ordered to steal Parrott’s motorcycle and Witness One was put Out Bad No Contact. Witness One turned in his patches and left.

The next morning at work, Barr told Witness One he had to quit his job. Witness One quit on the spot.

Pick A Hand

Two and a half weeks later, Witness One learned some members of the Salem charter had accused him of “talking to members of a rival club” and he agreed to meet a Salem Angel at a donut shop. The Angel invited Witness One to go to the Red Devils’ clubhouse so he could clear his name. He agreed to go. There were members of both clubs waiting for him. Barr asked Witness One about talking to members of the rival club. Witness One denied he had. Barr produced a ball peen hammer and told Witness One to “pick a hand.” Barr then asked the future Witness One, “you don’t mind giving me your bike right?” Then he told the others there to “take the damn bike.”

The witness was knocked unconscious and suffered a wound that required stitches. When he woke, Barr pointed out to Witness One that he would be needing stitches then asked “hand or knee.” After some hesitation the witness put his hand on a bar stool and Barr hit it twice, broke four bones and, according to the FBI, permanently disabled the former Red Devil. Meanwhile, two other defendants drove to the house Witness One shared with Witness Two, tore down his fence and rode away with his motorcycle. Apparently, this alarmed Witness Two and her children.

Witness Two then took Witness One to the hospital where he told the attending physician he had dropped an engine block on his hand. The day after that, Witness Three was told he could buy Witness One’s motorcycle if he could raise the money. He could not.

So, for months after that, Witness One was allegedly told to surrender the title to his motorcycle to the Salem charter. He refused. Finally, in late March, five months after the sweet sixteen party, one of the defendants told Witness One he had until one o’clock the next day to turn over his title or the defendant would break both of Witness One’s legs, rape Witness Two, beat up Witness Two’s children  while Witness One watched and then kill Witness One. Witness One was either unwilling or unable to take matters into his own hands so he went to the FBI and was fitted for a wire.

That, according to the official FBI account, was how Witness One became Witness One, Witness Two became Witness Two and Witness Three became Witness Three.

Six members of the Devils Diciples Motorcycle Club were found guilty of racketeering this morning under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO. As currently interpreted under case law, racketeering is the crime of being a criminal.

National President Jeff Garvin “Fat Dog” Smith, National Vice-President Paul “Pauli” Darrah, alleged National Warlord Cary “Gun Control” Vandiver, Vincent “Holiday” Witort and Patrick Michael “Magoo” McKeoun were found guilty of all charges. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two RICO charges faced by David Randy “D” Drozdowski but found him guilty on three other charges. Scott “Scotty Z” Sutherland was found not guilty. Sutherland had already pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, served his time and will probably be released from custody today.

Predicate Crimes

All the defendants were accused, in effect, of not cooperating with authorities and urging others not to do so. An indictment filed in July 2012 accused them of: Conspiracy to Suborn Perjury and Obstruct Justice; Subornation of Perjury; Aiding and Abetting, Obstruction of Justice: Obstruction of Justice by Threats to a Witness; Mailing Threatening Communications; and Conspiracy to Distribute and to Possess With Intent to Distribute Marijuana.

Club members were accused of manufacturing small amounts of methamphetamine, selling small amounts of marijuana, Vicodin and other drugs and profiting as a club from video poker machines located in clubhouses. Smith and others were also accused of ordering the 2003 beating s of five club members in Arizona who had raped the wife of a Hells Angel.

RICO allows the federalization of lesser, local crimes like selling marijuana and the imposition of very harsh penalties for those crimes. All of the convicted men face a decade or more behind bars.

Next

There is no date for their sentencing hearings. They will probably be sentenced this summer.

The Department of Justice also intends to seize the Devils Diciples’ Clinton Township, Michigan clubhouse, numerous motorcycles and other possessions belonging to the club and its members. The club was founded in Fontana, California in 1967 and has about 200 members in chapters in eight states.

The trial lasted four months and the jury of seven women and five men deliberated for more than three weeks.

Those wild and crazy guys at Bischoff Hervey Entertainment debut a new television show called Outlaw Country tomorrow night on Chicago superstation WGN at 10 p.m. in all the time zones that count.

BHE TV’s last show was a bad joke called The Devils Ride. It was supposed to give Walter Mitty and his boy Buckwheat an insider’s view of a real, live, outlaw motorcycle club. That show failed embarrassingly on many levels except the one that counts. It made money for two seasons, many people got paid and its ratings were good enough to earn its producers a do over in the “outlaw genre.”

