Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (37 page)

Michael Bromley-Martin QC, representing the organisers of the event, argued, ‘There is no evidence whatsoever that the Hell’s Angels organisation as opposed to individual members of the organisation are involved in organised crime.’ The council agreed, stating that it had seen no evidence that
the Bulldog Bash was ‘anything other than a well-managed public event’ organised by law-abiding individuals.

The previous year, Warwickshire detectives had spent £1.4million mounting a massive operation to police the festival. Sniffer dogs and metal detectors were employed to disrupt any planned illegal activity, and hundreds of officers set up stop and search stations along the route. Having failed to get the licence revoked, Holland insisted on carrying out a similar operation, ‘with a view to protecting people from harm for the duration of the event’.

Bulldog Bash festival organiser John ‘Bilbo’ Britt claimed the force was wasting its money. ‘They have tried three times to stop this show and have failed each time. Certain people in the police think us bikers are in some kind of war but we are not. It is discrimination, because we are in a fight with the police to stop them ruining part of our lifestyle. We are not just going to sit back and let them do that. If the police have the evidence that we are involved in organised crime, take us to court. We’ve been doing it for twenty-three years and never had any trouble in the festival. Under our leathers we’re just lovely big, cuddly teddy bears.’

During the Bash, the Angels stepped up their own PR campaign with their latest weapon in the media war – a brand new press officer. ‘Echo’ first appeared in the national press criticising the overly heavy-handed police operation. ‘If we are organised criminals, why do we ride around quite openly displaying patches saying who we are? We get together to ride our bikes, visit our brothers in Britain and overseas and have a party. Just because some of our members have crossed the line doesn’t make every member a criminal nor the club a criminal organisation.’

He also appeared in a video on the website of a local newspaper, decked out in full Angel regalia and again criticising the police. ‘It’s a completely over the top reaction,’ he said. ‘We accept the police have a responsibility for law and order, public safety, etc. But we police the site, there’s never any problems on the site. They have to look after the outside, and in the past they’ve had a couple of dozen police officers.

‘Last year and this year they spent £180,000 on equipment hire, which is twice what we spend on equipment hire for the whole show. I know the local people are very upset about … [the] roadblocks. I mean, what’s going on? This is a family event that’s gone on for twenty years without any problem.’

Echo was supremely articulate and seemed a natural on camera, even eclipsing the likes of the late Maz Harris. Little wonder – his real name was Steve Jones and his day job was working as a BBC journalist, reporting for both television and radio. When his distinctive face and voice were recognised by colleagues, the BBC launched an inquiry into his (undeclared) extra-curricular activities. It transpired that Jones had previously received a warning from his bosses for presenting an item in a short-sleeve shirt, showing off his tattoos. Once they were satisfied that Jones was in fact Echo, the BBC dismissed him on the spot.

While the police struggled to substantially link the Hell’s Angels with any kind of organised criminality, the Outlaws proved to be a far easier target. In November 2009, just a few months after he had appeared on
Sky News
, Dink and six other members of the club were caught red-handed with around £40,000 worth of amphetamines.

North Wales Police had received a tip-off (from their Dyfed Powys colleagues) that drug exchanges were taking place between members of the North Wales Outlaws and representatives of the West Wales chapter. A surveillance operation was set up and when two members visited the Outlaws clubhouse in Colwyn Bay, the vehicle was later stopped in a seemingly random check near Betws-y-Coed and two kilos of amphetamine were recovered. Unaware that they had been compromised, the gang continued to move drugs around the country under the watchful eye of the police team. Two months later, a van was stopped on the A55 and a similar quantity of amphetamine was found hidden in the lining of the roof. Mobile phones were seized and showed a pattern of regular calls between Dink and other senior Outlaws around the time of each delivery. A raid on the Colwyn Bay clubhouse also unearthed a quantity of cocaine.

Sentencing Dink to six years, Judge Merfyn Hughes QC said: ‘The Outlaws are a perfectly lawful organisation but you used your role as the European President to further your own criminal activities. You brought the organisation into disrepute by the wholesale and commercial supply of drugs.’

For Boone, the arrest and incarceration of the club president was the final nail in the coffin. By now he had a new girlfriend, Sally. Although she rode a motorcycle herself and loved being around bikers, she was not part of the MC scene and despised it with a vengeance. At first, Boone had ignored her complaints. He had heard the same thing from other women in the past. They all tried to make a stand, but
in the end they all came round, especially when they built up solid friendships with the old ladies of his club associates.

But Sally stood firm. And finally, it seemed that Boone had caught up with her way of thinking. He had considered leaving in the days after Gerry Tobin had been shot and had become thoroughly disillusioned after the fallout from the Birmingham airport incident. He loved the club, the partying, the fights and the brotherly love. What he didn’t like was the paranoid skulking around in the dark, the constant hounding by police, the trying not to get shot, and the feeling that he would end up in prison. Plus, if he wanted to move on with his life, Sally had made it clear that she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of starting a family with a practising Outlaw.

Leaving a one percenter club is hard but not impossible. For those who leave in ‘bad standings’ it means giving back any item bearing the name or logo of the club and often surrendering many of their personal items. The theory is that, because of your membership of the club, you have benefited financially and therefore many of your personal assets actually belong to the club. Any tattoos bearing the club logo must be removed or totally obscured. Some clubs insist on doing this themselves with the back of a hot spoon. Some unlucky former members have even had the skin cut off their arms with a razor blade.

Those who leave in ‘good standings’ have it slightly better. The most favoured among them are allowed to officially retire, stitching a special patch to the front of their jackets to signify this. You are allowed to retire once and then come back – but only the once. Otherwise, people
would retire from the club whenever a war was on and come back once the good times started up again.

