Canada - ~Today's bikers moving toward business suits, author says~
Since a deadly war with rival gangs left 160 people dead in Quebec several years ago, the leaders of the Hells Angels have transformed their organization into a more business-savvy, lower-profile gang, says a criminologist and author.
Biker dress-up and prerequisite rallies, such as a Keswick party on Saturday -- which the province's Biker Enforcement Unit (BEU) monitored, stopping all-comers on the road leading to the Shirlea Dr. clubhouse -- still require "full-patch" members to don the outlaw garb inside.
But fewer hit the road regularly on motorcycles, preferring cars, business suits or street clothes instead of logo-emblazzoned leather jackets, Stephen Schneider writes in his recent book, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada.
Such emblems "are like a big bullseye for police and other bikers to target," the Saint Mary's University, Halifax, professor wrote. The Hells are more focused on money-making "criminal entrepreneurships."
Schneider said the Hells also set up better-organized record-keeping and networks to import and ship drugs around the world, while retaining hit teams to enforce strict rules about sharing profits, paying tribute percentages and the ultimate penalty for betrayal.
'More sophisticated'
The Hells "are a lot more sophisticated than they were in the 1980s and 1990s," during the deadly Quebec turf war with the Rock Machine, Bandidos and other gangs, OPP Det.-Sgt. Len Isnor, the BEU's head, said in an interview.
In Ontario, where there are about 170 members, Isnor said they used "diplomacy" and got numerous rivals to "patch over" to their gang, Isnor said. The recruiting worked, mostly, and "there were no murders."
For decades, the Hells tried to get a foothold in this province, but only succeeded after recruiting the other gangs -- including some arch-rivals, Isnor said.
The invitations to join often carried subtle but nonethless deadly alternatives, usually carried out by their network of associated "support and friends" groups like the Red Line, Foundation, Eights and Aces, Isnor said.
When it comes to murder, "Hells Angels operate at arms length," he said. "They use these gangs as isolation, to do their dirty work."
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