ONTARIO POLICE FEAR BIKERS' TURF WAR

A Montreal-based biker gang recently rolled into the quiet southern Ontario
town of Sarnia, looking for virgin territory for crime, police say.

Police now fear Ontario could be the next battleground for outlaw biker
gangs waging a turf war.

Late last year, about 10 members of the Rock Machine's new Sarnia chapter
engaged in an act of synchronized intimidation, standing on tables at a
downtown bar, Sarnia police said.

They announced their presence and then beat up patrons and employees alike,
all in a matter of minutes, police said.

That was the Rock Machine's way of announcing they would be supplying
illegal drugs from then on, Sarnia police Detective Constable Scott MacLean
told Reuters news service.

The biker gang chose Sarnia for expansion because it's untouched by their
arch-rivals -- the Hells Angels -- and is close to the U.S. border, said
Sergeant Guy Ouellette, a biker gang specialist with SFB du Quebec, the
provincial police force.

The Rock Machine and Hells Angels are locked in a bloody battle in Quebec
for control of drug trafficking and the exotic entertainment market, which
has so far triggered some 90 bombings, about 130 acts of arson and resulted
in more than 100 deaths.

Sarnia is a relatively easy market to crack and the Rock Machine can hope
for comfortable profits with minimal conflict with the Hells Angels,
Ouellette said.

"They need to have virgin territory to do their business" he said. "They
want to be far from Montreal."

Ouellette said he doubts the Rock Machine will try to expand into Toronto
any time soon, since the Hells Angels already enjoy a presence here,
through a senior member who lives in Hamilton.

The illegal drug market in Canada is estimated to be worth between $7
billion and $10 billion a year, and about $17 billion of illicit funds are
laundered in Canada annually, according to a study by the
solicitor-general's office.

The Rock Machine indicated their ambitions of moving out of Quebec and
becoming a national group when they added the word "Canada" to their crest
last June, Staff Sergeant Jean-Pierre Levesque of Criminal Intelligence
Service Canada, the national clearing house for police data, said yesterday.