WILL HELLS FIRE SPARK GANG WAR?

Montreal could be in for underworld conflagration

Only one question still hangs in the air around the burnt offering that used
to be the
Hells Angels bunker in Sorel: Will this attack spark another violent gang
war?

This wasn't just any incendiary attack on a building. It was a strike
at the heart of the Hells Angels in Canada, a bid to tear down the
central temple of their outlaw biker religion. Their St. Peter's,
their Mecca, their Temple Mount all rolled into one ugly, brutish,
defiant red and white concrete fortress.

It was in Sorel that it all began on Dec. 5, 1977, when the Hells
Angels established themselves in Canada by creating the Montreal
chapter and headquartering it in the wrong city.

Over the next quarter-century, America's criminal export forged a
cross-country network of clubs that made them Canada's only truly
national organized crime syndicate. Their sacred death's head emblem
flames over red and white bunkers throughout the country, pointing a
middle finger at law enforcement.

As they grew increasingly powerful and confident during the 1990s, the
Hells Angels threatened politicians and police officers, killed prison
guards and a 10-year-old boy and shot a journalist as part of a war of
attrition that killed more than 160 people. They planted bombs and
murdered with impunity, all the while building a vertically integrated
drug trafficking network they controlled from manufacturer to street
corner.

Since the spectacular police roundup in the spring of 2001, however,
the Hells' power has waned to the point where the fortress they built
in Quebec has been spectacularly breached.

The anti-gang laws have landed their leaders long prison sentences and
left behind a rudderless organization seeking not just leaders but
also new members while trying to keep a low profile, which is hard to
do when you have a flaming deaths head sewn on your jacket and
tattooed on your arms.

The Hells' demise in Quebec left a void that the Mafia quickly filled.
But Operation Colisee ended the mob's brief reign when the RCMP
rounded up in 2007 their five bosses and more than 60 soldiers and
associates.

That left the field to one gang that has been spreading like a
subterranean fire: the Haitians.

If there was any doubt about that, just consider the comment of retired RCMP
sergeant
Mike Roussy, who was a senior investigator with Project Colisee: "After we
sent them
away, the Italian wiseguys still left on the streets of St. Leonard told me:
'Look at
what you guys did. You brought all the Italians in and now the blacks are
taking over.'
"

Some witnesses to the Sorel fire said they had recently seen Montreal
street gang members - read Haitians - elbowing their way through local
nightclubs.

The Haitians can be a fearsome lot. The Hells Angels kept them in
check by promoting one of their own members, Gregory Wooley, to be
leader of the Hells feeder gang, the Rockers. His job was to organize
and control the north-end street gangs into a Hells support group.

Wooley, who is due to leave prison Dec. 26, 2009 (he was considered
too violent to gain early release), honed his killer talents on
north-end streets, which made him a natural recruit to help the Hells
forge street-gang ties.

The Hells strategy of playing street gangs against each other and
scooping up the scum that rises to the top has paid off in their
worldwide expansion.

The Mafia and the Hells Angels are racist gangs that don't tolerate
having blacks in their ranks. (Wooley was never allowed into the Hells
Angels.)

Some police have speculated that the Hells may have destroyed their
own bunker. But for what reason? Insurance? Some internal rivalry?
Fear that the city was going to outlaw their bunker? Not likely.

The idea that a member would burn his motherhouse is unthinkable, like
the pope burning down St. Peter's. If an ambitious street gang is
responsible, then Quebec is in for a war.

And pitting the Hells against Montreal's street gangs could be a more
dangerous underworld conflagration than this city has seen.