Bandidos say police allow lies to spread
Breaking its silence over a bloody melee a month ago at the Twin Peaks in Waco that left nine people dead, the Bandidos Motorcycle Club said Monday that it is time for the police there to share what they know and help stop the spreading of lies.
“The Bandidos are sick of misinformation that is being put out there,” said Stephen Stubbs, a Las Vegas attorney who is representing the organization, which started in the Houston area in 1966.
“What the Waco Police Department needs to do is release the video and autopsy reports,” Stubbs told the Houston Chronicle. “Video and science have no agenda.”
The Bandidos, considered by law enforcement to be among the largest outlaw motorcycle gangs in the United States, were among numerous groups attending a May 17 gathering of motorcycle groups in Central Texas.
Before the gathering, known as the Confederation of Clubs and Independents, began, a fight broke out. Police have said the violence was a brawl between the Bandidos and the Cossacks gangs.
In addition to nine dead, 18 people were wounded, and 177 arrested on charges of engaging in organized crime. Each person was ordered held on $1 million bail.
“This isn’t your churchgoing crowd that came out to have dinner with the family,” Sgt. Patrick Swanton of the Waco Police Department said shortly after the shooting. “This is a gang-oriented criminal element that was in our city to conduct criminal activity.”
Police have not shared many details about what happened at Twin Peaks restaurant. Officers have said they are awaiting ballistics results to confirm who was shot by what gun.
They said they seized an arsenal, including 151 guns and other weapons, such as knives, tomahawks and stun guns, from the scene.
Police have said that members of the Cossacks and Bandidos, as well as each gang’s supporters, came to Twin Peaks ready to rumble.
“That is simply not true,” said Stubbs. “The Confederation of Clubs and Independents was an organized political meeting, but that doesn’t fit within the police narrative,” Stubbs said. “They want to make themselves look like heroes, I guess.”
A former member of the Cossacks, who was at Twin Peaks during the fight, has told the Chronicle that the violence was started not by the Bandidos but by a member of a smaller gang known as a support group.
He said that a member of the support group rode a motorcycle over the foot of a fledgling Cossack member and that an argument quickly shifted from a fistfight to a gunfight.
The former Cossack, who quit the group since the violence, said he was told that his group was going to meet specifically with the Bandidos to iron out an ongoing beef between the two groups.
The Bandidos said in their statement that they had no such meeting scheduled. They also said that any firearms they were carrying were legally registered.
“Members of the Bandidos were not aggressors, did not start the altercation, did not strike first, were not the first to pull weapons, and were not the first to use weapons,” the statement said.
“The violence was senseless, completely unnecessary and wrong,” the statement said.