BIKERS LOSE THEIR PLAYHOUSE

Eastern Ave. Building Seized By Government; Raids Net Dozens Of Hells
Angels

When police raided the largest Hells Angels clubhouse in the country
yesterday, members of the biker gang were apparently unaware that they
had been tenants of the federal government for three weeks.

"They definitely didn't know we had seized it. They did not know we
were coming," a source close to the investigation said of the Eastern
Ave. clubhouse, a social hub for bikers for almost 30 years.

And it is believed that for the past three weeks, it has been business
as usual for the estimated three dozen members associated with that
chapter, who gather to watch sports on the big-screen television,
drink beer at the second-floor bar or play cards in the game room.

But on March 14, a London, Ont., judge issued a court order to seize
and transfer 498 Eastern Ave., as well as two private residences, to
the Attorney General of Canada, on the basis that they were proceeds
of crime under new anti-racketeering legislation.

"We have exclusive possession of the clubhouse," said OPP Det. Insp.
Dan Redmond, who heads the biker enforcement unit.

Yesterday, in a series of early-morning raids across the province and
in British Columbia and New Brunswick, police arrested dozens of Hells
Angels full-patch members and associates. Details of their charges
have not been released.

Throughout the day, police worked behind the steel door on Eastern
Ave., gathering evidence and taking photographs of what those who have
been in biker clubs describe as typical.

There's a fridge well-stocked with beer, a bar, a meeting room and a
big-screen television for watching sports.

There's a party room and bedrooms -- for when women working for escort
agencies party with them. There's also a strict understanding at all
biker clubhouses that you don't bring your wife, and you don't commit
murders on the property, said former biker hit man Gilles (Kid) Lalonde.

Wives tend to wreck the atmosphere, especially when there are escort
women on site, while murders can leave messy evidence.

"No wives and no murders," Lalonde said. "Those are the two
rules."

Art Phillips, who has owned the plumbing business next door since
1941, said he can't say a bad word about his neighbours.

"They've never been a problem. They are like a watchdog for the area.
They have (security) cameras and they keep an eye on people coming and
going," Phillips said. "There's never been anything
confrontational."

In fact, he coached some of its members in hockey years ago, he said,
and he's often been called on to fix plumbing problems. "They've
always paid well," he said. His neighbours always say hello and have
even moved Phillips's car to save him a ticket.

Other neighbours said the building is maintained, with members
planting flowers in the boxes in the spring, decorating with lights at
Christmas and handing out candy at Halloween.

Perhaps the strongest memory lawyer Harry Kopyto has of the Eastern
Ave. clubhouse is a photo under the phone on the wall. "I saw a
picture of a rat with a knife through his body underneath the
telephone," said the since-disbarred lawyer yesterday.

When Kopyto visited the cinder-block bunker, it belonged to the
Para-Dice Riders, one of the local clubs that folded into the Hells
Angels in December 2000. "It was immaculate, very clean, gleaming,"
Kopyto recalled. "It was like a well-appointed den."

Lalonde said in a telephone interview he has been in plenty of biker
clubhouses, and they're all pretty much the same, with a bar,
television room and party room. There's a place for bikers from other
club chapters to visit, but there's no place for entertaining spouses,
Lalonde said. "No wives, for sure."

There's also a strict understanding that whatever happens in the
clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse.

"It's pretty much the same everywhere," said Lalonde, who belonged to
the Dark Circle, a group of hit men connected to the Alliance, a group
of independent drug dealers who were at war with the Hells Angels in
Quebec in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Lalonde, who's now in a witness protection program, said he shot --
but didn't kill -- two Angels, and had plans to kill a couple more
before he began to co-operate with police.

He said some clubhouses have computers, and one had a "Canada's Most
Wanted List," of people whom the club wanted killed.

There's precious little art in clubhouses. "I would say that they were
artistically committed to minimalism," Kopyto said. "There was nothing
to distract your attention."

There's also little to read beyond Playboy, Penthouse and perhaps a
daily newspaper. Clubhouses are also invariably clean, kept that way
by prospects who hope to attain full-member status.

While they're unremarkable buildings, Lalonde said he felt extremely
powerful the day he was allowed inside a clubhouse for the first time.

"I thought I was getting close to the big boys. When they let you in,
you know you're part of the group."

He said he's sure the Hells Angels will quickly build new clubhouses
and have no problem filling them.

"It's intimidation," Lalonde said.

"Everybody knows the Hells Angels are there ... Then it's (their)
territory ... They're going to get a new bunker and roll and roll and
roll. It'll never end."