Cop on leave for starting bar brawl with Hells Angels

Willoughby, Ohio(August 29, 2018) BTN — A Euclid officer is on paid administrative leave after he pulled out a gun during a fight with two men at a Willoughby bar, police said.

Todd Gauntner, 32, is charged with using a weapon while under intoxication in an incident that happened early Friday morning, Willoughby police said.

Authorities said Gauntner and two other men -- Dustin Wolf, 28, and Bradley Peterson, 39 -- got into an argument that turned into a physical brawl.

Cop with wounds from a beat down by club members

Police went about 1 a.m. to Frank and Tony's Place on 2nd Street to investigate a report of a large fight involving several men. A bartender told the investigators that someone pulled out a gun and put it to someone's head, according to a police report. He did not use his department-issued gun in the incident, the report says.

The bartender said the men fought behind the bar and broke bottles and other items, police said. Employees at the bar tried to break up the fight before police arrived.

The bartender can be heard crying on a 911 call saying a man with a white shirt had a gun and that he pointed at someone's head.

Gauntner suffered minor scratches to his face. He was arrested and placed in the Willoughby city jail, police said.

Police initially cited Wolf and Peterson with disorderly conduct and were allowed to leave the bar. Those charges were dropped, but both are now charged in warrants with assault, and investigators have accused them of being the aggressors in the fight.

Gauntner is a four-year veteran of the Euclid Police Department once honored for saving the life of a man shot 16 times, but Gauntner's negative attention dates back to 2016.

He pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm in an incident that happened Thanksgiving at Sims Park in Euclid. A Euclid Municipal Court judge ordered him to pay a $235 fine and to attend counseling in that incident. Euclid police suspended him for 90 days as they conducted an internal investigation.

Gauntner has been placed on paid administrative leave following Friday's incident as the department conducts an internal investigation to determine if he broke policy, Euclid Lt. Mitch Houser said.

If it is determined Gauntner violated department rules and regulations the most Euclid police officials can do is suspend him for two weeks without pay, Houser said. Harsher punishment would have to come from Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer, who also serves as the city's public safety director.

Gaunter is scheduled to appear in Willoughby Municipal Court Thursday at 8:15 a.m. for an arraignment. 

SOURCE: Cleveland.com

Raptor police tackle NSW bikie conflict

Newcastle, AU (April 5, 2018) BTN — Thirteen alleged outlaw motorcycle club members have been charged after raids in the NSW Hunter region with a specialist police squad staying in town to stop what's being called the biggest bikie conflict in NSW.

Thirty-one properties, from Muswellbrook to Newcastle, were targeted in Thursday's large-scale sting involving more than 280 police officers cracking down on the escalating conflict between rival clubs - the Finks and the Nomads.

Weapons, explosive detonators, guns, drugs and reptiles were seized, while 11 of those arrested were charged with participating in a criminal group and two were charged with drug offences.

Strikeforce Raptor, the squad of officers most reviled by the OMCG underworld, will remain in the region to support local police until the conflict ends.

The raids follow an investigation into the ongoing "civil war" between the two clubs, believed to have begun in late 2016, when a former Nomads bikies switched allegiance by "patching over" to the Finks.

There have since been a string of incidents, from assaults to drive-by shootings and firebombings, each more serious than the last.

In an affidavit tendered to the NSW Supreme Court last week, Sergeant Gary Broadhurst said the Hunter conflict was the most significant bikie war occurring in NSW.

The 13 men charged were granted strict conditional bail, with nine scheduled to appear at Newcastle Local Court on May 3 and the remaining four due to appear at the same court on April 26.

SOURCE: The West Australian

Source: Biker Trash Network

Free Souls MC member charged with rape and kidnapping

Spokane, WA (April 5, 2018) BTN — A member of an Oregon motorcycle club is facing accusations in Spokane of rape, kidnapping and showing a woman videos appearing to depict murder.

Roger L. Heuberger, 40, was arrested Sunday after a woman said she was sexually assaulted, injected with drugs and cut while tied to a chair inside a hotel room off Division Street. At his first court appearance Monday, prosecutors charged Heuberger with third-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment and possession of meth and heroin. A judge set bond at $25,000.

The woman told police that on March 28 or 29, she and another friend went with Heuberger and a fellow member of the biker club Free Souls – which is based out of Oregon – to Liberty Motel, 6801 N. Division St., where the four “partied,” according to court records.

The next day, she said Heuberger got upset because his girlfriend went with the biker friend to Coeur d’Alene. Court documents say Heuberger and the alleged victim went back to the hotel, where she said she was told to take off her clothes because Heuberger thought she was wearing a wire.

According to court records, Heuberger then tied her to a chair with a rubber cord and injected her with heroin, according to court records.

