The Secret Life of Bikers by Jerry Langton

Author:Jerry Langton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2018-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Bikers and Drug Trafficking

Every time I have asked a biker a question about drugs, he’s looked at me like I just asked if I could pull out one of his teeth. Of all the bikers I have ever spoken with, the only ones who will talk about drugs are those who have been through witness protection programs, which often work as a sort of de-bikerization rehab. One of them, former Hells Angel sergeant-at-arms Dave, describes how most of the members in his Downtown Toronto chapter made their income from drugs.

The bar they hung out in was something of a flea market for drugs (and stolen goods) that was protected by a Mad Max–style troop of friends, associates and hangers-on who gave early warning if police or a rival gang dared to show up. Their very presence scared off anyone who wasn’t involved with the club and thought they might drop by for a draft or a bite to eat. The ongoing cast of regulars included a guy who arrived every morning with cocaine, a ledger and a pen, ordered himself a beer, and distributed individual packets of coke until dinnertime, when he would go back to the suburbs to his wife and kids. Of course, he had to cut the club in on a large percentage of his revenues, but their continued goodwill kept him safe from anyone who might have wanted to take his drugs, his money or his job.

Members traded cocaine and other drugs—including oxycodone, steroids and date-rape drugs—in large amounts, breaking them up into smaller amounts for individual dealers. They even had an elaborate scheme that saw members hide cocaine in packages with T-shirts, hats and hoodies and mail them to a store in New Brunswick almost one thousand miles away. The coke was then handled by Dean Huggan, a member of Bacchus, who got it into the hands of local dealers.

Dave took drugs but was one of the few members who didn’t sell them, in no small part because he had a lucrative career in personal security, at least at first. But when his employers found out that he was a Hells Angel, that legitimate career ended. Aware that Dave was down on his luck and unable to get any other work, another member fronted him some cocaine to sell. “To him, it was perfectly natural,” Dave told me. “Like, you’re one of us now, and now you sell drugs.”

I’VE HAD BIKERS who have been convicted of trafficking, even those who have pleaded guilty to it, look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that they don’t sell drugs and never did.

The reason is simple: trafficking is an offense with very stiff penalties that almost always requires the cooperation of several people to pull off successfully. Should those people have the same patch on their back, it opens the possibility for law enforcement to prosecute the chapter or even the club as a criminal organization. Going to prison is one thing,

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