“God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t.”
CHICAGO, IL ( November 26, 2016) —That’s the motto of the Outlaws motorcycle club, formed in the Chicago area in 1935, now with
chapters and thousands of members around the world.
But the former Outlaws leader says the group isn’t nearly as fearsome or dominant as
it used to be in Illinois.
“The times have changed,” says Peter “Big Pete” James,
62, who lives in the west suburbs. “Somehow, there’s no testosterone out
there.”
Peter "Big Pete" James, former leader of the
Outlaws motorcycle club in the Chicago area
James hung up his Outlaws vest — black leather with a
skull and crossed pistons patch — last year amid an internal dispute with other
local leaders and his own ongoing fight with cancer.
Contrary to the biker rumor mill, James isn’t returning
to the fray, he told the Sun-Times. His wide-ranging interview was unusual
because so-called “1-percenter” bikers generally are loath to talk publicly
about their business.
Watching from the sidelines, James says that maybe the
biggest indication his old club is slipping involves the rise of the rival
Hells Angels motorcycle club, which he believes is poised to overtake the
Outlaws as the big-dog biker group in the Chicago area — an unthinkable
development not long ago.
He predicts — but insists he isn’t advocating — renewed
conflict between the two groups resulting from the shifting dynamic.
An attorney for the Outlaws responds only, “There
wouldn’t be any comment at this time.” The Hells Angels didn’t respond to
inquiries.
Back in the 1990s, the Outlaws and Hells Angels — both
which have weathered intense federal prosecutions and allegations they’re
nothing more than gangs on wheels involved in drug dealing and mayhem — were
locked in “war” in Chicago, as the Hells Angels made a foray into the region,
the Outlaws’ long-established turf.
After a series of bombings, shootings and stabbings, the
rival clubs formed a fragile truce. The Hells Angels, formed in 1948 in California,
gave up their attempt to put a clubhouse within the Chicago city limits and,
instead, planted a flag in Harvey, remaining there today.
Since then, the Outlaws have maintained a stronghold in
Chicago, with a South Side clubhouse at 25th and Rockwell and a North Side
clubhouse on Division Street. It also has several other chapters in northern
Illinois.
As regional vice president, James had domain over all of
them and also was president of the North Siders. In all, he says there were
maybe 100 hard-core members in northern Illinois.
But James says smart moves by the Hells Angels — plus
waves of prosecutions, poor leadership by some current Outlaws and changing
times and attitudes — have changed things.
For one, James says local Outlaws are less willing to
take orders from the top.
“It used to be the boss’ word was law,” he says. “He
says, ‘Ride off the cliff,’ and guys would ride off a cliff. The quality of the
members has gone down.”
Fear of prison has also had an impact on some local club
leaders, according to James, who’s critical of his old group for not being
“entrepreneurial.”
Unlike the Outlaws, Hells Angels members are
Internet-savvy, with the group’s local Facebook page accumulating more than
29,000 “likes” and the club selling T-shirts and other merchandise on its
website.
The Hells Angels also have made money by holding parties
at its Harvey clubhouse and at bars in the Chicago area, according to James,
who says the club welcomes “civilians” and members of smaller biker clubs to
their parties.
“The Outlaws are losing out on the party money,” he says,
along with the chance to market themselves and gain supporters.
Chicago-area law enforcement officials periodically have
cracked down on both clubs. They say they’ve been preoccupied with other groups
in recent years — especially the African-American gang factions behind
Chicago’s staggering 50 percent rise in murders this year.
It was more than a decade ago when federal authorities
charged Melvin Chancey, the former president of the Chicago-area Hells Angels,
with racketeering and drug trafficking.
Melvin Chancey, then 29 and president of the Chicago chapter
of the Hells Angels in 1998
The last major Chicago law-enforcement crackdown of the
Outlaws was more than five years ago. Chicago Outlaws member Mark Polchan was
convicted of orchestrating a 2003 bombing outside C & S Coin Operated
Amusements, a video-poker business in Berwyn that reputed mob boss Michael “The
Large Guy” Sarno wanted to destroy to protect his own gambling interests. The
pipe bomb blew out windows and damaged the building.
Polchan, who also was accused of fencing stolen jewelry
for the mob at his Cicero pawnshop, was sentenced in 2011 to 60 years in
federal prison.
James describes Polchan as his one-time “confidant” and
says, “I love him.”
He says he has continued to receive occasional visits
from federal agents looking for information on the biker world that he says
he’s unwilling to give. “I try to be polite, to a point,” he says.
He figures his former club isn’t engaged in criminal
activity at the same level as in the old days. Drug dealing, he says, worries
graying members who don’t want to face a prison stretch lasting decades.
Even if things seem more low-key, though, “It doesn’t
mean there’s not violence,” James says. “It’s just not as flagrant.”
But there have been reports of Outlaws roughing up
members of weaker Hispanic biker clubs in the Chicago area since James left.
The apparent aim: to force them to ally more closely with the Outlaws, which
has long enjoyed a “support system” from other clubs.
James says there’s nothing wrong with building alliances,
but it’s stupid to enlist “Neanderthal” methods, adding, “They’re not thinking
it through.”
“Big” Pete James’ motorcycle
James says that when he was in charge, he created a
confederation of dozens of biker clubs, part of an effort “to change the
stereotype.”
He says the TV show “Sons of Anarchy,” which aired on FX
from 2008 to 2014, popularized but also caused headaches for “1-percenter”
biker clubs — so-called for representing the 1 percent of bikers supposedly
involved in crime.
“I watched the show,” he says, laughing. “It was like an
Outfit guy watching ‘The Sopranos.’ Kind of a joke.”
Fans of the show about a criminal biker group in
California formed their own clubs and made pilgrimages to the Outlaws clubhouse
on Division Street to ask James to “sanction” them. James says he refused to
avoid giving the feds a reason to charge him with racketeering.
He says those newbies might dress the part and ride
around on Harleys but don’t share 1-percenters’ “toughness.”
Jay Dobyns got a firsthand look at the 1-percenter
lifestyle when he infiltrated the Hells Angels in Arizona as an undercover ATF
agent in the early 2000s.
“These guys are not book smart but have their Ph.Ds in
violence and intimidation,” says Dobyns, now retired and living in Arizona. “I
think the term ‘brotherhood’ is very easily thrown around in today’s society.
We hear it and use it a lot. They take it to a life-and-death level. When I was
with the club, there were guys who would have stepped in front of a bullet for
me. Now, they want to put a bullet in me.”
Dobyns says he crossed paths with Chancey — “one of the
true believers that the elimination of the enemy was a critical part of the
mission, the survival of their own club. In that area, the enemy was the
Outlaws.”
The continued animosity between the Hells Angels and
Outlaws makes James’ recent friendship with George Christie an unlikely one.
Christie is a former high-ranking Hells Angels leader who left the group in
2011 and was “excommunicated.”
Christie and James both have appeared on CNN to offer
their expertise on biker life and both wrote books on the subject — James’
memoir is expected to be released next year.
James says the main reason he wrote the book was to show
how far things have slipped in what he regards as a once-noble brotherhood and
to spur change in leadership and attitudes among the Outlaws in Illinois.
“It used to be guys banded together who believed in
something, and they had fun,” James says. “There’s no brotherhood left in the
Outlaws any more.”
He says the Outlaws in Chicago have a choice to make as
their rival grows and encroaches.
“The choice is fight or flight,” he says. “They know the
Angels will push them out of town. Who’s going to light the match?”
James says he won’t be on the front lines if that
happens. Last year, he had his “God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t” tattoo covered up
with a new design.
“I’m borderline ashamed already to say I was once one,”
he says.
