Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The Motorcycle Gang Intelligence Expert

OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
“My name is Jeremy Sheetz,” the short, dark haired man in the grey suit says. “I’m an Intel Operations Specialist with the ATF. I’ve been with the ATF since 2003. Since 2006 I’ve been working bikers.” Sheetz wears a dark blue shirt for maximum gangster effect. His receding hair is combed straight back and he wears Satan’s beard.
“Basically right now I support a lot of cases. Doing a lot of teaching. I’m very fortunate. I get to travel. I work a lot of runs like Sturgis every year. The Hells Angels USA Run. Bandidos USA Run. I just came back from Australia. We were assisting them in how to work long term investigations, how to change their laws. So that’s just some of the things I do.”
It is a startlingly frank admission about the way the Global War on Terror has metamorphosed into a Global War on Motorcycle Clubs. Seconds after seizing the podium Sheetz brags that the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is authoring laws in Australia designed to make life harder for motorcyclists.
Then he abruptly announces, “I’m not going to talk about Waco.” He says it in a way that implies that he knows a great deal about Waco but that he cannot share what he knows even to his audience of trustworthy policemen, who are about to be privy to secrets the press and other ordinary people are not important enough to know. The Waco secrets are too important. Careers may be at risk.

Exclusive Leaked

Sheetz craves celebrity which is one of the reasons he is speaking at the Gangs Across the Carolinas Conference at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina on August 13. The event is sponsored by the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association. Only sworn law enforcement officers are allowed to attend.
Sheetz is the senior motorcycle gang intelligence analyst for the ATF. He is the author of an annual report called OMGs and the Military. After the Twin Peaks Massacre in Waco last May 17, portions of the July 2014 version of the report were reprinted by numerous mainstream publications. On May 22, for example, The Huffington Post ran a “first look” story about Sheetz report  under the headline “Exclusive: Leaked Report Profiles Military, Police Members Of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.”
Sheetz lecture is glib and fatuous. His syntax is a mélange of Mickey Spillane and Tonto. And, his message is that biker violence is about to be a major problem in the Carolinas. Whether the Carolinas know it or not.

Cops Believe

A proof of Sheetz wide influence occurred last Saturday when three Outlaws were arrested in Rhode Island – basically for the crime of driving through the Providence Plantations. They were blatantly targeted arrests based on Sheetz’ intelligence reports. The day after those arrests, a Rhode Island State Police Major named Joseph Philbin told a Providence television: “The Outlaws are one the of biggest motorcycle clubs or gangs in the country, and the fact that they are establishing a presence in Rhode Island is alarming to us because sometimes they can bring forth some violence and criminal activity.” “New England is considered to belong to the Hells Angels.” “The Hells Angels have had a presence in Rhode Island as long as I’ve been on the state police, the last 20 to 25 years. So the fact that the Outlaws are trying to maintain or create a presence here could create a problem.” Philbin learned what he thinks he knows from Sheetz. The words and ideas are Sheetz.
The ATF intelligence analyst tells the North Carolina audience about what he believes to be the growing “problem” of “Outlaws expansion in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. On August 18, 2014 he lectures, two Outlaws attacked three Phantom Lords. On November 1, “approximately” five Hells Angels attacked an Outlaw with bats and brass knuckles at an Outlaw clubhouse. On November 13, an Outlaw’s motorcycle was “torched” in front of an Outlaw clubhouse. On December 3, a vehicle belonging to a former Outlaws spouse was set on fire.”
“I’m gonna give you a full review of what’s going on in the United States,” he promises

Inflammatory Junk

Much of his  presentation is a tempest of junk statistics and arbitrary assertions. “Thirty-eight percent of all Hells Angels in the United States are felons.” “Of the 300 plus OMGs that are entrenched in the USA, the Hells Angels, Pagans, Outlaws, Vagos and Bandidos are characterized as part of the Big Five.” Most of it is in self-important official speak. “Over a 24-month period ending January 1, 2012, 284 total acts of  violence related incidents have been reported.” Some of it is soporific. “Between 2012 and 2014 the Pagans, HAMC, Outlaws, Bandidos, SOS, Mongols and Vagos are considered the Dominant seven. Together they committed 260 violent acts.”
Most of it is inflammatory. “This is what is coming to North Carolina.” He plays a surveillance video. “This is outside a Pagans tattoo studio in Long Island. This is a Pagan named Road Block, a Pagans Sergeant at Arms, being assaulted by three Hells Angels and a group of Demon Knights.  Road Block walks outside and goes, ‘Oh shit.’ The Pagans inside the tattoo parlor lock the door and leave Road Block on his own. “Inside the tattoo parlor is a guy named J.R.,” Sheetz tells the crowd of cops something they want to hear. “J.R. was the chapter president of Long Island at the time. And he’s basically, a big sissy.”
“The ironic thing about this situation is that at the time we had an ATF undercover as a hang around for this chapter. Because of some internal conflicts within the Pagans, they told him to go home that weekend instead of being in the tattoo parlor.  So this was not only an ‘oh shit’ moment for the Pagans but it was also an ‘oh shit’ moment for the ATF. Because what are you gonna do if you have an ATF cover on that scene? None of these guys was ever, ever charged.”

