OFFICER ACCUSED OF BIKER GANG TIES
Quebec detective led charge against Hells Angels
MONTREAL • As a Montreal police detective, Benoit Roberge made his name working to bring down Quebec’s criminal biker gangs. He attended biker funerals, enlisted bikers as informants, bugged their hangouts and testified at their trials.
Mr. Roberge, who retired from the force in August, was back in court Monday, but this time he was in the prisoner’s box. The 50-year-old faces charges that he had become an informant himself, selling information about ongoing police investigations to the Hells Angels over a period of nearly four years.
News of a police officer who has allegedly turned is always shocking, but in the case of Mr. Roberge, it is doubly so. He was considered one of the province’s top experts on criminal biker gangs, having recognized early in his career the danger they presented to Quebec society.
In their 2003 book The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs are Conquering Canada, investigative reporters William Marsden and Julian Sher describe Mr. Roberge’s early battles to have his fellow officers take the biker threat seriously.
“As an intelligence analyst back in 1989 — when most Quebec police were dismissing the bikers as bad dressers — he began piecing together information on the nascent Rock Machine and the trouble brewing between them and the Hells Angels,” the authors write.
“I had to convince them there was a war,” Mr. Roberge told them. “The [Sûreté du Québec] laughed at me.”
The war would soon become apparent to all, leading to more than 150 killings and at its peak involving attacks on prison guards and a prominent crime reporter. As a detective-sergeant with the Montreal police, Mr. Roberge was in charge of the biker - turned - inf ormant Dany Kane, who committed suicide in 2000 but whose intelligence would prove instrumental in a sweeping crackdown on the Hells Angels in 2001.
In The Road to Hell, Mr. roberge described the relationship he developed with Mr. Kane. “That guy was a little like a partner,” he said. “He wasn’t my partner. He was a criminal. except that we worked as a team.” Of Mr. Kane’s suicide, he said, “He seemed to be a traitor in all areas of his life.… He was troubled by betraying his world.”
For a police officer, the two charges of gangsterism, one of breach of trust and one of obstruction of justice that Mr. roberge faces amount to a betrayal of the world he inhabited since beginning his career in 1985. Among other things, it is alleged that he attempted “to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice” by di- vulging information about investigations or court procedures. The infractions allegedly occurred between Jan. 1, 2010 and this month.
Provincial police said Mr. roberge was in the company of a Hells Angels member when he was arrested in a Montreal suburb Saturday by a heavily armed tactical squad.
Sûreté du Québec Inspector Michel Forget said police had begun to suspect some months ago that information was leaking out, and their inquiries pointed to Mr. roberge. “The investigation demonstrated that he transmitted pertinent information to organizedcrime figures in relation to ongoing investigations in return for some amounts of money,” Insp. Forget said.
He said that organized crime will do everything possible to derail police investigations, but “any attempt at infiltration will be repressed.… We are going to keep pressure on the fight against organized crime, regardless of their attempts or their tactics to harm us.”
before his retirement, Mr. roberge had been working for a special police squad combatting organized crime. Since March, he had been in charge of intelligence for the provincial tax agency. The agency announced Monday that he has been temporarily relieved of his duties.
The arrest is another black eye for the Montreal police following the January 2012 suicide of Ian davidson, a detective who was under investigation on suspicion of selling a list of police informants to the Mafia.