Police watch over the Angels’ dirty dozen

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/12/2001 (8690 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a side wall in the cluttered war room of the Winnipeg Police Service’s vice office is a fuzzy picture of 12 guys standing shoulder to shoulder, some wearing sunglasses, a couple even grinning.

There’s no mistaking who they are — the Winnipeg chapter of the Hells Angels. They’re all wearing black vests that sport the now familiar red-and-white colours of the world’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang.

The picture was taken in a local lawyer’s office. The boardroom provided a legal cover that allowed the 12 members to briefly get together, despite some having bail conditions that they not associate with each other.

The picture has been superimposed on the Winnipeg skyline at night. In the upper corner is the copyrighted logo of the Hells Angels.

The picture was taken for one reason: It identifies the men as full-fledged Hells Angels to other HA chapters scattered throughout North America and the world. It has been posted on a secure Internet site that only Hells Angels have access to.

Winnipeg police have a copy, but they’re not willing to share it or say how they got it.

Police have lots of other pictures, too, tacked up on the wall. The dozens of mug shots and surveillance pictures form an organizational chart of who’s who in the Hells Angels food chain in Manitoba. Sitting at the top is president Ernie Dew, a former Los Brovos motorcycle gang member. In the picture he has a neat haircut and appears to be smiling.

Below him are the other 11 members of the Winnipeg chapter of the Hells Angels, the local guys who found themselves 18 months ago joining the infamous outlaw motorcycle gang as it rushed to consolidate power across Canada.

It was a decade-long ride that culminated at their Chalmers Avenue clubhouse, a building they had taken over from the rival Spartans on Saturday, July 22, last year. In what’s called a patch-over ceremony, seven members of the Los Brovos retired their colours in exchange for the red and the white of the Big Red Machine. Four other Los Brovos were patched over when time, parole or bail permitted. Only one member of the current group was not a Los Brovos: Bernie Dubois was a Redliner.

Dubois is also smiling in the picture of him in the police organizational chart. In fact, most of them are smiling. They look quite content being who they are and doing what they do.

Probation

Under Hells Angels rules, they were supposed to be on membership probation for an entire year, but they were given full chapter status only six months later when Hells Angels organizers patched over bikers in Ontario to full chapter status almost overnight in a lightning attempt to ward off competition from the rival Rock Machine and Bandidos.

If you do the math, Winnipeg’s Hells Angels celebrate their first anniversary as a full “81” chapter just before Christmas. The number derives from H being the eighth letter of the alphabet and A being the first.

The gang falls under the umbrella of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club — Western Canada, which is controlled out of the Vancouver area. They have a Web site (www.hamcwc.com), but the Winnipeg link is still under construction. The site is mainly used to sell Hells Angels shirts, jackets and caps, with proceeds going to their Bill C-95 defence fund, set up to finance their legal fight against Ottawa’s anti-gang legislation.

A party commemorating this first-year milestone is planned today at the Transcona Country Club. At this time, they’ll also unveil their new clubhouse, just inside city limits off north Main Street, a nice-looking house that overlooks the Red River and Chief Peguis Bridge.

Winnipeg police don’t think the bikers have much to celebrate, and say their first year as full Hells Angels has been nothing short of a colossal, embarrassing flop.

Out of the spotlight

Police officers familiar with the Angels — a handful of officers have devoted their careers to pursuing them — will say that the idea of being a Hells Angel is to stay out of the spotlight, to stay quietly behind the scenes to take care of business as others do the dirty work.

That business, police say, is focused mostly on drug dealing — cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine. The area of business is centralized in Winnipeg, but extends to rural Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.

For the most part, everything was quiet until Hells Angels member Rodney Sweeney was shot and wounded last June 21 while sitting in his tow truck at Grey Street and McCalman Avenue. His two-year-old son next to him was uninjured. Sweeney was hit in the head, shoulder, arm and knee but survived the attack, staggering to a nearby home, where an ambulance was called.

All hell broke loose moments after those shots as the Hells Angels hit the street looking for the shooter and as police pulled out the stops to put a lid on things.

The violence continued the next night when a Hells Angels associate was shot and injured outside Teaser’s, a St. Boniface strip club.

Then on June 27, a 33-year-old man was wounded in a shooting outside his Harbison Avenue East home in what police believe was retaliation for the first two shootings.

On July 19, witnesses heard three shots ring out in a shoot-out between two cars in broad daylight on the residential street of Ross Avenue West. No one was reported hurt.

Then on July 31, several shots were fired at a silver Cavalier, thought to be driven by ex-biker Kevin Sylvester, which was being chased by a black truck eastbound on Portage Avenue near Midway Chrysler. Sylvester is the younger brother of Darwin Sylvester, who disappeared in early June, 1998. He is believed to be dead, a victim of the decade-long internal biker war over who would earn the right to become Hells Angels. The next day, Dale Sweeney, a member of the Angels and brother of Rod Sweeney, and a gang associate were charged with attempted murder in the Portage Avenue attack on Sylvester.

On Aug. 9, police charged Sylvester with attempted murder in the June 21 Sweeney shooting. That charge is pending.

And then the shooting stopped.

The swiftness in which police contained the gunfire surprised no one, as those familiar with the city’s biker scene know Winnipeg police have a good handle on their comings and goings.

Vice Insp. Stan Tataryn said Winnipeg is well-respected within Canadian law enforcement for having good intelligence on the bikers. Evidence of that was a Nov. 23 drug bust in which city police seized 10 kilos of almost-pure cocaine from a truck being driven by a Hells Angels associate.

Tataryn wouldn’t comment on police tactics, but added they don’t plan on changing them. Their focus is on the Angels themselves and those close to them, not the little fish out on the street peddling drugs. Their approach is slow, steady and thorough, so that when a charge is laid, it won’t be challenged by a lawyer looking to score points using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That strategy appears to be working. Right now, three Angels are behind bars and one of them, Ricardo Oliveira, is to be deported to Portugal in the new year after he was caught with a restricted firearm with ammunition, and a loaded .27-calibre semi-automatic firearm with its serial number removed.

In total, seven of the 12 members are either before the courts or have criminal charges pending.

Complacent

Tartaryn adds that the Hells Angels make no bones about who they are and what they do, and the last thing police and Winnipeg citizens should be is complacent about their presence.

“I think when a good, hard-working citizen is sitting at a restaurant and somebody comes in with their colours on, they should get up and leave, and I’d question whether they should pay their bill,” he says. “This is a criminal organization and these are criminals.”

Representatives of the Hells Angels declined requests to be interviewed. However, through a spokesperson they made it clear that much of what police say about crime and the local drug trade is unfairly and inaccurately blamed on them.

They also say they’re often the victims of police harassment. For example, two members are fighting traffic violations for having illegal exhaust pipes and handle bars on their motorcycles; they got the tickets several times in one day.

Tataryn and other police officers say too bad.

They also say they’re under no illusions the gang is going to go away. There’s too much money to be made selling drugs, and there is always someone down in the Angels’ organization willing to rise to the occasion, just so they can wear the red and the white of the Big Red Machine. Currently, there are no gang prospects, although there are plenty of friends, associates, and hang-arounds, including a father and son. There is also the Zig Zag Crew, an organized gang of young men doing legwork for the Angels in the city’s drug trade.

“Two years from now, it might not be the same people running the store,” Tataryn said. “The weak people will be weeded out. Eventually, we’ll have a strong chapter.”

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bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca