Repentigny, Quebec (April 18, 2019) BTN – A police officer who was arrested along with dozens of people rounded up following a major drug trafficking investigation into the Hells Angels has been granted parole on the 18-month sentence he received in January.
Carl Ranger, a member of the Repentigny police when he was arrested in Project Objection last year, quit the police force shortly after he was charged. He admitted that in 2017 he approached an undercover agent who was involved in Project Objection and asked him for a $6,000 loan, and then broke the law to get it.
The undercover agent said he would agree to the loan if Ranger did a few favours for him. The first was to research a license plate in a police database for the undercover agent, who was posing as a criminal. After carrying out that task, Ranger agreed to transport 10,000 meth pills to a drug dealer and returned with $10,000 for the undercover agent.
When Ranger pleaded guilty in October, no evidence presented in court suggested that what he agreed to had anything to do with the Hells Angels. Several full-patch members of the motorcycle club have been arrested since April last year, when the first series of arrests were carried out. Some have since pleaded guilty to running drug trafficking networks in different parts of the province.
According to a written copy of the decision made by the Commission québécoise des libérations conditionnelles on Monday, Ranger said his career as a police officer spiralled after he discovered the body of a woman who had been murdered in 2008. He said he slipped into a depression following the gruesome discovery and he received minimal support from the police force. He said he drank more and fell into financial trouble after he took a leave of absence to deal with his depression.
Ranger was eligible for parole after having served one-sixth of his sentence.
New York, NY (April 16, 2019) BTN — Since 1968, 77 East Third Street in Manhattan's East Village housed the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's New York City clubhouse and apartments for some of its members. But the building was recently sold and the Angels have purchased new digs, a former church on Long Island.
The New Yorker's Sarah Larson stopped by on moving day and wrote the article below.
On a drizzly Sunday at the end of March, a white-and-yellow moving van occupied a space in front of 77 East Third Street that had long been reserved—and carefully delineated with traffic cones—for gleaming Harley-Davidson choppers. From August, 1969, until that day, the six-story lightly gargoyled Renaissance Revival apartment building with a first-floor brick façade was the New York City headquarters of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Its distinctive front door, between two Doric columns painted with sevens, depicted a motorcycle-helmeted skeleton gleefully wielding a pitchfork atop a bed of flaming skulls.
A plaque read “in memory of big vinny 1948-1979: ‘when in doubt, knock ’em out.’ ” That day, the Post’s front-page headline was “hell freezes over: yuppies bounce snowflake bikers out of east village.” After fifty years, the Hells Angels were moving out.
Hells Angels near their New York clubhouse on East Third Street between First and Second Avenue in March 1971.
The building had functioned as both clubhouse and Angels-only apartment complex. Its buyer, Nathan Blatter, of Whitestone Realty Group, has been approached by someone who wants to open a Hells Angels museum there, but he is not interested. “It’s going to be a regular apartment building,” he said. That day, several brawny men in vests that said “prospect”—a club membership level between “hang-around” and “full patch”—did the heavy lifting from No. 77 to the van: a metal shelving unit, shipping containers, a stray broom. The club had been moving out piecemeal. Its infamous park-style sidewalk bench, tempting to look at but dangerous for civilians to sit on, was gone.
Earlier in the month, a student from the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, next door, saw members moving boxes out of the basement; another neighbor reported seeing the emergence of “motorcycle stuff and other unmentionable paraphernalia.” He warned an onlooker to stay away. “It’s like a skunk—you touch it and you start to stink,” he said, and hurried off. Other neighbors, though wary of being identified, were more wistful. At a dive bar, two veterans of the eighties post-punk scene—call them Nancy and Janet—reminisced over a glass of house red, with ice cubes.
“I’m going to miss the sound of their motorcycles,” Janet said. She moved to the East Village in 1980. “They’d have big Fourth of July parties. We’d go up to my roof and the fireworks would come right up to your face.” The Angels launched their fireworks from metal garbage cans. (A local illustrator described this as “absolutely terrifying.”)
“The parties used to be great,” Nancy said. “Until the explosion.” In 1990, a garbage-can firecracker killed a fourteen-year-old boy.
Over the years, the East Village Angels both caused and prevented mayhem. In 1994, the Times characterized this mayhem, part “lore and part police reports,” as “countless decibel-cranking parties, LSD-laced misadventures, drug deals, orgies and random acts of violence against passers-by.” In recent years, parking-space tussles resulted in beatings and a shooting; a woman who pounded on the door, screaming, was badly beaten.
In 1978, the chapter president, Vincent (Big Vinny) Girolamo, of plaque fame, allegedly pushed his girlfriend off the roof, to her death. (He died, of stab wounds, before he could stand trial.) Innumerable bad vibes were doled out after unwanted bench-sitting, dog-peeing, and photography incidents. But, from the scuzz era to the N.Y.U.-and-condos era, club members also defended their neighbors; the Angels’ block was considered the safest around.
“I haven’t heard anybody say ‘Good riddance,’ ” Janet said.
“I’ll miss the way they decorated at Christmas,” Nancy said.
