BIKER'S SUPERVALU TARGETED

New Internet Magazine Urges Boycott Of Davie Street Store Owned By
Hells Angel

VANCOUVER - A new Vancouver online magazine has launched a campaign to
boycott the Super Valu supermarket in the West End because it is owned
by a member of the Hells Angels.

"Boycott Davie Street Super-Valu owned by a Hells Angels Gang Member,"
says the graphic banner headline above the story in the English Bay
Banner, a weekly cyber-magazine launched last Sunday.

The decision by The Banner -- located on the Internet at
ebaybanner.blogspot.com/ -- to start the boycott campaign was prompted
by The Vancouver Sun's series on organized crime last year, which
revealed that Hells Angels member Ross Douglas McLellan owned the
SuperValu franchise.

The series, a special project with the Victoria Times Colonist, was
recently nominated for a National Newspaper Award.

The Banner story, written by publisher R.H. Langen,
states:

"As a resident of the West End and one who is already exasperated with
a host of social ills manifest in our society, I am dismayed that this
individual has been operating with impunity right here in our
neighbourhood. What precisely happened to our oft-vaunted community
values?

"By patronizing this location we offer our tacit support of the
activities of this [Hells Angels] group. The English Bay Banner
invites all people of conscience and goodness to share this stand."

Vancouver RCMP Insp. Bob Paulson, in charge of outlaw motorcycle gang
investigations for the RCMP in B.C., said the Banner deserves credit
for its stand. "I thought it was quite courageous," he said.

The Hells Angels maintain they are simply a motorcycle club of
like-minded men, not a criminal organization -- a claim scoffed at by
police.

"If you're a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang, then you're involved
in criminal activity," Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham told The
Sun last year.

Graham made the comments when he became chair of a Canadian
Association of Chiefs of Police committee that coordinates
intelligence and enforcement against outlaw biker gangs.

The Hells Angels were identified last year as one of the top targets
in the Annual Report on Organized Crime in Canada released by the
Criminal Intelligence Service.

The report said the Hells Angels remain the most powerful and largest
outlaw motorcycle gang in Canada, with 32 chapters and about 500
members, including seven chapters in B.C.

The report said the Hells Angels use lower-level criminal gangs and
intermediaries to try to conceal criminal activities from police.

Hells Angels members in B.C. have a "symbiotic relationship" with
traditional Italian-based organized crime, commonly known as the
mafia, the report said.