UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS

Police Find That They Are The Subject Of Angels' Surveillance

A police raid on the Hells Angels clubhouse in Coquitlam in 2002
turned up a file containing photographs of police officers with
several officers' faces circled, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

"It was disturbing," said Insp. Andy Richards, a biker gang expert
with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, who participated in
the raid. "It was alarming to see that they had what they had."

The raid on the Coquitlam clubhouse on Jan. 28, 2002, was spearheaded
by Delta police as part of their investigation into an alleged
extortion by two Hells Angels prospects -- one of whom, Rick Mandi,
was convicted last January.

Richards said about a dozen photos were found in a file folder marked
"Cops" in the clubhouse's downstairs office.

One series of photos appeared to have been taken by someone on the
street during a police drug raid on the Blunt Brothers marijuana cafe
on Hastings Street, Richards said.

"All the drug squad members were in plain clothes. They had their
faces circled and a little notation beside it saying, 'drug officers,'
" he said. "[And] there was one picture of an ERT [Emergency Response
Team] member from that same raid standing outside and his picture was
circled and it said beside that: 'Works undercover a lot.' "

A second group of photos included what appeared to be several personal
snapshots that happened to include officers who were working
undercover at the time.

"People in the pictures were circled and they were identified as
undercover police officers," said Richards.

A separate file in the office included photos of people suspected of
being police informants.

"These appeared to be surveillance photos, as if they'd taken them
themselves or hired a private investigator to take them," Richards
said.

He said police believe the pictures were used to identify possible
undercover officers and not to target officers for violence, but said
they were still troubling.

"It kind of begs the question, why, if they are just a group of
motorcycle enthusiasts, is there this apparent obsession with police
and informants?" said Richards.

Rick Ciarniello, spokesman for the Hells Angels, said Friday there was
nothing sinister about the photos seized in 2002. He said the club
took the photographs outside its own clubhouse during an anniversary
celebration at which police arrived.

"It is absolutely not ominous at all," he said. "We were having
problems with the police overreacting or abusing people and my lawyer
told me that we should take the photographs of these particular
policemen in the event that we were going to do anything with this --
a complaint or something like that -- we would be able to identify the
officer. It is as simple as that."

No complaint was in fact laid, Ciarniello said, but police are
misinterpreting the photographs if they suggest something more
sinister was being done.

"Richards has an agenda and he is propagating that agenda," he said.
"That is another one of those police fairy tales that they tell all
the time."

He said no club members were ever charged because of the search
warrant.

"They used it as a fishing trip to go through the clubhouse,"
Ciarniello said. "We went to the courts for relief. Ninety-nine per
cent of that warrant was quashed."

But police say the clubhouse photos are just one example of the kind
of intimidation faced by police and prosecutors who work on organized
crime cases in B.C.

In 1996, one of the lead investigators of Project Nova -- a police
investigation that resulted in the 2001 conviction of Hells Angels
members Ronaldo Lising and Francisco Pires for drug trafficking --
received two threatening phone calls at home.

Brad Parker, then a Vancouver police investigator and now a
superintendent with the Delta police, said the two calls were made to
his unlisted home phone number late one night.

On the first call, Parker recalls, a man said, "Stop what you're
doing. You're going to get it," and then hung up.

The second call was made about five minutes later, said Parker, by
someone with a younger-sounding voice.

"He said something to the effect of, 'You better f---ing watch your
back.' "

Parker said the calls made him worry for the safety of his wife and
children.

"I've got family and kids. It's unsettling," he said. "It made me
angry that someone would do that. . . . That was the first time I'd
ever got phone calls at home, and I'd been doing this job for a long
time."

He said the calls led him and his wife to lay down firm rules for his
children about answering the door or picking up the phone.

"It did change same of the house rules," he said.

Richards said when Parker informed his superiors about the threatening
phone calls, one of the force's inspectors, along with two "big,
burly" members of the force's emergency response team, paid a visit to
John Bryce, president of the Angels' East End chapter, at his
motorcycle shop in Burnaby, Hi-Way Choppers.

Richards said Bryce told the inspector he didn't know who had made the
calls and couldn't control what his members did.

According to Richards, the inspector responded: "Then neither can
I."

In an interview, Bryce said he remembered the inspector's visit to his
shop.

