https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/...he-les-patchs-de-quatre-hells-angels.phpDPCP snatches "patches" of four Hells Angels
That hurts their pride. The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) has just inflicted a snub on four members in good standing of the Hells Angels by obtaining the confiscation of their precious jacket in the colors of the club, without even bikers being accused of the slightest crime.
The bikers jackets, symbol of the power of intimidation of the criminal organization, were confiscated Friday in Sorel by order of the judge Denys Noël, which judged that they were "tainted by crime". The jackets of several aspirants and supporters were also confiscated.
"This is an important step in legal terms, to say that without criminal charges, goods can be tinted by crime", welcomed Friday the prosecutor in the case, M e Pierre Goulet.
A JUDGMENT TO STUDY
The DCPP account study carefully Justice Noël judgment to see how the operation will be repeated in the future, but M th Goulet stressed that the seizure of jackets took place in a specific context, during an operation police officer of the Montérégie Regional Mixed Squad against a network of drug traffickers.
The jackets were seized during a meeting in the den used by the network, which helped to prove that they were "tainted by crime".
The judgment does not mean that any member of the Hells who is riding in the street with his jacket can be confiscated. The context must be taken into account each time.
ANTI-DRUG OPERATION
On June 15, 2016, as part of an investigation called "Projet Néré", the squad led by the Sûreté du Québec hit a drug trafficking network operating in the Sorel-Tracy area.
The network was led by two members of the Beast Crew, a Hells school club used to do "field" work with the blessing of its big brothers.
The local Beast Crew was also used as a weekly meeting place for Hells Angels members.
On the day of the police operation, about half a dozen full members of the Hells Angels sections of Montreal and Trois-Rivières were on site, as were two "hangarounds", aspiring first-level candidates. organization, as well as several members of Beast Crew and other supporters clubs.
Four members in good standing of the Hells, Claude Pépin, Gilles Robidoux, Michel Vallières and Vincent Boulanger, wore their jacket sporting the winged skull when the police are disembarked. These were seized by the police, as were the jackets marked with an incomplete escutcheon worn by the hangarounds Daniel Giroux and Stéphane Jarry.
INTIMIDATION TOOLS
Although only Beast Crew members have been charged with drug trafficking, the DPCP has instituted proceedings to confiscate definitively all the biker jackets found in the den during the operation, along with a variety of jewelery, clothing and clothing. and furniture identified to the Beast Crew and their big brothers of the Hells.
"The clothing, jewelery, charms, badges with distinctive and exclusive Hells Angels signs are used by those who wear them as tools of intimidation and to show their connection with the organization that is renowned for its power and violence", pleaded the DPCP prosecutor.
He had a police expert testify that the Hells are a criminal organization that lives on drug trafficking run by its satellite clubs, which pay royalties to it. The expert also insisted that the wearing of the colors of the organization serves to impose its stranglehold on the territory and to intimidate any potential competitor.
- With the collaboration of Daniel Renaud, La Presse
