DRUG DEALERS AS BUSY AS EVER

Call It The Litmus Test Of Organized Crime.

Top Hells Angels are behind bars awaiting a new trial, longtime drug daddy
Gerald Matticks has been sentenced to 12 years in jail, but one fact has
not changed an iota - the price of hash on Montreal's streets.

"If there was a shortage of drugs, the prices would go up," said Inspector
Serge Frenette, head of the Montreal Police organized crime division. "But
the quantity of drugs hasn't gone down. When we get one group, there's
always someone who will take their place."

Indeed, while the face of organized crime may have changed, it doesn't seem
to have affected business.

With Operation Printemps 2001, the Bandidos filled part of the crime vacuum
left by the Hells Angels, when more than 100 people were arrested as
suspects in the gang's drug-distribution and money-laundering networks,
Frenette said.

"But now that the top Hells are behind bars and the Bandidos gang has been
dismantled, of course another gang will rise to take their place," Frenette
said. "It's just like with the police. When an officer retires, another one
moves up and picks up the slack."

Some might argue that getting the big guys would have an impact -
especially Matticks, whose control of shipments through the Port of
Montreal kept the streets flooded with drugs over the years.

Evidence in court this week showed Matticks personally arranged seven
shipments of hashish totalling 33,363 kilograms, and one of 260 kilograms
of cocaine, all in little more than a year.

But veteran crime reporter Michel Auger, who became intimately acquainted
with organized crime in Montreal when he was shot five times getting out of
his car in the Journal de Montreal's parking lot on Sept. 13, 2000, said
even at the port it's business as usual.

"Gerald Matticks is in jail, but his people are still there," Auger said.
"I've heard about Matticks's control over the port since 1965, even though
the authorities always denied it, and I know someone will take his place."

Or as Frenette put it, the ports in Canada, particularly in Montreal, will
continue to be a major entry point for drugs "because it's hard to hide
4,000 pounds of hash in the trunk of a car."

As for the Hells Angels, they already have been replaced, Auger said - by
other Hells Angels from across Quebec.

"The Mafia, the Hells Angels and the independents still have the same
shares in drug trafficking."

What has changed has been the level of violence associated with organized
crime, Auger said.

"There may have been a 24-hour delay in the spring of 2000, but not one
consumer didn't get his drugs. The only thing that has changed since the
arrests has been that there is less violence."

After eight violent years during which the biker war claimed 170 lives,
that's no small victory, Auger said.

The challenge now for police is to find new ways to crack down on the
newcomers.

Just as the Hells' way of doing business came out in trial, including the
code names they used, for everyone and everything, so too did the police's
modus operandi.

"Every time we get people before the courts, we have to divulge how we did
it," Frenette said. "Then we have to change our way of doing things. In the
future, we will have to try and hit the organization - from its leaders
down to the drug dealers. But we will have to be very imaginative."