OFF THE WIRE
http://www.clutchandchrome.com/news/news/indictment-brings-arrests-and-violence Indictment of motorcycle gang brings arrests and violence Saturday, 19 June 2010 | Written by Digits | |
While motorcycle gangs may be dramatized on FX with its hit show ‘Sons of Anarchy’, members of the real-life counterparts have had a week of headlines and legal troubles.
Understanding the title of motorcycle gang is sometimes too freely attached to a riding organization and occasionally improperly taken by certain riders looking for a particular image, arrests, court room dramas and legal decisions monopolized the two-wheeled press over the last week.
Starting off the week U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Neil H. MacBride and Rich Marianos, representing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) announced at a press conference the National President and 26 other members and associates of the American Outlaw Association (Outlaws) motorcycle gang were indicted by a federal grand jury.
The 50-page indictment, handed up Thursday and unsealed Tuesday painted the Outlaws motorcycle gang as a highly organized criminal enterprise with a defined, multi-level chain of command, the indictment charged leaders and members including Wisconsin, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia. Reportedly, the enterprise is alleged to have engaged in violent racketeering activities with the intent to expand its influence and control various parts of the country against rival motorcycle gangs, particularly the Hell’s Angels.
Members, who become part of the gang only by a unanimous chapter vote that follows a probationary period, earn patches to show their loyalty. They pay dues, can be taxed to cover a member's legal costs and may be beaten if they break club rules, according to the indictment.
And violence erupted when some of the members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang were being arrested following the announcement. In Maine, members were involved in a shootout with Federal agents during an attempted arrest with a member of the group killed in the exchange. A surviving member from the incident was denied bail on Friday with prosecutors telling a judge 41-year-old Thomas Benvie in fact owned the gun fellow member Thomas Mayne allegedly used to fire at federal agents on Tuesday morning.
As if predicting the deadly episode, U.S. attorney MacBride described the Outlaws' "entire environment revolves around violence," at Tuesday’s press conference noting authorities have been working to dismantle the gang with court papers indicating some undercover officers have infiltrated its ranks.
From the Washington Post to Tennessee’s Knoxville Journal and even reaching the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana, reports in different news organizations from across the country of local residents being arrested from the indictment populated the papers.
But it wasn’t only the Outlaws who were the topic of conversation in America’s legal system. In Virginia members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club were denied bail with not only the momentum of the recent Federal indictment convincing the judge to hold members until their trial later this month, but several incidents of alleged violence against rival clubs including the Desperados Motorcycle Club. The prosecutor’s argument included a death resulting from a shootout with Federal authorities during an attempted arrest last October.
“[The] arrests of the national president and leadership of the American Outlaws Association mark another aggressive attempt by the Department of Justice to dismantle what the indictment alleges to be a gang whose entire environment revolves around violence,” U.S. Attorney MacBride said at Tuesday’s press conference.