"I recall something like that," he said. "But it's been
awhile."

But Bryce added that neither he nor his fellow Hells Angels, had
anything to do with the calls to Parker's home.

"We didn't do that," he said. "We don't want to have any problem with
the police, right. So why would we do that? It's insane."

Parker said he was aware of the inspector's visit to Bryce's
shop.

"He apparently went and . . . had a chat with him. I got no phone
calls after that."

Larry Butler, a biker gang expert with the Vancouver police, said fear
of intimidation -- or violence -- is part of the job for an organized
crime investigator.

"You can't run around being paranoid all the time," he said. "The job
is to be able to step up and deal with these guys."

In Quebec, the assassination of two jail guards in 1997 and the
near-fatal shooting of newspaper reporter Michel Auger in 2000 led the
government there to crack down on biker gangs.

Richards said he thinks gangsters in B.C. are smart enough to know
that any similar violence here would only intensify the
law-enforcement pressure against them.

"They're smart enough to see what happened back in Quebec," he
said.

Police aren't the only members of B.C.'s justice system who have been
subject to intimidation.

In 2001, Ernie Froess, a Crown prosecutor working on the prosecution
of Lising and Pires, was threatened with death in a downtown food
court by John Virgil Punko, a member of the Angels' East End chapter.

Punko was charged with uttering death threats and obstructing
justice.

Froess testified in court that Punko approached him as he was eating
in the Pacific Centre food court, kicked his chair, called him a
"f---ing a--hole" and walked away.

Five minutes later, at the top of the mall escalator, he ran into
Punko again -- who blocked his path and told him: "You better watch
your f---ing back. You're f---ing dead."

Punko was convicted of obstructing justice in January 2002 and
sentenced to eight months in jail and two years probation.

In a recent interview, Froess said the threat shook him
up.

"I didn't take the threat lightly," he said. "I felt some concern for
my safety and that of my family."

However, Froess said the Vancouver police immediately took security
measures that made him feel safer.

Froess said the whole incident seemed "surreal" to him -- especially
since Punko had been a regular spectator at Lising and Pires' trial.

"It was hard to believe this was actually happening, especially in a
public area," he said. "He must have realized that I would recognize
him."

Froess said the timing of the threat was also bizarre.

"They [Lising and Pires] were convicted the day before," he said. "So
Punko was a little late in trying to affect the outcome."

Ciarniello said that obviously Punko's actions were not sanctioned by
the Hells Angels.

"That was something that was ill-advised and reckless and stupid and
was not sanctioned by the club," Ciarniello said.

Concern about intimidation of the justice system by organized crime
led the federal justice department to launch a project in the late
1990s to survey police, prosecutors and judges about the problem.

"The intimidation is intended to destabilize the criminal justice
system particularly where the prosecution of organized crime is
concerned," reads a discussion paper on the issue prepared by the
department and obtained by The Vancouver Sun through the Access to
Information Act.

The Vancouver police department's submission to the justice
department, obtained by The Sun through the Freedom of Information
Act, states that members of its gang crime and outlaw motorcycle units
have been subject to threats.

"There have in fact been threats made against some members and their
families," the report reads. "These were not direct threats but came
through intelligence received through various sources. These threats
never materialized."

Details of the threats were not provided.

Submissions from other police forces, prosecutors and judges were also
obtained by The Sun and reveal instances of intimidation across the
country.

A submission from the Toronto police indicated that "bulletproof vests
have been made available to Toronto prosecutors" working on organized
crime cases.

A response from the Ontario correctional system indicated prison
guards were regularly subject to "threats of death, sexual assault and
physical harm directed at spouses, parents, siblings and the children
of ministry employees."

The response noted that "the instances of intimidation that could be
linked to an identified group of offenders were those that involved
'bikers' and their associates attempting to either have correctional
officers introduce drugs into institutions or influence the activities
of ministry investigators."

Police in Edmonton indicated they had experienced six separate
incidents of officers working on drug cases receiving threats. Those
officers' homes "were armed with panic and entry alarms" for their
protection.

And a submission from the Halifax police indicated that intimidation
in that city had become so bad "that some prosecutors, as well as
judges, do not want to prosecute organized crime cases. They fear for
their own safety as well as their families."