It is impossible to tell, based on the hodgepodge of outtakes and self important pronouncements that WGN distributed to would be reviewers, whether Outlaw Country will be interesting or not. My first impression was that it is not too bad if you get a little drunk first. It was not encouraging that about halfway through the mess of unconnected video clips Kurt Sutter, the man who blessed the world with a chick show called  Sons of Anarchy, announced that Outlaw Country “truly is straight up documentary.” You know, like Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame or Michael Apted’s Up Series or Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s Restrepo.

Sutter’s appearance suggests two things. First Sutter probably couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the “C” and the “A.” And, less obviously, Outlaw Country and WGN are chasing an audience that went adrift when Sutter’s old show went off the air. I watched the Outlaw Country promos with the most devoted Sons of Anarchy fan I know. She said, “I don’t want to watch this, There’s no sex. There’s no Charlie Hunnam.” It seems that if Outlaw Country wants to succeed Sons it has already failed. Then she said, “Who gives a damn about Podunk, Missouri.”

And I said, “Well maybe I do. We got any more margaritas?”

The Prequel

There is a long back story to Outlaw Country. The show’s principal antagonists are two sets of brothers – the Monks versus the Cooks.

Steve Cook is an “outlaw motorcycle gang investigator in Independence, Missouri next door to the hamlet of Buckner where the show is set. Steve Cook’s principal claim to fame is his participation in a cynical and cruel racketeering prosecution of members of the Galloping Goose and El Forastero Motorcycle Clubs. The police added up all the drugs that were shared among club members on an average of five runs a year from January 1, 2002 through July 31, 2007 and decided that constituted a major drug distribution network. Steve Cook’s brother Lawrence “Mike” Cook, who is now Buckner’s police chief, also participated in that investigation which resulted in three federal cases called USA v. Angell et al, USA v. Eneff et al and USA v. Phillips et al. Most defendants were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.

The Monk brothers, John and Josh, rode with El Forastero and were among the investigation’s victims. Most of what happened next is still sealed but it is a matter of public record that Josh Monk was among 13 men and four women who became cooperating witnesses in the cases. It appears that Josh Monk testified “about his lengthy association with the outlaw motorcycle gangs, a prior drug conviction, and his knowledge of their drug distribution before, during, and after the charged time frame.”

There is no record that John Monk ever cooperated with prosecutors but some bikers in Kansas and Missouri have accused him of fraternization with the Cook brothers.

John Monk’s tattoo shop, Kingpin Tattooing in Independence, was raided by Swat and searched in July 2005 and the connection between that raid and the ensuing federal cases, if there was one, remains unclear. One source also alleges that the relationship between the Monks and the Cooks is more cordial than Outlaw Country makes it appear. For example, the source alleged, Steve Cook had a “99%er” tattoo put on in John Monk’s current tattoo shop, Revelation Tattoo, in Kansas City.

How

Producer Jason Hervey is oblique when he discusses how the Monk brothers and the Cook brothers came to collaborate on a reality series. “How did this come to be,” Hervey asked rhetorically. “I received a phone call from somebody we work with who said they had a mayor and a police chief they wanted us to meet in this small town in crisis in middle America – Buckner, Missouri. And, it sounded fascinating.”

Buckner Mayor Dan Hickson told the Kansas City Star a slightly different story. According to Hickson, “the show’s producers felt Buckner was the perfect setting for the show” and were “very impressed with the nice people.”

According to the mayor, everything about the show is very nice. “Jason Hervey, (technical advisor Charles) Chuckie Lynch and the entire production crew has been easy to work with and very accommodating. Jason Hervey is one of the most down to earth individuals I’ve ever met and I now consider him a friend.” Hickson also told the Star, “It’s our hope that the show will help to promote Buckner and bring people to our town. We are excited and hope that this brings a level of tourism to Buckner.”

Kurt Sutter’s explanation of how the show came to be might be the most cogent of them all: “People are fascinated by outlaws.”

Maybe Buckner will become an outlaw destination. Maybe clubs from all over the country will travel to Buckner and adventure tourists from all over the world will journey to Buckner to gawk at them.

