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News from Hells Angels MC Baltimore
| Headline: B.C. seizes Hells Angels Nanaimo headquarters |
| Saturday - 11/10/2007 |
| Referrer: The Gobe and Mail |
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VICTORIA — For more than 30 years, police have targeted activities at a Hells Angels headquarters in Nanaimo with little effect on its alleged operations.
Yesterday, backed by dozens of heavily armed police, the province seized the clubhouse, lock, stock and barrel.
It's the first time B.C. has used its year-old Civil Forfeiture Act to directly take on the organization. The civil court order, obtained in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday, authorized the province to confiscate the building and its contents.
The three-storey stucco building, behind barbed wire on a corner lot in a residential neighbourhood, is painted in the Hells Angels' signature red and white and features a “Hells Angel Nanaimo” stamp on the knocker and the Death Head logo on an exterior wall.
The clubhouse has been a fixture for bikers for more than three decades, according to court documents that were unsealed yesterday afternoon.
Registered to Angel Acres Recreation and Festival Property Ltd., the building was unoccupied when Nanaimo RCMP and the South Island Emergency Response Team arrived at the door around 11 a.m. yesterday.
“We have contained the area and secured the building and are awaiting further action from the civil forfeiture office,” said Nanaimo RCMP spokesperson Constable Jen Allan.
“The clubhouse itself is protected by a heavy fence with barbed wire, a number of security devices and cameras, but the entry to the building went without incident.”
A 10-centimetre-thick stack of police affidavits filed in B.C. Supreme Court outline details from years of police investigations related to the clubhouse, including information from a 2003 raid, surveillance, and at least one paid informant.
The documents state the Nanaimo chapter of the Hells Angels frequently meets there on Thursday nights for what they refer to as “church meetings.”
The documents cite a litany of alleged offences with the building, which has been under surveillance since 2001 by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C.
“The building and the people and the organizations who use it have consistently been the subject of numerous police investigations,” one police affidavit states.
It alleges Angel Acres Ltd. “have allowed unlawful activities, including, but not limited to, the possession of controlled substances, assaults, the possession of restricted weapons and the continuous operation of a booze can, to occur on the premises.”
Police allege the house was renovated to suit the specific purposes of the Nanaimo Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, such as “maintaining a high level of secrecy over things that occur within the clubhouse” with fortifications such as reinforced exterior doors, wire meshed fencing and a lack of windows on the ground level, plus at least eight security cameras.
Despite a lengthy investigation, the special enforcement unit could not get organized crime charges approved by Crown prosecutors, while drug-trafficking charges were withdrawn.
Solicitor-General John Les, who has been under pressure in recent weeks to tackle organized crime in the wake of high-profile killings in the Lower Mainland, said the civil forfeiture legislation is another instrument to fight crime.
“This is a welcome new tool in our fight against unlawful activity,” he said in an interview yesterday.
(NEW NAZI TACTIC TOOL)
The civil forfeiture law, which has been in place a little over a year, has already been used to seize $2-million in cash and assets.
The Nanaimo property will be held secure by RCMP until the courts determine if the property has been acquired as a result of unlawful activity or used for unlawful activity. If the province wins the case, the B.C. Supreme Court can order forfeiture of the property.
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