Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime

Thomas Barker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317524106
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Corruption politique et inconduite

Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime, Second Edition, describes and analyzes a rapidly expanding global problem: criminal acts committed by motorcycle gangs. Thomas Barker, one of the world's top experts on outlaw biker gangs, offers fascinating details about the Bandidos, the Vagos, the Mongols, and other "one percenters" (criminal biker gangs, as opposed to the vast majority of motorcycle enthusiasts). He combines this data with a strengthened conceptual framework that makes sense of this complicated picture.

U.S.-based motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels have proliferated, especially in Canada and Europe, to the point where these gangs have more members in other countries than in the United States. Increasingly more often in recent years their crimes are not limited to rumbles or drug use—these gangs challenge the dominance of organized crime, leading to violent conflicts between the rivals. Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada are particularly hard-hit by this rising violence.

One of Barker's unique contributions is his Criminal Organization Continuum, building on the groundbreaking network approach to organized crime proposed by Klaus von Lampe. Introduced in the first edition, Barker elaborates his continuum tool and makes it more multi-dimensional to help refine the definition of adult criminal gangs. The product of years of research, this book lays the groundwork for further study by offering students, police, and researchers the most thorough account available of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

KEY TERMS

criminal exploitable ties

Criminal Organization Continuum

economic criminal organizations

horizontal differentiation

network approach to organized crime

organized criminal gang

single-purpose gangs

social criminal organizations

spatial differentiation

vertical differentiation

OVERVIEW

One-percent bikers and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) began in the United States and at one time were solely considered an American phenomenon and problem (Barker, 2007). This limited view changed markedly in the last 30-plus years as U.S.-based motorcycle gangs spread their criminal tendrils throughout the world to the extent that some U.S.-based clubs—Hells Angels MC, Outlaws MC, Bandidos MC—now have more chapters outside the United States than within U.S. boundaries. With this expansion, U.S.-based motorcycle gangs evolved from local to regional, then national, and now international/transnational criminal gangs. For example, the president of the Nicaragua chapter of the U.S.-based Vagos MC was convicted of murdering the “Godfather” of the San Diego Hells Angels in a shootout at a Nevada casino and sentenced to life imprisonment (Sonner, 2013, August 7). The slain Hells Angels chapter president was the fifth-ranking Hells Angels leader. The international Vagos leaders approved his murder during the Vagos national meeting at the casino. Complicating the transnational crime problem posed by U.S.-based biker gangs, indigenous OMGs from outside the United States are spreading beyond their borders and in several cases setting up chapters in the United States. They are following the lead of the U.S.-based biker gangs and becoming transnational. In the twenty-first century, one-percent biker gangs are a transnational organized crime reality.

The extension of the one-percent lifestyle, culture, and criminal behavior has not been without violence and death as the U.S. clubs have met resistance from indigenous one-percent clubs not in awe of their foreign interlopers. The wars and violence between competing U.S. and indigenous biker gangs in Canada, Australia, England, and the Scandinavian countries have exceeded those of prior organized crime groups in terms of the dead and injured, the weapons used, and the public settings in which they take place. Adding fuel to the fire of increased violence, the U.S. biker gangs have carried their “at home” enmities for other U.S. biker gangs with them and fought with each other over territory, crime markets, drug routes, and perceived real or imagined incidents of disrespect.

The end result of this transnational expansion of biker gangs has been an exponential increase in international OMG organized crime and a level of violence that has called for extraordinary measures by national and international law enforcement authorities and other government agencies, causing many to pass bans on membership or wearing colors.

The second edition of this book, recognizing the movement to transnational organized crime by U.S.-based OMGs, reexamines the “roots” of the one-percent lifestyle in the United States and the distinction between motorcycle clubs and motorcycle gangs, including a discussion of the Big Five biker gangs, their puppet and support clubs, and the major independent biker gangs. The expansion of U.S.-based biker gangs throughout the world is examined with special attention to selected countries where OMGs have become major organized crime problems.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE SECOND EDITION

Criminal Organization Continuum of Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs

The discussion that follows will expand the Criminal Organization Continuum of outlaw motorcycle groups, ranging from clubs at one end to gangs on the other end, developed in the first edition. Basic to this continuum is the distinction between conventional and deviant motorcycle clubs and the evolution of a select group of bikers who are labeled one-percenters. Closely examined are one-percent clubs known as OMGs organized and devoted to crime for profit. We will identify the dimensions along which we classify OMGs and identify the major OMGs and their puppet/support gangs whenever possible. As the discussion crosses “the pond,” we identify the major biker gangs in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the rest of the world.