“They used to break people’s cameras,” Janet said. In the Instagram age, unwanted photography had skyrocketed.
The group is aggressively private. Only members were allowed inside the clubhouse—but Janet, decades ago, was invited in after a peppery conversation with an Angel. “I was scared shitless and trying to be tough,” she said. The interior, she recalled, “was like a suburban house”—couches and so on. “The women were cleaning and the men were partying.
Where were the Angels going? “I don’t know yet,” a prospect said. “Goin’ somewhere!” Would they miss the East Village? A wary, noncommittal nod. When the van was almost full, the Angels packed one final item: a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, eased onto a truck lift, raised up, and strapped in. A ponytailed Angel picked up a little girl, hoisted her onto his shoulders in front of the Big Vinny sign, and, smiling, posed for a picture. After some inter-Angel hugs and back pats, the men drove away. By the next afternoon, the plaques, signs, and flaming skulls were gone. ♦
Hagen, Germany (April 14, 2019) BTN –
Ministry of Interior sees no handle: Why the motorcycle club Freeway Rider's in Hagen may continue to show their colors, while the motorcycle club Bandidos may not.
Will this step generally lead to de-escalation? Probably at the end of this week, the first trial in the Hagener Rocker war with the confession of a Hagener Bandidos will come to an end. The 31-year-old will then admit that he has shot on the Saarlandstraße on a car in which sat members of the enemy Freeway Riders - and then probably go for about three and a half years in custody.
Displeasure at Bandidos peak
As can be heard from the environment of the Bandidos, the disputes with the Freeway Riders in Hagen with several sometimes bloody acts in public at the leading forces of the rocker grouping in Germany caused displeasure. Accordingly, it is likely for the Hagener Bandidos who try to gain a foothold here since 2016, give little support for further clashes. The official Bandidos spokesman left a request from the WP unanswered.
Nevertheless: The Hagen investigators remain vigilant and want to continue consistently. They are pleased that there have been no serious clashes since the arrests and raids in the fall and winter against Bandidos and Freeway Riders. The self-proclaimed dissolution of the Hagener Bandidos-Chapters , however, is considered more tactical feint.
In the Federal Constitutional Court
And indeed, both groups remain present in the cityscape. The bandidos, however, not with the actual club emblem, the shooting Mexican, but with the letters "BMC". Why are not they allowed to show their club signs, but the freeway riders already ? "That's because the Freeway Riders has not yet banned a chapter based on club law," says Wolfgang Beus, spokesman for the NRW Interior Ministry.
This was the case with the Bandidos: in Aachen. "And according to the law, showing the symbols for all chapters is forbidden if one is forbidden," said Beus. The Bochum lawyer Reinhard Peters, who also represents the Bandido in the district court Hagen in the current process, considers this legally untenable. He moved to the Federal Constitutional Court for a client: "Our constitutional complaint has also been accepted unusually quickly for consultation. I expect a decision later this year. "
Prince Edward Island, Canada (April 14, 2019) BTN – Island RCMP and Charlottetown police are on high alert this weekend with Hells Angels members from across the country in P.E.I.
There was a heavy presence of Hells Angels members, as well as several other motorcycle clubs, at a “celebration of life” for fisherman Ian Roulston Kennedy in Three Rivers Saturday.
Kennedy was a full-patch member of the Hells Angels.
Cpl. Andy Cook, the RCMP’s provincial motorcycle club coordinator, said law enforcement stayed close to the funeral for public safety reasons. “The funeral was for a member of the Hells Angels and we’re there for public safety and also for intelligence gathering to do with a large number of Hells Angels who were here in the province,” he said.
Cook said RCMP estimates there were 75 Hells Angels on the Island in total, from every province in Canada. He said due to the history of some Hells Angels members, a law enforcement presence is necessary anytime the club meets in P.E.I.
“As much as I’m sure the Hells Angels didn’t want to see us around, we’re here to protect the public and when they come into a community, because of their reputation, because of their history, they make that place unsafe and we’re not going to let that happen here,” he said. “So they can expect to see us each and every time they come here.”
Cook said there was an incident at a bar in downtown Charlottetown Friday night. “Information was provided to me that someone did get punched by a Hells Angels member last night so certainly we’re worried about the violence,” he said, adding that club members typically do not stay in P.E.I. for long periods of time. “We don’t expect them to be here beyond the weekend.”
RCMP were unable to say whether Kennedy became a full-patch member of the club prior to his death, or posthumously. However, his love for motorcycles and the club was clear during the funeral, which was livestreamed on the Ferguson Logan Montague Funeral Home website.
During a eulogy, Mark Gauthier of Vicious Cycle Motorcycle Club, said Kennedy “completed the program of the biggest motorcycle club in the world, earning his spot amongst them all the while never complaining or expecting any special treatment because of his health.” “He wanted to earn his spot just the same as the guy beside him and that’s exactly what he did."
Gauthier described Kennedy as an adventurous man who fished through chemotherapy and whose memory will live on in the hearts of those he knew.
“When we ride, Ian rides,” he said. “When we’re on the water, Ian is on the water.”