Inside Knowledge

“We know who these guys are,” Sheetz brags. “We stand right in front of them. We take their photos. I write the OMG Military report. I get fuck yous all the time. I put my phone number right in there. They call. They just don’t like us. That’s good. That means we’re doing our jobs. We’re putting them in jail. And, that’s what our job is to do.”
“My job as the Intel operations specialist is to make sure that my ATF undercovers, or the informers and the case agents have everything they need when they do one of these cases.  When you work one of these cases they don’t go by the name John Smith. They go by monikers. So you gotta know their monikers. They don’t always live at the house that’s in Lexus Nexus. A lot of their bikes, their cars are registered in their females’ names. Old lady’s names. Sometimes other dudes names. This is what you have to be cognizant of. This is what we think about. We think about clubs like the Hells Angels, the Pagans, the Outlaws.”
He proceeds to demonize club members. He shows a slide of “a food drive that takes part every year in Virginia Beach,  The first Saturday of the month. The media’s out there. The radio stations are out there. They meet at Pembroke Mall. All biker clubs to include the African-American biker clubs, the multi-racial, the expanded associational, it doesn’t matter. They show up. They donate food. They drive the food to the food bank…. But this is not what they really are. This is not them. This is the outside. This is what they want you to see. But when you work these guys you see this is all smoke and mirrors. It’s all bullshit.”
He talks about the then mayor of Batesville, Indiana. “The Mayor of Batesville, while he was the mayor, was also a member of the Klan. After he left that, he became a member of the Invaders. This is him now. He’s now the chapter president of the Indiana Nomads.” Nine days after the conference in North Carolina, a man named Rick Fledderman who was Mayor of Batesville, Indiana resigned his office after he was charged with patronizing a prostitute.

White Ideology

Sheetz, who comes across as a cubicle tough guy, describes motorcycle clubs as “a white ideology.”
“But I’ll show you how that is changing because they are basically running out of people to bring on as prospects because there are so many clubs. So a lot of these clubs that used to be dominant white are now bringing on Hispanic gang members. The guys who look African-American. They’re really Dominican or Puerto Rican.”
“The farther north the Bandidos go,” he says, “the whiter and fatter they get. The farther east the Mongols go, the fatter and whiter they get.”
“Okay, what’s a one percenter? Any group of motorcyclists who have made a voluntary commitment to band together to abide by their organization’s rules, basically bylaws, enforced by violence, it’s all about violence, to engage in activities that bring them and their club into repeated conflicts.”
The real problem, he seems to argue, is that the “white ideology” of motorcycle clubs is so appealing that it is spreading out of control. “There’s so many clubs, they’re running out of room.”

