ROAD MAP TO VIOLENT RIVALRY
Texas shootout is another chapter in a long history of violence involving motorcycle gangs
The Bandidos motorcycle gang has a saying: “Cut one, we all bleed.”
It’s not clear who started the cutting, but there was plenty of bloodshed on Sunday when the Bandidos brutally clashed with members of several other bike gangs at a restaurant in Waco, Texas. A wild shootout in broad daylight left nine bikers dead, 18 wounded and at least 170 under arrest.
The confrontation began about noon at a Twin Peaks restaurant in a shopping centre and quickly escalated from fisticuffs to all-out war, said Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton, a police spokesman. At one point, as many as 30 gang members were shooting at one another in the restaurant’s parking lot. Police found more than 100 weapons and scores of shell casings. The shootout started because a smaller gang called the Cossacks — backed by the Hells Angels — challenged the Bandidos for control of Texas. Several other bike gangs might have joined the battle, too, angry over recent killings by Bandidos members.
The shootout is the latest and perhaps goriest chapter in a long history of violence involving mo- torcycle gangs in North America. The Bandidos, like their more popularly known archrivals the Hells Angels, are frequent characters in that blood-soaked book. The group is generally considered the world’s second-largest biker gang, behind the Angels, with as many as 2,500 members in 13 countries, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Bandidos’ story charts the rise of biker gangs from counterculture clubs to fearsome organized crime organizations.
Nowadays, if we know anything about motorcycle gangs, it’s probably thanks to Hunter S. Thompson or the hit television show Sons of Anarchy.
But long before Thompson’s 1966 book Hell’s Angels, bike gangs were on the rise.
“Returning veterans (from the Second World War) used their severance pay to buy motorcycles and party in taverns,” writes James F. Quinn, a professor at the University of North Texas who has studied motorcycle gangs. “Thrill-seeking attracted some returning veterans to choose a saloon society lifestyle centred around motorcycles. Positive views of military experiences, and the intense camaraderie they bred, also made such a lifestyle attractive. In some cases, combat roles became master statuses for veterans who could not tolerate military discipline but linked their self-image to the small-group camaraderie and risk-taking of military service. Conventional activities offered no acceptable alternatives and these men were threatened with a loss of identity, companionship, and security as military involvement ceased.”
Thompson’s 1966 profile of the Angels came just as they were expanding across the U.S., stirring dramatic reactions. “They call themselves Hell’s Angels,” began a 1965 magazine article quoted in Thompson’s book. “They ride, rape and raid like marauding cavalry — and they boast that no police force can break up their criminal motorcycle fraternity.”
“We’re the one percenters, man — the ones who don’t fit and don’t care,” an Angel told Thompson. “So don’t talk to me about your doctor bills and your traffic warrants — I mean you get your woman and your bike and your banjo and I mean you’re on your way. We’ve punched our way out of a hundred rumbles, stayed alive with our boots and our fists. We’re royalty among motorcycle outlaws, baby.”
The Bandidos began almost 20 years after the Hells Angels, but the two gangs soon became bitter rivals.
According to the motorcycle club’s legend, founder Donald Chambers was bored with other bike clubs. “Chambers started the Bandidos in March 1966, when he was 36 years old and working on the ship docks in Houston,” Skip Hollandsworth wrote in a 2007 profile of the gang.
“Don wasn’t looking for people who fit into what he called ‘polite society,’ ” one of the group’s first members told Hollandsworth. “He wanted the badass bikers who cared about nothing except riding full time on their Harley-Davidsons. He wanted bikers who lived only for the open road. No rules, no bull----, just the open road.”
But as both the Hells Angels and the Bandidos expanded, they grew from freewheeling counterculture clubs into ruthless organized crime syndicates, according to academics who study the groups and prosecutors who pursue them in court.
Thrill-seeking attracted some returning veterans to choose a saloon society lifestyle centred around motorcycles.
The arrest and incarceration of bike gang leaders in the 1970s led to what Quinn calls a “retrenchment,” during which a second generation of leaders dialed back the violence and focused on turning bigger profits through better operating drug and other criminal rackets.
But the past three decades have been shot through with sporadic bike gang battles, often overseas. By the 1980s, both the Bandidos and the Hells Angels had become international organizations. In 1984, a shootout between Bandidos and another gang called the Comancheros killed seven and wounded 28 in Milperra, Australia, near Sydney. The incident became known as the Milperra Massacre.
In the mid-1990s, a Great Nordic Biker War between the Bandidos and the Hells Angels shook Scandinavia. At least 12 people died and nearly 100 were injured in the three-year skirmish.
The two bike gangs faced off again in Canada during the late 1990s and 2000s. This time, the conflict — The Quebec Biker war — reportedly cost more than 100 lives. The conflict largely ended in April 2006, when authorities found eight Bandidos members dead in a farmer’s field near Toronto. In 2009, an ex-cop on trial for the assassinations accused Bandidos world president Jeff Pike of ordering the killings. The ex-cop and five others were convicted of the crime. Pike denied the accusation and was never charged.
“I’m just a clean-cut American guy who loves riding his motorcycle,” Pike told Hollandsworth. “You’d be surprised. I’m almost always in bed by 10 p.m.” The Bandidos did not immediately return a request for comment for this article.
But Steve Cook says the cleancut, fun-loving claim is a charade. Cook is a Kansas City-area cop who says he’s worked undercover in gangs affiliated with the Bandidos.
“These guys are organized crime, but they are also domestic terrorists,” he told the Washington Post. “These guys are heavily involved in methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, motorcycle theft. The thing is, these guys want to put on this appearance, ‘Oh we’re just motorcycle enthusiasts and we just like to ride bikes.’ The evidence is quite to the contrary.”
In fact, Cook says that Sunday’s shootout closely parallels previous battles between the Bandidos and Hells Angels.
“My perception is that the Cossacks have been flirting, if you will, with Hells Angels,” Cook said. “If I’m a Bandido, my immediate reaction is: ‘These guys are going to try to make a move and bring an international gang into our state, which is going to cause a war.’”
One way or another, war did come to Waco on Sunday.
“The Bandidos already knew that the Cossacks weren’t going to play ball, and when push came to shove and these guys weren’t co-operating, all hell broke loose,” said Cook.