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Bandidos flaunt brutal pedigree

April 11, 2004

By Julian Sher

Their slogan is unabashedly in-your-face: "We are the people your parents warned you about," screams the banner on the official website of the Bandidos Canada, and they mean it.
In biker wars that have stretched from Quebec to Winnipeg and throughout Europe, the hatred rivalry between the Bandidos and the Hells Angels has been long-standing - and bloody.
Unlike the Hells Angels, who have tried to finesse their public image with toy runs and other charity stunts, the Texas-based Bandidos have never shied away from flaunting their brutal pedigree. "Cut one, we all bleed," the Bandidos boast -- and the blood has never stopped flowing, often from internal strife as much as external battles.
In Europe, the Bandidos went to war against the Angels - literally, with anti-tank rocket launchers, hand grenades and plastic explosives - in a five year drug turf war which left 11 people dead before the rival gangs agreed to an uneasy truce in 1997.
The Bandidos first moved into Canada in 2000, when they affiliated with the Rock Machine, who were engaged in a vicious turf battle with Maurice "Mom" Boucher's Hells Angels in Quebec that left more than 160 people dead on the streets. The HA won that war, and then moved on to try to crush the Bandidos in Ontario with a combination of bullets, bribes and bluster.
A civil war within the Bandidos erupted when the Hells Angels successfully recruited Paul "Sasquatch" Porter, a prominent Rock Machine leader who had survived three murder attempts.
He was luckier than four of the other eleven founding members of the Bandidos' allies in Quebec who had been assassinated by gunshots or car bombs-one so devastating that the police could only identify the victim by means of a small piece of skin with a tattoo on it.
Mr. Porter decided his life would be better - and no doubt a lot longer - if he switched allegiances. He persuaded several members of the Bandidos to jump to the Angels - the first sign of serious internal tensions within their Canadian organization.
The Bandidos who refused to bend - like Alain Brunette who had left Quebec to help build the Kingston chapter of the Bandidos - had to be broken.
The Quebec Angels sent Daniel Lamer, one of their enforcers from a puppet club, to assassinate Brunette. But in March 2002, Lamer's car was pulled over for speeding on Highway 401. The ensuing gun battle left one OPP officer wounded and Lamer dead, ironically saving the life of the Bandido leader who was his target.
What the Angels began, the police finished off. In June, 2002, about three hundred police officers swooped down on homes and clubhouses of the Bandidos in Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Quebec City, arresting Mr. Brunette and twenty-five other gang members, effectively wiping them out as a serious force in the province.
The small Toronto chapter of the Bandidos has tried to make inroads in Alberta and Manitoba, but with little success against the Hells Angels behemoth.
The ineffectiveness of the Canadian arm of the Bandidos could not have sat well with the Texas-based gang which has always prided itself on its violence and guts. They were considered enough of an "embarrassment" that their American sponsors tried to disown them recently.
"Because their numbers were so low in Canada, the US Bandidos had tried to separate themselves from Canada," said a police officer with the Criminal Intelligence Service of the Texas Department of Public Safety whose name cannot be revealed because he works undercover against the gang in their home state.
"When you get to point when you're not even breaking even -- on drugs, like any other trade -- you decide to close the business," he said. "If you're not bringing anything into the pot, you're a liability instead of an asset."
And that leaves the rich assets of the drug trade in Canada in the monopolistic hands of the Hells Angels.
"The dominant biker organization in Canada is the Hells Angels," says Sgt. Eric Dupre, national coordinator for outlaw motorcycle gangs at the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence Services. "The Hells Angels rule and the Bandidos are an insignificant player at this time."
Even more insignificant after the weekend's internal bloodbath.