RAID SURPRISES CALGARY BIKERS

It came down to a nail-biting 48 hours after a major raid on the Hells
Angels in Quebec threatened to blow the cover off a huge Alberta
police sting on the infamous bike gang's Calgary chapter.

But the worries of police officers, including Police Chief Jack
Beaton, turned out to be unfounded as Friday's bust still caught local
bikers and their associates completely off-guard.

"It was quite a shock to me when I got out of bed," Beaton said,
referring to the Wednesday morning raids around Montreal.

"Believe it or not, we were just as surprised as you when we found out
what happened in Quebec this week. It was completely separate from
what we were planning."

About 200 police officers swooped down on the Hells Angels' Ogden
clubhouse and 26 other locations around the city early Friday morning,
seizing $1 million in illegal drugs and weapons. Hundreds of charges
are expected to be laid against as many as 40 people.

Late Friday, up to 13 were taken into custody and charged.

Police are still hunting for at least 27 more suspects.

It was the culmination of 11 months and $2.5-million worth of police
work that came on the heels of the biggest bike gang raid in Canadian
history when a team of 2,000 Mounties and civic police arrested more
than 120 Hells Angels members in Quebec.

Police insist the timing of the two busts was sheer
coincidence.

"When you're running secret operations like this, you try and keep it
as covert as possible," Beaton said Friday.

"We were concerned when the bust went down in Quebec. They even said
in their news release that it could lead to similar busts in Alberta
and Vancouver, even though they didn't know what we were doing here."

Called Operation Shadow, the raids began at 3 a.m. when police
officers from Calgary, Edmonton and the RCMP used search warrants to
enter homes in Calgary, Chestermere, Okotoks and Turner Valley.

Beaton said eight of those who have been charged so far are known to
be some of the city's 18 full-fledged Hells Angels members while the
rest of the suspects are considered to be "associates" of the
motorcycle club.

Charges include conspiracy to traffic, drug trafficking and various
weapons offences. Beaton said organized crime and proceeds of crime
charges could be laid at a later date.

"The focus was on the Hells Angels Calgary chapter," he said. "Our
probing showed that there was a lot of drug trafficking going on in
that organization, therefore we focused our resources and undercover
officers in that capacity."

Combined with drug buys by undercover officers in the last year,
police have seized 11 kilograms of cocaine, 2,070 tablets of Valium,
585 morphine pills, four kilograms of marijuana, 485 hits of ecstasy,
and 1.5 kilograms of methamphetamine.

They also found five handguns, one Uzi submachine gun with a silencer,
11 rifles, one shotgun, a crossbow and a Tazer stun gun.

"This is one of the major operations in Canada and for Alberta this is
what we consider to be one of the biggest ones," Beaton said. "We are
very proud of what happened today."

Police wore black balaclavas to hide their identities as they combed
through the gang's headquarters at 8311 26 St. S.E.

Despite the barbed-wire fence, surveillance cameras and the
clubhouse's fortified steel door, the raid unfolded peacefully.

"We didn't have to use force at any of the locations and at the
clubhouse we had compliance to the search warrant," Beaton said.
"There was an individual inside we contacted and he opened the door to
allow police access."

Insp. Murray Stooke, head of the Calgary police criminal investigation
division, said the operation went off without a hitch even after
Quebec police warned that more raids would likely be carried out in
Alberta and B.C.

"As it turned out they did not expect us," he said, adding the timing
of Operation Shadow wasn't altered after the Quebec raids hit the airwaves.

"Something this size was a bit of a juggernaut," he said. "We had
everything in place and there was no way to change it."

Even the gang's next-door neighbour had no idea that police had
surrounded her house until she ventured outside just after noon.

"I didn't hear anything," said Jeanette Pickering, who has lived in
the small white bungalow beside the former King's Crew clubhouse for
the last 12 years.

"I sat down at the table to read the paper like I normally do and then
I saw all the policemen outside."

The bike gang is considered a mainstay among the small community of
residents who live in the few square blocks of turn-of-the-century
homes just south of Glenmore Trail.

Hells Angels members have been known to help some of their elderly
residents carry their garbage out to the curb and rarely let their
parties get out of hand.

"I've never had any problems with them," said one man who has lived a
few houses away from the clubhouse for 47 years.

"They've been as good a neighbour as any and probably better than
most. I don't have to lock my doors because they keep the riff raff
out of the neighbourhood."

Friday's bust, and the months of work that went into it, yielded a
wealth of information about how the Hells Angels operate nationwide
and will be disseminated through the Criminal Intelligence Service of
Canada.

"This intelligence will be valuable in inter-police investigations and
we'll be sharing this information with other police agencies across
Canada," said Alberta RCMP Chief Supt. Rick Bowlby.

Alberta Solicitor General Heather Forsyth said the operation's success
may also lead to more provincial money being poured into combatting
organized crime in Calgary.

"It's one of the things I've promised the chief we will sit down and
discuss," Forsyth said. "It's a problem that needs to be addressed."

The following Calgary residents were charged with a variety of drug
offences: Richard Allen Osmond, 36; Mia White, 30; John Pilling Jr.,
41; Eric Glen Fulton, 25; James Brian St. Michael, 34; Shawna Marie
Boyd, 20; Malcolm Chesley Chipman, 52; Tracey Heft, 32; Kenneth George
Snider, 62; and Kevin Allan Press, 44.

Also charged were Lester Robert Jones, 29, of Okotoks; Shane William
Wachter, 27, of Chestermere; and Randall Dale Irons, 36, of Airdrie.

Jones, Pilling, Fulton, Heft, Snider and Press were also charged with
weapons offences.