Reality

Everyone who might get paid behind this project is eager to emphasize its “reality.” The Monk brothers are portrayed sympathetically and appear to be men many readers here might already know. They both argue that once they were outlaws but now they are reformed and their arguments are convincing. If they were both sentenced to, say, hypothetically, five years probation in 2009 it is unimaginable that they would allow themselves to be filmed breaking the law in 2014. The show portrays the brothers as  victims of tragic childhoods and there is no reason to doubt that. Josh Monk and his wife were baptized in 2009 and he is now an assistant pastor at the Maywood Baptist Church. John Monk repeatedly protests his innocence and explains that he is only in the show to “let the truth be exposed” and to “show what cops do.”

“The reason we let TV cameras follow us around is because we ain’t doin’ nothin’,” John Monk says.

Steve Cook, who has to be telling the truth because he is, after all, a “validated expert” on outlaws, calls the Monks “prolific criminals.” Steve also has interesting opinions about his place in American History. “If you look back historically, this isn’t something new,” Steve says. “Frank and Jesse James, the Youngers…whether it’s robbing trains and stage coaches, busting into gun stores and slinging dope, this has always been outlaw country.” Mythic heroes like Steve cannot exist without mythic villains like the Monk brothers.

Series regular Edward “Fingers” Jauch, who also collaborates with Steve Cook at Cook’s Heartland Law Enforcement Training Institute in Lees Summit, Missouri, openly imagines himself to be Wild Bill Hickok.

Mike Cook is portrayed as a self-righteous bully. “I was put here to intimidate those who intimidate others,” he explains to the audience at home.

Glimpsed through a haze of tequila and weed Outlaw Country almost looks like something true. It isn’t just Sutter. Producer Hervey habitually refers to the project as a “documentary.” “We’re imbedded in small town America, literally in a war zone,” he claims.

Hervey says technical advisor Chuckie Lynch, who genuinely seems grateful to be a free man in Hollywood, “has lived the life none of us has lived.”

Quid Est Veritas

And Chuckie tells potential reviewers, “If you want to tell the story about what you call an outlaw, at least tell the truth about it.” There is some slight possibility that Chuckie has a financial stake in the show’s success.

Despite all this talk about truth many scenes seem to be obvious lies. The sounds of an apparently real fight in a bowling alley are enhanced. The words “Pow” and “Pop” don’t actually appear on the screen but they might as well. A raid on John Monk’s tattoo shop is obviously staged. The Cook brothers are bad actors. Series regular Jim “JD” Dillman, another Steve Cook crony, is already promoting himself as a “reality star.”

Chuckie Lynch’s comments about truth suggest Pontius Pilate’s famous riposte. “What is truth?” The postmodern opinion is that there is no objective truth. “Truth” is just somebody’s opinion. Maybe the Monks really are the James Gang. Maybe Fingers Jauch really is Wild Bill Hickok. Maybe Dillman really is a star. Maybe Buckner really is an exposed position in Afghanistan..

These philosophical quibbles only matter because the show is being sold as the literal truth, the truth as most people understand it, not the artistic truth as defined from inside WGN’s secret control room on the Moon. And the truth matters because the Department of Justice has been propagandizing about motorcycle clubs on reality television since at least 2005. All episodes of Inside Outlaw Bikers on NatGeo and all the episodes of Gangland about motorcycle outlaws, including the Galloping Goose episode featuring Steve Cook, were actively promoted by the ATF’s former Assistant Director for Public and Governmental Affairs, W. Larry Ford. Outtakes from Gangland have even been entered into evidence in at least two federal racketeering cases. And people prosecuted in those cases went to very real penitentiaries.

Maybe the point of Outlaw Country might have been better defined if WGN had made a whole episode available for preview. Maybe the full 60 minute version will turn out to be better than the show looks so far.

Move over Jay Dobyns and Billy Queen. There’s a new biker hero in Hollywood.

Last night was the première of Gangland Undercover’s  six part, scripted, cable miniseries about the biker adventures of former Vago, Mongol and Outlaw Ashley Charles Wyatt, pictured above. Wyatt’s name in the witness protection program is Charles Falco.  He coauthored and published a book with Kerrie Droban two years ago titled Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs.

The miniseries runs on the History Channel at 10 p.m. It directly competes with the new Bischoff Hervey Entertainment series Outlaw Country on superstation WGN.

New York Times

As Neil Genzlinger pointed out in Monday’s New York Times, both WGN and the History Channel are “no doubt hoping to fill the Sons of Anarchy void.”