Network Approach to Organized Crime

As in the first edition, guiding the inquiry is the network approach to organized crime proposed by Klaus von Lampe. A noted German organized crime researcher, von Lampe says that there are two areas of consensus in the study of organized crime: (1) no one doubts that organized crime exists; however, and (2) there is no generally accepted definition of organized crime (von Lampe, 2003). Von Lampe opines that many researchers use the concept of “illegal enterprise,” examining the activities and not the structure as a starting point. Using this approach, criminal enterprises (organized crime) exist when groups of criminals provide an illegal good or service on an ongoing basis, best exemplified by groups such as drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). Von Lampe says that classifying organized criminal behavior by enterprise/activity avoids the conspiracy theory involved in ethnically defined criminal organizations and the use of fuzzy and hard-to-define terms of the enumeration method of mandatory and optional criteria possessed by organized crime groups. However, there are problems with this approach.

The enterprise theory, with its emphasis on market, fails to address predatory and fraudulent crimes with no primary market orientation (such as investment fraud—Ponzi schemes, mortgage fraud, etc.), and quasi-government or parasitic power syndicates that occupy strata above criminal groups (e.g., political machines) engaged in illegal business transactions, such as those addressed by Block (1983) in his seminal study of organized crime in New York from 1930 to 1950. Von Lampe proposes a new concept—“criminally exploitable ties”—in describing a network approach that provides for a better understanding of organized crime (von Lampe, 2003:10). His analysis assumes that crimes such as drug trafficking or investment fraud; criminal collectives such as “mafia syndicates”; and criminogenic milieus or systematic conditions, such as corrupt alliances of businessmen, politicians, and public officials, all begin with participants connected through criminally exploitable ties that combine into criminal networks. These criminal networks are sets of actors connected by ties that in some way support the commission of illegal acts. Criminal networks constitute “the least common denominator of organized crime” (von Lampe & Johansen, 2004:167). This leads to the four principles in the network approach of organized crime.

First Principle

All group crime begins with a dyadic network between individuals with criminally exploitable ties.

According to the network approach to organized crime, the basic unit in any form of criminal cooperation is a criminally exploitive tie linking two actors. Each actor in the basic network has latent or manifest criminal dispositions that come together when the opportunities arise, and there is a common basis of trust. Each actor could already be an individual criminal; however, a network between them will not be formed without common trust. Trust is necessary for two actors to engage in criminal behavior in order to minimize the risks involved in illegal transactions. Those risks include the increased risk of detection and prosecution that comes with “partnering up.” After all, one has to be sure that the partner is not an undercover officer or an informant, loose-lipped, or in any way unreliable, because agreements between criminal partners cannot be enforced in a court of law. Of course, this trust can be misplaced or break down under the pressure imposed by law enforcement authorities, but it will have to be perceived to be there by both parties when the network begins. This leads to the second principle.

Second Principle

Networks between criminal actors will depend on a common basis of trust.

Trust is formed in a number of ways. Trust in the criminal milieu can be based on one’s reputation among criminal actors, especially in OMGs. Prospective members in biker clubs/gangs are chosen from that group of bikers known to have the reputation as “righteous bikers.” This common basis of trust can also be found in some sort of bonding relationship, such as ethnicity, kinship, childhood friendship, and prison acquaintanceship. Furthermore, this bonding relationship can be formed by affiliation or membership in secret societies such as the Sicilian Mafia, Chinese Triads, or Japanese Yakuza, or in subcultures that share a specific set of values and code of conduct much like street gangs and one-percent motorcycle clubs. Groups such as street gangs and one-percent biker clubs are recognizable to each other by reputation, distinctive clothing, behavior patterns, argot, or tattoos. As social groups, they adhere to mutual support and noncooperation with law enforcement and other formal social control agents.