When you leave the club in this way, you are allowed to keep your tattoo but you must have the date that you left inscribed into it to show that you are no longer a member. If invited, you are allowed to attend clubhouse parties, mandatory runs and funerals, though many retired members simply leave everything about the club behind and get on with their lives.

Boone knew the Outlaws would never let him go voluntarily. He had been there too long, knew too much and was too useful to them. If he was going to get out, Boone would have to make them want to get rid of him. In the end, the simplest route seemed to be to breach one of the key rules – no fighting with other members. Following a meeting in the Birmingham clubhouse one night in April 2009, Boone made his move.

Although he had tried to keep his feelings to himself as much as possible, several of his close friends in the club knew what had been going through his mind. When he tried to deliberately pick a fight with one of them for no reason, he simply shook his head and walked away. ‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ he said, ‘and I’m not prepared to help you out.’

The next person Boone tried felt the same way and he was soon feeling increasingly frustrated. Drastic action was called for, so he came up with the most extreme solution he could think of. As head of security for the run to Birmingham, he was under orders to be armed at all times. He now took out the heavy silver revolver from the small of his back and pointed it directly at the head of one of the vice-presidents.

The whole clubhouse fell silent. The VP’s head fell forward and he exhaled slowly. Disappointment and shock was etched all over his face. ‘What are you doing man?’ he asked softly.

‘I need out. I can’t take it any more.’

‘But not like this, not this way.’

‘It’s the only thing I can think of.’

Boone had barely finished his sentence when the inevitable happened. Virtually every biker in the building pounced on him. He was quickly disarmed and knocked to the floor where punches and kicks rained down on him. As he tried to cover his face he was spun over on to his back. By now a few of the Outlaws had picked up makeshift weapons – pool cues, chair legs – and he could feel them impacting on his body.

Then there were hands on his jacket, tearing at his top and bottom rockers, then at his centre logo, ripping the patches right off his back. Had he been a newer, less popular member, he probably would have been killed or, at the very least, left severely injured. But almost as quickly as it started, the beating stopped and Boone found himself being propelled through the reinforced door of the clubhouse.

He was now an outsider in every sense of the word. He knew that within days, possibly within hours, members of the club would turn up at his house to ensure that everything connected to the Outlaws was removed or destroyed. He knew that he would be given just seven days to have his club tattoos covered up or removed. He knew nothing in his life would ever be the same again.

For the first few weeks, he felt as though he had lost a limb. The club had been such a huge part of his life for so
many years; he hadn’t registered just how much time it had taken up. But once the initial shock subsided, he could see that he had done the right thing. A massive source of stress and worry suddenly evaporated. Boone still felt incredibly loyal to the Outlaws and his brothers in the MC, but it was as if his feelings belonged to another era, back when the club was truly about nothing more than biking and brawling.

His MC had grown into a monster – big and corporate, with something indefinable having been lost along the way. As a Pagan, Boone had not only felt part of an elite group, he had also found himself to be essential to everything that happened. Now, even though the UK was one of the most powerful chapters in the world, they were part of the AOA and could only be seen as a small cog in a much larger wheel. Although the change had been inevitable, it hadn’t been what he’d signed up for. Now that was all behind him and he was free to live the life he wanted to live. He planned to make the most of it.

When a reporter from the
Texas Monthly
secured an invite to a Bandido funeral in early 2007, he eagerly eavesdropped on a conversation among some of the more senior bikers, thinking he might hear some interesting anecdotes about the club. ‘Jesus, my fucking cholesterol,’ one of them said, ‘fucking off the fucking charts.’ And then there was the reporter at a recent Sturgis festival who overheard a group of Hell’s Angels complaining about the fact that the t-shirt vendors did not offer a senior discount. The truth is as plain as the liver spots on their faces: the hardcore element of most biker gangs is fast becoming filled with old men.

Despite this trend, within a year of his leaving, the Outlaws had grown to more than twice its original size. A massive push aimed at expanding the club and bringing in newer, younger members had been incredibly successful. In part, this was a reaction to the incident at Birmingham Airport where the Outlaws had found themselves going toe-to-toe with a far younger, more physically able crowd. No one wanted to risk that happening again.

Europe is the continent with the highest increase in new biker gang chapters anywhere in the world. During the last five years, the Bandidos, the Hell’s Angels and the Outlaws have opened more than 120 chapters which makes the total number of chapters in Europe more than 425. The number
of chapters for these three large groups in the United States and Canada is around 300.

All three of the major international biker gangs have expanded rapidly in Sweden in particular. In the preceding five years the Hell’s Angels have started up five new chapters in the Scandinavian country. The Outlaws have also established a base there and the Bandidos have increased the number of their own chapters to a total of nine.

And the more the gangs expand, the greater the potential for conflict. In June 2010, the Outlaws planned to open a new chapter in Ehrendingen, Switzerland. Hundreds of guests were invited from all over Europe. While the preparations were still going on for the Swiss bikers, their old ladies and children, up to 200 people with motorcycles and cars appeared in the club grounds and launched a massive unprovoked attack with baseball bats, steel pipes, clubs, knives and firearms, firing several shots and destroying dozens of cars and motorcycles.

Local media infuriated the Outlaws by stating the attack had taken place because they had failed to seek advance permission to establish a chapter from the local Hell’s Angels.

There is the potential for serious trouble in Ireland too, where tensions have never been higher. Many years have passed on the Emerald Isle since Boone and his fellow Pagans fought in the Battle of Kilmeaden. The Alliance that had been formed in the aftermath of that conflict, with the sole aim of preventing the major MCs from gaining a foothold in Ireland, is looking increasingly fragile. The Outlaws set up shop in the Republic in 2001 and the Hell’s Angels followed suit in 2007, with a chapter in Belfast and every intention of spreading south.