 OPP Detective Inspector Paul Beesley listens to a question during a news conference in London, Ont. Monday April 10, 2006. (CP / Adrian Wyld) |
The Bandidos biker gang in Canada: a background
CTV.ca News Staff
While the recent slayings and subsequent arrests virtually wiped out Bandidos forces in Canada, the gang remains the second-largest organized criminal biker group in the world -- with a reputation for being one of the most violent.
"We are the people your parents warned you about," states the Bandidos' motto.
Though the Hells Angels are the world's largest biker gang, the Bandidos "have always been much more in your face," said Julian Sher, an investigative journalist who has co-authored two books on the topic.
In fact, the two gangs are historic rivals. But investigators say the weekend discovery of eight Bandidos members and associates' bodies found crammed in abandoned vehicles in a southwestern Ontario farm wasn't the result of a biker turf war.
Instead, police claim it was an internal settling of scores that could, according to some experts, be related to their recent attempts to expand.
After they were chased out of Quebec, the Bandidos set up shop in Toronto and tried to extend their influence across the country.
Sher told CTV News he has seen biker gangs battle over turf in big cities and small towns alike in a bid to gain full control over illicit markets.
"Like any other business, you know, whether it's Tim Hortons or Loblaws, they will try to move into territories where they can make business," Sher said.
"So we've seen the bikers expand not just in big centres like Toronto and Hamilton, but also London, Thunder Bay, Kitchener-Waterloo."
Despite the group's ambition to improve their standing in the pecking order, Sher said the Bandidos were never able to gain traction in Canada because the Hells Angels -- "through a combination of bribes, bluster and often bullets -- have always crushed them."
Yves Lavigne, an investigative journalist who infiltrated the Bandidos in 1989, says the Toronto chapter was not backed by the international organization.
"The group that we saw in Ontario was an offshoot, given its colours by the gang in Quebec who got their colours from the people in Scandinavia," he said, appearing on CTV's Canada AM.
"It was not endorsed by the American Bandidos. They didn't want them. On a scale of one to ten in terms of biker world power, the Bandidos in southwestern Ontario rated between zero and one," Lavigne said.
Lavigne added that the men who were killed in Shedden were "guys who could not make other biker gangs."
"There are people out there for who their life dream is to become an outlaw biker, but they don't have what it takes, so they had belonged to different gangs, they had been rejected," he said.
"They liked the lifestyle, unfortunately it caught up to them."
But Lavigne dismisses the suggestion from the police that the murders were an "internal cleansing."
He says there were no more than 12 bikers with allegiances to Bandidos in Ontario at any one time.
"No one was looking for power. If they were, they wouldn't have wiped out the gang. Over whom do they have power once they do that?" he asked.
Instead, Lavigne characterized the slayings as a family tragedy.
"They trusted each other, which is why the slaughter happened. They weren't watching their backs, their guard was down," he said.
"Someone snapped. This was an act of insanity. It was not premeditated."
There has also been speculation that a confrontation sparked by a shift of allegiance toward the Hells Angels may have gotten out of hand.
But so far, police sources have said there is no indication that the orders came from the Texas headquarters of the U.S. parent organization.
Another alternative theory is that what transpired at the London-area farm was a deadly drug ripoff, over $400,000 worth of cocaine, which left three Bandidos shot dead.
Media reports suggest five other Bandidos arrived later that night, only to be killed themselves.
Internal feuds
Biker gangs have a history of internal cleansing. Indeed, the recent slayings are drawing comparison to one of the most notorious mass murders in biker history.
In what is now known as the Lennoxville Massacre, a conflict between two Quebec chapters of the Hells Angels saw five bikers machine-gunned dead and dumped in the St. Lawrence River. A sixth biker was murdered later.
Increased biker gang activity in southwestern Ontario is a direct result of the 10-year bloody gang war that gripped Quebec in the 1990s between the Hells Angels and a gang connected to the Banditos -- the Rock Machine.
"The hatred between these two groups has been quite longstanding," Sher told CTV Newsnet in an interview.
The feud first spilled over to Canada in Quebec in the mid-1990s. The upstart Rock Machine bike club had turned to the Bandidos for help to retain its share of the drug market.
Battles between the rival gangs left more than 150 dead in Quebec, some of them innocent bystanders -- including 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers who was hit by exploding shrapnel. The boy's death prompted a massive public outcry, and the two groups declared a public ceasefire in 2000.
In the fall of 2000, facing public indignation over the mounting death toll and the shooting of journalist Michel Auger, the Hells and Rock Machine announced a short-lived ceasefire.
But within weeks, tensions again escalated when the Rock Machine obtained probationary membership in the Bandidos.
As the Rock Machine had just established three Ontario chapters in Ontario, the amalgamation effectively handed the Bandidos a foothold in Ontario.
The Hells Angels responded by offering other rival gangs in the province a one-time-only offer of full memberships, or full patches, without a probationary period. By early 2001, the Hells were a powerhouse in the province that had previously eluded them.
After authorities cracked down in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario replaced the province as the main battlefields, Sher explained.
Today, Ontario's estimated 250 Hells Angels and associates insist they are a motorcycle club, not a criminal organization.
As for the Bandidos, their presence has been virtually purged in Ontario, Lavigne said.
With the 12-member chapter in Toronto effectively erased from existence, all that is left is a smaller, junior chapter in Winnipeg.
"There's three guys left out west. If they were smart, they would burn their colours, head out to the mountains and become cowboys," Lavigne said.
"Because it's a lot safer riding a horse for them than riding a Harley," he said.
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