While she was under the influence of the drugs, she told authorities that Heuberger brought out a laptop and played a DVD that appeared to show the “killing of women and children.” The woman said it showed a male “who looked similar to Roger” taking victims “into the woods and then murdering them.”

Court records say Heuberger then started cutting the woman on the arm. After allowing her to get up from the chair, he proceeded to rape her.

After several hours of captivity, the woman was able to convince Heuberger to let her leave the motel room to get food, court records say. The two went to Taco Bell across the street, where she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to leave.

Two days later, she contacted police while staying at MultiCare Deaconess Hospital, where officers interviewed her and found wounds consistent with being choked, cut and sexually assaulted.

On Sunday, police served a search warrant on the motel room, where they found several plastic baggies floating in the bathroom’s toilet. They found other white bags in a box, a black pistol, syringes and a computer with a DVD that could contain the footage described by the victim, according to the warrant.

Heuberger’s friend and fellow club member from Vancouver, Washington, was interviewed by police, and said he was gone at the time of the alleged crimes. He has not been arrested. His car was seized for evidence.

Heuberger has no criminal history in Spokane County. According to a search of Marion County, Oregon, jail records, the 40-year-old was arrested and charged with assault and harassment in June 2017.

SOURCE: The Spokesman-Review

Source: Biker Trash Network

Photos of bikers taken by cops allowed court says

Orange County, Florida (April 5, 2018) BTN — Fighting a bill that would have allowed Floridians to openly carry guns, two Orange County sheriff’s officers in 2011 moved forward with a plan to give lawmakers a glimpse of some people who might be able to pack heat publicly.

The officers pulled together booking or driver’s license photos of “one percenters” — members of motorcycle clubs — who might be able to openly carry guns and provided the photos to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the end, lawmakers did not approve a broad open-carry proposal for people with concealed-weapons licenses. But the use of the photos led to a lawsuit that resulted this week in a federal appeals court rejecting arguments by three members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club that the officers had violated a privacy law in using the photos.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Michael Fewless, who in 2011 was captain of the governmental affairs section of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and lobbied the Legislature, and John McMahon, an intelligence agent who selected and emailed the photos to Fewless.

The civil case focused heavily on whether the officers violated a federal law known as the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act and whether an exception for government agencies included being able to use the information for lobbying purposes. The appeals court Monday upheld a lower-court ruling that said the exception covered lobbying and concluded that Fewless had been representing the sheriff’s office when he provided the photos to senators and staff members and when he referred to them during a committee meeting.

“(The) record reflects that Fewless used the photos while acting on behalf of the OCSO (Orange County Sheriff’s Office) in the course of carrying out the OCSO’s lobbying function,” said the 10-page ruling, written by Judge Harvey Schlesinger and joined by judges Charles Wilson and Susan Black. “The photos were delivered to the committee and were seen only by legislators and staff members. Fewless merely referred to the photos in the course of his testimony before the committee. Thus, the distribution of the photos related directly to Fewless’ lobbying efforts.”

A brief filed last year on behalf of three bikers who were plaintiffs in the case, Leslie Baas, Tracy Osteen and Doyle Napier, said the way the photos were used was not legitimate.

“To start with, it is undisputed the disclosure of the plaintiffs’ driver’s license photographs had nothing to do with any criminal behavior on the part of the plaintiffs which might be a legitimate subject of legislative or public interest, let alone law enforcement inquiry,” the brief said. “Indeed, the disclosure had nothing whatsoever to do with the plaintiffs at all but rather had the admitted purpose of propagating a ‘counter-stereotype’ to rebut a stereotype utilized in lobbying efforts by a pro-gun lobbyist with no affiliation to the plaintiffs that an open carry bill would benefit ‘bankers and executives’ who might be charged with a crime if the concealed weapons they were carrying were accidentally exposed. 

To put it succinctly, the defendants (Fewless and McMahon), with the intention of creating ‘poster children’ for denial of a bill the defendants disliked, took it upon themselves to expose the ‘highly protected’ information of private persons who were believed to be law abiding … based upon a non-criminal private association (i.e. motorcycle club membership) and, most outrageously, the stupefyingly superficial criterion of an ‘intimidating’ appearance in the opinion of the officers.”

But in addition to ruling that the exception to the federal privacy law covered lobbying, the appeals court said the officers were entitled to what is known as “qualified immunity.”

“There is no case law clearly establishing that Fewless’ use of the photos was impermissible,” wrote Schlesinger, a federal district judge who was designated to serve on the appellate panel. “Moreover, appellants (the plaintiffs) were required to show that no reasonable officer in the officers’ position could have believed that he was accessing or distributing the photos for a permissible use under the DPPA (the federal law). Appellants failed to make that showing. Appellees (the officers) are therefore entitled to qualified immunity.”

SOURCE: Florida Politics

Source: Biker Trash Network