The common basis of trust can also develop over time as actors come together in legal and or illegal business relationships. These ties will not be as strong and intense as those of ethnicity, kinship, affiliation, and membership, and they will often be ephemeral. They may also be more common in certain organized criminal activities such as drug trafficking (see Desroches, 2005; Box 1.1).

Single-purpose gangs have limited supporting networks and organization, and the criminal activity they engage in is only constrained by opportunity and inclination. Typically, single-purpose gangs have little or no continuity—arrested members are not replaced (Barker, 2012). Aggressive law enforcement action against singlepurpose gangs usually eliminates them. The single purpose does not endure with the turnover of members into an organized criminal gang—that is, unless the singlepurpose gang morphs into an organized criminal gang. Organized criminal gangs have extensive supporting networks and long histories of criminal activity, a defined membership, and use violence in the furtherance of their criminal behavior and quest for power. Examples of these organized criminal gangs include adult street gangs, prison gangs, OMGs, and DTOs (Barker, 2012).

BOX 1.1 ORGANIZED CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES—NETWORKS

Organized crime in the United States today is a multiethnic enterprise, comprised of many different groups, most of them quite small, which emerge to exploit criminal activities (e.g., fraud, smuggling, stolen property distribution, and so on). Many of these groups are short-lived, comprised of career criminals who form temporary networks with desired skills (e.g., forgery, smuggling connections, border and bribery connections, etc.) to exploit a criminal opportunity (the Single Purpose Criminal Gangs identified by Barker, 2012). These networks often dissolve after the opportunity has been exploited as the criminals seek new opportunities that may employ different combinations of criminals.

Source: Albanese, 2004:13. (Italics added).

Adult street gangs such as the “super gangs” of Los Angeles and Chicago and the transnational street gangs like 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13); prison gangs such as the Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerilla Family, and the transnational Barrio Azteca and Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos; and OMGs are unique within the category of organized criminal gangs because they share common characteristics (Barker, 2012). These criminal gangs make a clear distinction between themselves and others—they are truly “outsiders” in society. They express this distinction between themselves and others with symbols, colors, tattoos, argot, and dress. They also share the distinctive characteristics of all criminal gangs. The members of these groups are involved in various types of crimes for profit, and engage in violence.

Criminal organizations such as organized criminal gangs evolve out of dyadic criminal networks and are defined as a set of three or more people linked by criminal exploitable ties. They have to evolve out of the dyadic setting due to the size and complexity of networks necessary for some crimes. When the dyadic relationship requires a third person, the nucleus for organized crime and organized criminal gangs appears. In addition, in order to be an organized crime gang, these social networks must engage in ongoing or recurring illegal acts. Obviously, two criminals would not be enough to engage in all the activities necessary in organized crime, such as drug trafficking. Organized crime requires conspiracies between criminal actors. Illicit goods must be found, grown, or otherwise produced, and transported; customers must be found, identified, or cultivated; law enforcement must be avoided or neutralized; and profits must be laundered, shared, and divided. Furthermore, many criminal activities are spatially separate—regional, national, and transnational. All these tasks require combinations of individuals linked together by criminally exploi-tive ties—criminal organizations.

Third Principle

A criminal organization consists of a combination of individuals linked through criminally exploitable ties.

Many crimes require organization and structure: drug and weapons trafficking, protection/extortion rackets, organized retail theft (ORT), human trafficking, disposal of stolen goods, gambling, prostitution, money laundering, and the production and distribution of pornography. Von Lampe provides a typology of criminal organizations according to the functions they serve and their degree of structural complexity (von Lampe, 2003). He goes on to say that criminal organizations serve one of three functions: economic, social, and quasi-governmental. We will discuss the economic and social functions because they have the most direct bearing on OMGs. Economic criminal organizations are those set up for the sole purpose of achieving material gain through crime, such as gangs of burglars, robbers, DTOs, or an illegal casino. As we shall see, some motorcycle “clubs,” such as the Pennsylvania Warlocks MC, the Canadian Rock Machine MC, the Mongols MC, and the Bandidos MC, came into being for the sole purpose of m...