Bureaucratic Ideology

Sheetz touches on the increasing federalization of all law enforcement in the United States. “Everybody looks at ATF and they say, ‘Hey DOJ, FBI? You guys classify these guys as a gang?’ Nope. The states do. But what we did do in 2010 is we put them on this high priority, organized crime list. Top organized crime list. And as you can see La Cosa Nostra is at the top. At the time, the Hells Angels were number seven, which is pretty good. So basically, if you were to start a Hells Angels investigation and you work with FBI or ATF or DEA, they want you to call the Attorney General’s Office and say, ‘Hey, we got a case going and we want to make sure we don’t have a blue on blue situation.’ That occurs still to this day. Because there are a lot of other things that have to do with like DEA so you need to run it through the Fusion Center, That way you’re not have any kind of conflict with another case.”
Sheetz explains how the ATF, FBI, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security all work together to make life hard for motorcycle club members. “So at the same time,” Sheetz begins, “the Attorney General’s Office did this, the Hells Angels World Run which occurs every five years in the United States, was going on in Laconia, New Hampshire. So Customs and Border Patrol and the State Department said, ‘We’re gonna come in and we’re gonna say you’re a foreign member, we’re gonna put you on a list. And when you come to the airport, you can’t enter the United States.’”
“Now myself, my couple of guys, said ‘This is bullshit.’ Why is it bullshit? Because what they’re saying is you have a propensity to come into the United States to commit a crime. But there was never a precedent set. But they did it anyway. So at the time, the Hells Angels said this is bullshit. So when we were working the World Run at Laconia, there wasn’t many members from Brazil or England. They would get to the airport and they’d say, ‘Oh! You gotta go back. CBP and the State Department won’t allow you to come in.’ Some guys even flew into Boston or New York. They turned them around. They turned around their families, wives, kids, So now you’re kinda stretching the envelope a little bit.”
One of the women eventually “turned around” under this policy was Izzy Wildheart. Wildheart advocates for incarcerated Hells Angels on a website called “Big House Crew.” The site also advocates for non-Hells Angels who Wildheart thinks have been treated unfairly and in 2009 she was awarded The President’s Volunteer Service Award by Barack Obama. The award stated, “Your volunteer service demonstrates the kind of commitment…that moves America a step closer to its great promise.”
In July 2012 Wildheart was denied entry into the United States because she talks sympathetically about Hells Angels and because she is married to a Hells Angel. In 2012, she told The Aging Rebel, “I was due to fly to New York state to visit a friend of mine who is married to a Native American for her daughter’s graduation party,” she said. “I had been granted an ESTA, a kind of Visa waiver. I was met at Heathrow by Homeland Security who after a lot of fucking around, calling Washington’s Homeland Security who informed Heathrow my case needed to be dealt with here in London or I would be detained in New York. I am now officially under the Terrorist Act and Criminal Organization Act and banned from setting foot in the good old US of A for life, due to my association with the club. My mother is an American citizen, I have three sisters and a brother who live in the States and I have no criminal record, but ‘the doors are firmly shut’ to me.”
“The thing that’s ironic is the Hells Angels were gonna sue,” Sheets rambles on. In fact, in April 2012 the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation of Westlake Village, California actually did file suit against Janet Napolitano, The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Alejandro Mayorkas who is the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The suit disputed the official policy that declared “the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, Bandidos, and the Mongols” to be organized crime groups. That policy also asserts “that these groups operated as permanent organized criminal societies. Active membership in these groups could reasonably be considered to involve a permanent association with criminal activities….”
Sheetz is hazy on the details. “So they’re gonna sue the United States government for not letting their core members come in  and they’re saying there’s a propensity to come into the United States and commit a violent act. Even though there’s no precedent ever set. So on that list…So on that list at the time they put down the Hells Angels. But in 2013 they updated that list. They put the Bandidos, the Vagos, the Mongols and the Pagans. There was a problem there. The Pagans aren’t international so nobody from international is flying into America. And then they forgot to put on the Outlaws. Oops! To this day the Pagans are still on the list and the Outlaws are not on the list but we’re trying to get that changed. But anybody who works for a government knows it takes a long time to get things done.”

Gang Enhancement Laws

Throughout his presentation, Sheetz urges the cops in the room to lobby for gang enhancement laws. “States do have gang enhancement laws. Even places like California. The last time I looked there were like 50 members of the Vagos, Hells Angels, Mongols and other smaller clubs who have been charged with a gang enhancement. So if you commit a burglary, an assault or maim somebody and there’s three or more guys, they can slap a gang enhancement charge on you as well as whatever you’re being charged with – burglary or assault. And you can get one to 15 years added onto your sentence.”
“If you’re a member of the Hells Angels and you plead into that gang enhancement you’re done. Automatically kicked out. They just had it happen in Arizona. A guy pled to the gang. They kicked him out immediately. Good member. He’d been a member about four years. He pled to it. He assaulted a guy. He pled to the gang. Booted the very next day. You go to places like Arizona, California, Minnesota – Minnesota’s now getting it, Georgia’s working on it, Nevada, Virginia, Virginia’s gonna copy exactly what Arizona’s done. Take what they’ve done. Change your state’s name.”
Sheetz talks about the limits of ATF’s intelligence gathering. “We don’t know much about the Pagans because they don’t do much electronically. Basically, they use FAX machines. They’re outdated.”
“The Outlaws, we don’t have anybody right now who can tell us what’s going on, on the inside.”
Sheetz gives the budding gang experts his take on the government’s attempts to seize the Mongols Motorcycle Club’s insignia. “We thought this year in May it was done…. If they go through seizing these colors, a message is going to be sent, These colors are property of the United States government…. I can honestly tell you, after this is over ATF isn’t going after another set of colors. It takes so long. It was manpower intensive. And we just don’t have the manpower or the money.”

