ROUGH RIDE FOR JUSTICE

COURTROOM BATTLES

Northern Alberta cops have failed repeatedly to back their claims that
bikers are a crime gang.

They have failed to get convictions on most of their charges.

The bikers have won nearly every court challenge they've raised.

Cops have been accused - by judges - of exaggerating evidence and trying to
influence the courts in biker prosecutions.

And Edmonton bikers are positively gleeful to point out that about as many
Edmonton-area cops as bikers are facing trials on Criminal Code offences.
And no biker stands accused of sex crimes, something the police cannot
claim.

"You'll never print that," a Hells Angel said.

The biker, 51, a bike shop owner, has never been a name in the crime news.

But in 1988 he and four other Edmonton Grim Reapers started bikers on what a
city lawyer calls "a series of successes in the courts" when they challenged
a search warrant that let cops take 22 guns from their homes and their
clubhouse. All were legal and no charges were laid.

After nearly two years in court they got the guns back.

The warrant had alleged that "outlaw motorcycle gangs, as organized crime
bodies, pose the single most serious threat to the country."

The cops who swore the search warrant, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled,
didn't have enough evidence to back it up.

Then prosecutors tried to get a firearms ban against the bikers, and a
provincial court judge threw that out, too.

"It was a major success," lawyer Bill Tatarchuk, who has represented bikers
in many cases, including those, told The Sun.

"We have had a series of successes in the courts."

Reaper Terry Malec, now a Hells Angel, was one of the men who won that
battle. A decade later, he fought it again - with Tatarchuk - when a Mountie
refused to renew his Firearms Acquisition Certificate.

Again the Crown's case was that Malec was in a crime gang.

The provincial court judge rejected it.

"Canadian law has not gone so far as to punish people on the basis of
prospective criminal intent," said Judge M.J. Burch. And she shook her head
at some evidence the Crown tabled - the criminal records of other Edmonton
Angels.

"I see a lot of impaired charges and things like possession of a joint back
in the 1970s here," she said.

Quebec biker cop Guy Ouellette said at the time the police had hoped to make
use of a court victory against other bikers: "This was a test case, one of
the first in the country."

The cops and Crown failed that test, Tatarchuk said.

"It showed that the police theory, that if you are a Hells Angel you are a
bad guy, is faulty. They have not proven it," Tatarchuk said.

That was underlined by yet another Alberta court ruling in September last
year, and that ruling expanded the principle of fair treatment to the entire
club.

B.C. Angels had challenged the traffic tickets they got at a CheckStop near
Calgary on July 24, 1997.

The CheckStop, they claimed, was not intended to ensure general safety of
the highways, but was essentially a search, an intelligence operation and an
investigation aimed specifically at them, with no warrant or evidence that
it was justified.

Judge Allan Fradsham agreed: "... The principles of fundamental justice were
violated."

Tatarchuk, a witness in that case, calls it "A very good decision."

CheckStops are perfectly legal, he said, but setting one up to stop the
Angels specifically to identify them - because you suspect all Angels of
crime - was offensive to the court.

The courts did not even test the anti-gang charges that five Edmonton Rebels
faced under new 1997 legislation against participating in a criminal
organization.

It was plea-bargained away in what one cop called "a huge discount" of the
charges laid after a 10-month investigation by RCMP and Edmonton city
police.

That public statement angered Peter Caffaro, assistant chief judge of the
provincial court, who said it was interference with the court system on the
part of the police.

Another loss for the lawmen came after three Red Deer Reapers were charged
in the June 1997 Operation Kittyhawk, in which police alleged they were
enforcers for a prostitution ring.

A raid on their clubhouse and the police allegations made headlines, but the
charges were withdrawn, even before a preliminary hearing, on Jan. 23, 1998.

"There were several deficiencies in the Crown's case," said Tatarchuk.

Even though he has handed the police some of their most striking biker-case
defeats, Tatarchuk has praise for their work.

"In my experience with law enforcement in Edmonton and the surrounding area,
the police are doing a very good job."

He points to the guilty pleas by Rebels arrested in the 1997 investigation,
and the three-to-five-year sentences passed.

Although city police were unhappy with the many charges dropped, "a guilty
plea is always a victory for the Crown," Tatarchuk said.

And the impact of those victories is huge, say four men in the Integrated
Intelligence Unit, Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Section, a joint RCMP-city police
squad.

"Since the patchover in '97, of the approximately 28 members, ex-Rebels and
Reapers and prospects, 15 of them have been charged with criminal offences
and 13 convicted, seven of these sentenced to jail time," said Cpl. Denis
Huot, a Mountie for 22 years.

"Better than 50% of guys who identified themselves as members or prospects
of the Hells Angels Edmonton Chapter have been charged," said RCMP Sgt. Bill
Appleby, also a 22-year veteran.

Their first shot at laying anti-gang charges - the 1997 Rebels investigation
dubbed Project Kiss - was not a failure of evidence, he said. It just wasn't
worth pursuing convictions.

"You are talking about legislation that was brand new and had not been
prosecuted by anybody."

Plea bargains, he said, can't be seen as simply a defeat for the
prosecution.

"We are always hoping for greater sentences, more convictions, but you have
to figure out where your time and resources are better spent."

If the bikers thought the case was weak, he said, they'd fight it.

"Every one of these guys eventually pleaded guilty (to something). It gives
you an idea of the merit of the charges."

Appleby noted that the Calgary judge who ruled against police in the
CheckStop case pointed out the lack of serious criminal records among the
B.C. bikers. "Now these guys have all gone to jail and they all have records
now."

And, there are four fewer Angels prospects in the ranks now, the cops note.
One was the Rebels' president.

"They were charged, convicted and they are no longer in the club," Appleby
said.

The Angels are content to let judges weigh the evidence, said Edmonton Hells
Angels president Gerald Weldon, alleging that the club can't win in the
court of public opinion, where both the cops and media are arrayed against
it.

"We just don't think that our voice added to this debate at this time will
make any difference."