The Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, the site of the shootout, had its franchise agreement revoked on Monday.
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ, SERGE F. KOVALESKI and ALAN BLINDER
May 18, 2015
WACO,
Tex. — In the denim-and-leather world of Texas motorcycle gangs, the
Bandidos and the Cossacks are warring tribes in an unforgiving
landscape.
Both originated in Texas in the
1960s. But the Bandidos were first, in 1966, with the Cossacks forming
in 1969. The Bandidos became the state’s biggest motorcycle group, but
one that now tries to walk a fine line — declared by the government to
be a criminal enterprise involved in the distribution of drugs, but also
engaged in political advocacy on behalf of motorcyclists and activities
like charity runs.
There is little that is
ambiguous, however, about their feud with the Cossacks. Last year, two
members of the Bandidos, including the president of the Abilene chapter,
were indicted
on charges of stabbing two men, in what the police said was a conflict
with the Cossacks. The feud formed the backdrop of the shootout here on
Sunday afternoon, when a gathering intended to discuss bikers’ rights
and how to work on issues of mutual concern erupted into gunfire that left nine bikers dead and 18 others wounded.
On
Monday, about 170 bikers were charged with engaging in organized crime
linked to capital murder. It will be up to prosecutors and a grand jury
to decide what charges they will ultimately face, but capital murder
charges can carry the death penalty.
The
shootout provided a glimpse of the sometimes competing agendas — power
and influence, a desire to avoid public confrontations and a code of
never backing down in a fight — that turned the meeting of hundreds of
bikers into a blood bath.
“The
view of the Bandidos is that Texas is their state,” said Terry Katz,
the vice president of the International Association of Outlaw Motorcycle
Gang Investigators. “They are the big dogs of Texas, and then this
other, smaller club — the Cossacks — comes along in 1969 or so, and they
decide that they are not going to bow down.”
While
the police and government officials term the groups “gangs,” members
insist on using the term “club” instead, and say they are often harassed
and stigmatized for legal activities.
On Sunday, a
Twin Peaks restaurant at a popular shopping center in south Waco was
supposed to be the setting for a meeting of a Texas branch of the
Confederation of Clubs and Independents, an umbrella group under which
various motorcycle groups discuss issues of mutual interest.
“We
have been doing this for 18 years, and we never had a problem,” said
Gimmi Jimmy, national ambassador for the Bandidos and the state chairman
for the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents, which oversees
the local branches. “We discuss things like biker rights, but no
individual club business is talked about.”
The
Cossacks — Mr. Jimmy did not want to be quoted using the club’s name,
referring to it instead as “the other side” — were not part of the
meeting, but the Bandidos were. Eight Cossacks and one Bandido were
killed in the gunfight, he said. “The only reason I am not in jail,” he
added, “is that I got there late.”
The police
on Monday were still sorting out what had happened at the restaurant
off Interstate 35, and local officials were beginning an extraordinary
booking process — arresting and charging about 170 people they had
detained after the fight. The restaurant where the biker groups had
gathered, a chain known for scantily clad waitresses, continued to face
scrutiny over its handling of security. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage
Commission suspended the restaurant’s license for a week, and its
corporate headquarters revoked its franchise agreement.
The
local management said it was disappointed that Twin Peaks had “made a
sudden decision to cancel our Waco franchise before all of the facts are
learned.”
After the shooting, the state-run
Texas Joint Crime Information Center issued an advisory that members of
the Bandidos and the Cossacks “reportedly have been instructed to arm
themselves with weapons and travel to north Texas.” The bulletin said
officers throughout Texas “should be aware of the escalating violence
between both groups and are to consider all Bandidos and Cossacks
members as armed and dangerous.”
The one-page
document said the Bandidos were believed to have summoned additional
members from Arkansas and New Mexico as “reinforcements.”
Sgt.
Patrick Swanton, a Waco Police Department spokesman, said that rather
than overwhelm the jail, the police had used the Waco Convention Center
as a staging area overnight to hold those arrested. The bikers were
appearing before magistrates who were setting bond at $1 million each.
The
police had anticipated trouble and were out in force before the
confrontation. “There were multiple people on the scene firing weapons
at each other,” Sergeant Swanton said. “They then turned on our
officers. Our officers returned gunfire, wounding and possibly killing
several.”
Law enforcement officials said the gun battle
was primarily between the Bandidos and Cossacks, though members of the
Scimitars, who are affiliated with the Cossacks, and two other groups
were also involved. It remained unclear what had caused the first fight
in the restaurant that led to a larger fight in the parking lot.
Sergeant
Swanton said the initial confrontation had involved a “parking issue.”
Mr. Jimmy said that he had heard there was no such argument, but that
there was a fight in the restaurant bathroom about something, although
he did not know what.
The Bandidos take their
supremacy so seriously that in El Paso in 2012, five members and
associates were arrested on allegations that they attacked bikers
belonging to other groups because the Bandidos had not given them
permission to wear their “colors,” or group logos. Members who fight in
the name of a motorcycle club are often rewarded with patches and pins.
Wrapped
in their patch-covered jackets and straddling thundering motorcycles,
biker groups are familiar sights along America’s highways. But the
shootout here has brought renewed attention to organizations that
sometimes describe themselves as “outlaw motorcycle clubs.”
Bikers,
their lawyers and other supporters say the constitutional rights of
many club members are constantly under assault by law enforcement
authorities. They accuse the authorities of harassing them because they
are such a visible presence and because they are conspicuous in their
disdain and distrust of the police and agents with the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the main federal agency that
monitors biker groups.
But to law
enforcement officials, groups like the Bandidos and the Cossacks amount
to crime syndicates that are prone to violent clashes over territory and
real and perceived slights. In recent years, the State Department and
the Department of Homeland Security added the Bandidos — along with the
Hells Angels, the Outlaws and the Mongols — to a list of known criminal
organizations that also includes the Mafia, the Chinese Triads and the
Japanese syndicate Yakuza.
The Bandidos are
one of the few major biker gangs in the world. According to the
Department of Justice, it has up to 2,500 members in 14 countries, with
about 900 belonging to 93 chapters in the United States. Members of the
Bandidos, whose motto is “we are the people our parents warned us
about,” have been arrested in several states on drug, weapons and
racketeering charges and have been involved in deadly feuds around the
world.
One slogan displayed in the 1990s by
Bandidos members caught up in a Nordic turf war with the Hells Angels
seemed to sum up the group’s ethos: “God forgives. Bandidos don’t.”
For
the most part, observers and law enforcement officials say, the crime
associated with motorcycle groups is carried out in secret because of
the awareness that high-profile episodes of violence invite renewed
crackdowns by the authorities. But while violent clashes are fewer in
number, they have in recent years played out in public and sensational
ways, such as when a Hells Angels leader was killed in a Nevada casino
in 2011.
“The violence is more intense and
more public,” said Randy McBee, an associate professor of history at
Texas Tech University and the author of a coming book about the culture
and the history of the American motorcyclist since World War II. “These
people don’t seem to have a concern about where or when it happens.”
Representatives
of the Cossacks could not be reached on Monday. The group has promoted
itself with a simple motto: “We take care of our own.” Previous news
accounts about the organization mention its toy drives and social
events.
Don Charles Davis, who writes the biker
blog “The Aging Rebel,” said the Waco episode was “a challenge to the
Bandidos’ pre-eminence” by less established organizations, like the
Cossacks.
“A lot of the newer members are
veterans, and they want to prove their independence and equality,” he
said. “It’s a generational thing that is reshaping the culture.”
