HELLS ANGELS SAY POLICE RAIDS TERRORIZED THEM

Bob and Lori Vierra awoke the morning of Jan. 20, 1998, to the sound of
gunshots outside their San Jose home. The next thing they knew, Bob Vierra
was down on the ground, handcuffed and surrounded by police and federal
agents.

When Vierra looked up, he saw blood running down his driveway. His German
shepherd, Sam, had been ripped apart by bullets. Nearby, another of the
Vierras' shepherds, Dog, also lay dead near a chain-link fence, his back
legs and tail bloodied by police fire.

The cops were at the Vierra home for a very specific reason -- they were
looking for links between the San Jose chapter of the Hells Angels and the
infamous Pink Poodle murder case.

Vierra was a member of the club. And as the Vierras and dozens of other
people around the South Bay discovered that morning, it was a very bad day
to have any association with the local Hells Angels. Two hundred law
enforcement officers had fanned out around the area to spring an early
morning surprise on the club.

The police ``came in and shot my dogs for a lousy search warrant,'' said
Vierra, sitting one recent evening on a tabletop at the Hells Angels
clubhouse, his wife trembling at his side. ``I understand a search
warrant -- but there is a correct way to do it. I told them, `Is there a law
against being a Hells Angel?' ''

Vierra and his fellow San Jose Hells Angels are trying to get an answer to
that question through a unique civil rights lawsuit filed last month in San
Jose federal court. The club, claiming it is being persecuted by law
enforcement agencies, is asking a federal judge to declare that it is not a
criminal gang.

The suit also claims widespread abuses during the searches, which took place
in two stages -- one raid in January of last year and another in October
1997.

Frustrated club members and their families agreed to interviews last month
in a gathering at their Drake Street clubhouse, a drab, below ground hangout
with pool tables, a bar and Hells Angels paraphernalia adorning every wall.
The clubhouse was raided during the searches, as were dozens of homes.

Investigators were convinced a lot more had taken place inside that
clubhouse than idle talk about Harleys. Search warrant affidavits filed by
police suggested the club would go to any lengths to cover up its role in
the August 1997 beating death of a patron at the Pink Poodle, the South
Bay's best-known strip club.

The affidavits described a shadowy world of Hells Angels who would murder or
threaten witnesses to protect their own. Searching for clues that might
connect the Hells Angels to the Pink Poodle, police grabbed anything related
to Hells Angels, from motorcycles to T-shirts and stickers.

As it turned out, the searches turned up little, and the prosecution's
murder case wound up in shambles. A Santa Clara County jury acquitted the
two defendants, Gary Costanza and Steven Tausan, of all crimes connected to
the beating death of 38-year-old Kevin Sullivan. Tausan was a San Jose Hells
Angels member who argued that he struck Sullivan in self-defense.

`Demolished my house'

Already smarting from the failed trial, law enforcement officials must now
contend with a suit that claims they ransacked houses, killed dogs and
misled the courts about why they conducted the raids. Even though the Hells
Angels have a bad boy reputation, interviews show that police encountered
wives, children, grandmothers and dogs during the searches, not just
leather-clad bikers.

``They demolished my house,'' said Jim Welch, a club member who lives with
his 85-year-old grandmother in a Benton Street house designated an historic
structure by the city of Santa Clara. ``They came in making me look like
Public Enemy No. 1. Somebody owes us a huge apology.'' Santa Clara County
officials say there is no merit to the club's complaints about the searches.
Law enforcement officials have long insisted the Hells Angels have been
involved in criminal activity, from drug trafficking to murder. Hells Angels
have been the subject of major state and federal criminal probes in the Bay
Area since at least the early 1980s.

Prosecutors argued that Hells Angels culture was at the heart of the Pink
Poodle murder case. They tried to persuade jurors that Sullivan's death was
orchestrated by the club.

San Jose police spokesman at the time, Louis Quezada, said the department
was simply helping the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department with the
searches and has no agenda against the Hells Angels. The FBI, another
defendant in the suit, had no comment.

Deputy County Counsel Todd Boley, who is defending the sheriff's department,
said there appears to have been nothing improper in the handling of the
raids. At the time of the raids, sheriffs officials said dogs were killed
because they had attacked arriving police officers.

And Assistant District Attorney Dave Davies, one of the supervisors of the
Pink Poodle investigation, denied that the Hells Angels were singled out.

``Everything that happened in the case was pursuant to court-ordered search
warrants,'' Davies said. ``I don't think there is any basis to any claim (of
harassment).'' Other than James Elrite, president of the San Jose chapter,
and his wife, Molly, none of the 19 other plaintiffs in the suit were
charged with anything in connection with the searches. The Elrites, who
declined comment, still face drug charges related to a search of their home.

Elrite, through his lawyer, declined to discuss the matter because of the
pending criminal case. In the suit, the Elrites do claim their rights were
violated during the October 1997 search.

Some of those most angry about the searches are family members who were home
for the 7 a.m., January 1998 raids. Marnie Arnett, the wife of Hells Angel
James Arnett, shudders when she recalls police barging into her house, where
she cares for foster children and runs a day care center.

``They kept at me for two hours,'' says Arnett, a petite woman who nearly
lost her foster care license after the search. ``They'd say, `You look like
a nice girl -- what are you doing married to a Hells Angel?' ''

Lori Vierra, who was handcuffed during the January search, cannot talk about
the morning raid on her house without breaking down. But she described the
incident in a 22-page entry in her diary, which she provided to the Mercury
News.

Vierra was shattered by the loss of her shepherds, Sam and Dog.

``I woke up crying (that night), thinking it was a dream,'' Vierra wrote in
her journal the night of the raid. ``Hoping I'd see Sam and Dog in the yard.
I didn't, so I cried more and more knowing it was real.''

Suing to dispel moniker

Frank Iadiano, a club member, says such accounts supplied the Hells Angels
with enough ammunition to hire lawyers to take on their adversaries in law
enforcement. Iadiano was originally charged with obstruction in the Pink
Poodle case, but the charges were dropped.

``We are not a gang,'' said Iadiano, a burly prototype of a biker. ``We plan
to dispel that moniker. We are a motorcycle club. The San Jose Hells Angels
has existed for 30 years. We are a motorcycle club.''