BIKER GANG BRINGS VIOLENCE TO DISORGANIZED DRUG MARKET

For One Well-Known Ottawa DJ, It Happened On A Holiday Weekend.

A couple of teens asked him whether he had any pills -- the latest club-kid
slang for Ecstasy. The DJ did. Because it was a holiday weekend, he had
bought a couple of dozen from a Toronto connection for himself and his
friends.

But these are tense times for the Ottawa club and rave scene, and it's never
wise to advertise you're carrying illicit drugs.

"No," the DJ said. "I just have enough for myself."

Then he felt a third person stick a hand in one of his pockets. The DJ
grabbed the arm, then realized two things -- there was a knife at his throat
and he was surrounded by seven or eight people, all similarly dressed and
regarding him with the hard, flat gaze of people prepared for violence.

The DJ surrendered the drugs. "At the time, I figured it was my mistake," he
said. "I knew this was happening. I should have been more careful."

For the past 18 months, anyone carrying Ecstasy in Ottawa has feared exactly
this scenario. Untouched by police and almost unopposed by ravers, Quebec's
Hells Angels have spent this period gaining control of Ottawa's thriving
club-drug trade. Like a cobra slaying a rat, there is the initial bite, a
brief and violent struggle and then victory.

Until recently, the drugs sold in the city's raves and all-night dance clubs
were peddled by a disorganized and unaffiliated group of kids. In an
interview last week, Sgt. Kurt Betournay, the biker gang expert for the
Ottawa-Carleton police, acknowledged that the club drug market used to be a
free-for-all.

"It was wide open," he admitted. But after a year and a half of beatings in
club bathrooms and lost teeth at area raves, the Hells Angels have a
near-absolute monopoly on the Ecstasy pills, ketamine bumps and GHB vials
sold in the city. "They own it," said Sgt. Betournay.

Perhaps more than any in the city, the rave community has been affected by
the Hells Angels' consolidation of power in the Ottawa-Hull area. If, as
police intelligence predicts, a Hells Angels chapter in this city is
imminent, a close examination of what has happened in this youth subculture
over the past 18 months could shed light on a process that is likely to
recur in many of the area's black markets.

Ottawa's small rave community once prided itself on its volunteerism and
charitable spirit. Ravers were close-knit and fights were non-existent.
Once, everyone looked out for each other -- an ethic likely boosted by the
empathy-inducing effects of their drug of choice, Ecstasy.

The bikers have changed that.

"Before, people didn't hurt anyone -- disputes were settled over a beer in a
bar," said a longtime staffer at one of the area's after-hours dance clubs.
"The bikers brought violence."

The ravers first began hearing about a Hells Angels infiltration of the
city's club-drug market in spring 1999. Before this, the Quebec motorcycle
gang had, over several years, wrested control of much of the Ottawa-Hull
drug market from the city's sole biker gang, the Outlaws.

But before the Angels' power grab, no single group supplied Ottawa's
club-drug market. The small-time drug dealers who provided partyers with
their weekend supplies derived their product from a disparate scattering of
sources.

"Before, any shmo could go to Toronto with $1,000 and come back with 60 or
70 pills," said one former Ottawa dealer.

Commanding prices from $25 to $35, the pills could net a dealer about
$3,000.

Others dealers were supplied by couriered packages from Vancouver. And a few
were supplied from Montreal, where the Hells Angels are the Microsoft of the
club-drug trade.

"It's a monopoly," explained an Ottawa promoter who has run events in the
city. "They're organized like a business and run things very smoothly. They
even have walkie-talkies."

At well-financed all-night parties, drug runners swagger through the packed
arena venues shouting out the name of the drugs they're peddling. The
runners are clad in uniforms, brightly coloured jerseys with prominent
numbers, usually made by the stylish hip-hop clothing label FUBU.

"Ecstasy, speed, special K! Ecstasy, speed, special K!"

Ask one for a drug he doesn't have and he'll refer you to one of his
colleagues. "You want cocaine? Go to number 12 in the white jersey."