Genzlinger thinks, “Bikers are close to qualifying for their own TV genre. Along with the fictional and underappreciated Sons of Anarchy, whose seven-season run ended in December, reality shows like The Devils Ride, on Discovery, have claimed to get inside biker clubs but have mostly just embarrassed everyone involved.”

You can read the entire Times article here.

Men’s Journal

The influential monthly Men’s Journal is less reserved in it’s praise for the Falco miniseries.

In a 1,500 word article published yesterday, the magazine calls the television show, “The Real Life Sons of Anarchy” and quotes Falco’s criticism of the recent FX series. “Sons Of Anarchy tries to give a romantic view of that lifestyle,” Falco says from his “undisclosed location…. There is no romantic view. These guys are thugs, and more than anything, they’re murderers, drug dealers, and bullies. They don’t like normal society and they hate normal civilians.”

Men’s Journal describes the Vagos Motorcycle Club as “the largest urban terrorist organization in the U.S.” at the time of Wyatt/Falco’s infiltration. Wyatt/Falco tells the magazine the Vagos “are not bikers – they’re gang members who ride bikes.”

You can read the entire Men’s Journal piece here.

Former Devils Diciple Fred “Shooter” Weiss, above, one of two men originally charged with the September 2012 murder of a club member named Samuel Henry Dixson, pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison Monday. Weiss must also serve three years of supervised probation. If he violates the terms of his plea deal in the next seven years he could be sentenced to 16 years in prison. He had faced life.

According Chandra Paul, the prosecutor in the case, Weiss was “intoxicated to the point where legally the law requires” that he be charged with manslaughter rather than murder. Weiss must also pay $7,180 in restitution.

Dixson, of Milton, Florida, was arrested in Orange, Florida in 2004 for lewd and lascivious behavior on a child under 16 years of age. He registered as a sex offender in 2005 and began hanging around the Devils Diciples in 2011.

Confession

Dixson was shot in the face at the Baldwin County, Alabama chapter’s first anniversary party on Saturday, September 8, 2012. On Tuesday, September 11, Weiss and another Devils Diciple named Adam “Sandman” Mayton tried to turn themselves in for homicide to police in Robertsdale, Alabama. Mayton had two black eyes at the time and had obviously been beaten. The two men changed their minds about confessing to murder after being Mirandized and talking to an attorney.

The next day, September 12, someone burned the mobile home that served as the chapter’s clubhouse. Firefighters who responded to the arson discovered Dixson’s nude body near the Styx River. Police have alleged that club members and associates burned the clubhouse to conceal evidence.

Dixson’s body was identified on September 13.

Hindering prosecution

Both Weiss and Mayton were charged with murder. The charge against Mayton was reduced to hindering prosecution after he told police that Weiss had killed Dixson. Mayton was found dead of natural causes on June 23, 2014.

Six more people were eventually charged with hindering prosecution. One of them, Harlis Holcomb, pled guilty Monday and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay $7,180 in restitution. Holcomb was also ordered to not contact Weiss. If he violates the terms of his probation he can be sentenced to ten years in prison.

The remaining five defendants will be sentenced March 23.

The two shows that competed head to head Tuesday at 10 p.m. for the Sons of Anarchy audience both debuted as ratings flops.

Gangland Undercover, a six episode miniseries about, as the History Channel describes it, Ashley Charles Wyatt’s “three-year mission living a double-life as an ATF informant planted inside one of the most historically dangerous motorcycle gangs, the California-based Vagos –  a criminal group involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering  and murder,” finished 78th among cable television shows on Tuesday night. The show was seen by an estimated 1.062 million viewers. The final episode of Sons of Anarchy attracted about 9.26 million viewers. The seventh and final season of the FX biker drama averaged 7.54 million viewers each week.

Total viewers for Gangland Undercover amounted to much less than for competing shows in the same timeslot. For example, Being Mary Jane on BET had about 2.413 million viewers in the same timeslot. Justified which aired at 10 p.m. on FX attracted 1.810 million viewers.

Outlaw Country on superstation WGN was not among the top 100 cables shows on Tuesday night. Ratings information for shows that do that poorly are not generally available but it appears likely that the show had fewer than 655,000 viewers.

Together the two shows probably attracted fewer than 1.7 million viewers which is about 70 percent of the audience for Being Mary Jane and about 23 percent of the average audience for Sons.