Mongols And Angels

“Shit’s gonna occur,” Sheetz warns his spell bound audience and then he spills out the official government narrative of events involving the Mongols and the Hells Angels in the Southwest over the last 18 months. It is intended as a warning for North Carolina.
“March 22 2014,  On that day in San Bernardino, the Vagos had a mandatory run. The Hells Angels had a West Coast officers’ meeting. And, the Mongols had a mandatory run. So you knew something was gonna happen.  So four Hells Angels and five hang arounds were coming off an exit ramp  and they saw approximately about 55 Mongols. These guys try to run the Mongols off the road. That doesn’t work. Next thing you know on the side of the road these guys are in a knife fight. Two Hells Angels got stabbed really bad. Five mile backup on the road.
“So right after that. Raleigh, North Carolina. We have never seen a Hells Angels support club, basically drop their colors and go to an adversary. Guess what happened in Raleigh? They were sick of being the bitches. They basically said to the Hells Angels, ‘Hey.’ Conversation with the Mongols. Several of them patched over. And they see each other a couple of days later. Incident occurs in a bar. Hells Angel gets the bad end of that stick, Gets beat down. But you now have an incident in North Carolina between the Hells Angels and the Mongols.
“Meanwhile across the country. Reno, Nevada. Noon on a Sunday. Bunch of Hells Angels are in a bar. ‘Cause we all drink at noon on Sundays. Bunch of Mongols roll by. Shots are fired. Nobody’s hit. Nobody’s prosecuted. Nobody’s even charged. But this shit’s starting to really heat up now.
“September 20. Corona, California. Bunch of Mongols are leaving to go to a party. They ride up the Highway. Three members and three hang arounds. Bunch of Hells Angels pull up. Pull off on an exit ramp. As they make a right the Hells Angels make a right. And a shooting occurs. The guy in the back, who was just discharged from the United States Navy, is blown off his bike.
“Now the good thing about Southern California is John Ciccone and Darrin Kozlowski have an OMG task force. About 35 different guys and they have been doing this for so long. So do to intelligence, they heard the Mongols were gonna retaliate. And these guys who are talking aren’t just like shitheads. These guys are former Sureno gang members that have moved up the ranks and now they are Mongols. They are heavy hitters. So they found out, you know what. We’re gonna retaliate against the Hells Angels.
“So October 27, John Ciccone’s task force gets a search warrant, uh…eight on that day. Retribution for shooting that hang around off the back of his bike. So they go to do a search warrant at a guy’s house. Named David Martinez. Violent, violent Mongol. As the TAC team gets ready. Officer gets hit in the back. Shot and killed. So eventually they get in the house. They find a shotgun. But his defense was. I didn’t shoot him. He was shot by somebody in his TAC team. But nobody in the TAC team had a shotgun. And then he said, well, they didn’t announce themselves. It was all on video. So the bad thing about this is this is a horrendous thing. You never want to see someone shot. Never ever.
“So now we fast forward to February, Arizona. Because these guys are international. They’re all across the United States. This is Patrick Eberhardt. Cave Creek member which is a suburb of Phoenix. His father is the West Coast Treasurer. Cave Creek Chapter president. This little kid is basically driving around. He sees a pack of Hells Angels and he thinks he knows them. So his best friend, who is not a Hells Angel, sees the Hells Angels and they make a quick U-turn and they ride right up to a traffic light. He looks to the right. He looks to the left and he drops off the bike. And that’s all you see. That’s what the witnesses said.
“Do we think the Mongols did it? Sure. I talk to the detective probably two, three times a week. Great guy. Works Hells Angels. Works Mongols. He works a lot of clubs. He knows they did it. We all know they did it. We just don’t think there’s enough evidence right now to bring any charges.”
Most of what Sheetz claims is twisted. He starts with ideas and sees what he wants to see – what will prove what he sees in his head. He is obviously neither bright nor insightful or even particularly well informed. But he is paid to have opinions. That’s what “intelligence” means, really. A collection of opinions. Then he tells them to the world. And the world believes.