When associates of the Hells Angels began their attempt to bring the same
level of control to this area's drug market, they began with the soft sell.
In March 1999, according to a raver affiliated with this city's volunteer
drug information organization, Ottawans Actively Tripping Safely (OATS),
people identifying themselves as representatives of the Hells Angels
approached many of the Ecstasy dealers. "They would say stuff like, 'Would
you like to sell for the Hells Angels? Would you like to sell these drugs?'
"

The initial Angels job offers had been pitched by teenagers who worked for
the club. Although the teens usually dressed in the same baseball-cap and
billowing-pant-leg style of Ottawa ravers, they were dubbed "bikers" by
association.

"When you say 'the bikers,' you have this instant visualization of this old
guy in leather and a beard. It's not. It's teenagers," one partygoer said.

The method most often used by bikers to weed out independent dealers
involved simply asking around at a rave where to find some pills. When
people stopped volunteering that information, according to the OATS
volunteer, the bikers devised other, more creative methods.

"Tactics like asking some 15 or 16 year old, 'if someone offers to sell you
pills, find out what they are and we'll give you free drugs all night,' "
said the volunteer.

Around the beginning of last summer, the all-night parties began receiving
visits from a new clientele: Middle-aged men.

"They were big," said the OATS volunteer. "And there wasn't much promoters
could do to keep them out. There would be more of them than there was
security."

A former drug dealer, who has since quit the public side of his peddling out
of a fear of biker retribution, outlined the way many dealers were nabbed:
"Say I go to a party with 20 pills. I sell to some girl, but she's a rat for
the bikers. And if what I sell her isn't white butterflies, or whatever the
bikers' brand is, then they take them away."

Often the bikers did more than that. Last summer at The Well, a club located
in the basement of a brick building in the Byward Market, one of the main
biker henchmen found a dealer peddling the wrong brand of pills. The biker
smashed his face into the brick wall and threw him down the club's steep
stairs. The dealer lost two of his front teeth, according to the OATS
volunteer, who witnessed the incident.

The violence rose to a new level one year ago at an outdoor party called
Luna II, which occurred the weekend after 50 Hells Angels bikers visited
Gatineau's Hotel Montcalm, a trip intended as a display of the group's
power. The very next weekend, the biker's rave representatives began a night
of terror -- breaking noses and dispensing beatings at will. From that
point, the bikers became a permanent fixture at parties in the Ottawa-Hull
area.

By the end of 1999, the intelligence division of the Ottawa-Carleton police
was abuzz with leads that the biker gang was pushing to corner the city's
club-drug market.

"We were getting it all over that they were taking over gay bars and raves,
and people were being thrown out, all the small dealers were being thrown
out and saying, you don't deal here anymore, our guy does," Sgt. Betournay
said last week.

Today, the powerful motorcycle gang has killed its rat. The Hells Angels'
control of the Ottawa club-drug market is near absolute.

"It wasn't a war," said Sgt. Betournay, explaining that the Angels moved
into the region basically unopposed. He supplied his own name for what
happened -- takeover -- a word that brings to mind corporate tactics that
aptly describe the Hells Angels' businesslike approach to crime. Now, Sgt.
Betournay said, "the takeover is over."

Much of the rave community remains puzzled by the police's non-reaction to
the biker power grab. "They must have known," said the after-hours club
staffer. "Supposedly they have undercover people in the clubs and at the
raves. What were they doing?"

"It's like Montreal now," said the former drug dealer. The bikers are
flooding the Ottawa market with new, more dangerous drugs such as GHB and
ketamine, a highly addictive anesthetic that puts its users into a
trance-like state known as a "K-hole."

Recently, one of the area's most respected DJs posted a blurb about the
bikers on an Internet message board. The sentiment behind the message is a
resigned acceptance of a permanent Hells Angels presence in Ottawa.

Arguing that a biker drug boycott would be ineffective, the DJ wrote, "By
having their hand in certain clubs they provide a space where people can
come and do drugs. There will always be people wanting to do drugs who don't
know or even care where the drugs come from.

"Even if the rave scene went clean, the bikers would stay. They're making
they're (sic) own niche in the city, above and beyond just the rave market."