Mass Roundup of Bikers in Waco Shootout Tests Limits of Court System

New York Times – by MANNY FERNANDEZ, SERGE F. KOVALESKI and DAVID MONTGOMERY

WACO, Tex. — The deadly shootout here on Sunday between rival motorcycle gangs has led to what appears to be the largest roundup and mass arrest of bikers in recent American history, experts said. As the roughly 170 people facing organized-crime charges in the case continued to clog up the local court system on Tuesday, new details emerged about the disputes that led to the violence.

“Out of 32 years working biker cases, this is the biggest one I have seen in the United States,” said Steve Trethewy, who works in the intelligence unit of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. “The case will be a challenge for law enforcement. I am glad I am not the investigator. It is huge.”  

The difficulties facing the police and prosecutors were foreshadowed by the last mass arrest of bikers in the United States. In that case, in 2002, three motorcycle gang members were killed and about a dozen others were injured in a shooting and knifing brawl in Laughlin, Nev. The brawl broke out at Harrah’s Casino and Hotel between the Hells Angels and the Mongols, all of whom were attending an annual motorcycle rally. About 120 people were detained by law enforcement. A total of 44 Hells Angels were indicted in federal court, but only seven were convicted. Six Mongols members pleaded guilty to state charges.

“Oftentimes, these mass prosecutions fail because of the overreach,” said Robert Draskovich, a Las Vegas criminal defense lawyer who represented a member of the Hells Angels in the Laughlin case. The charges against his client were dropped. In the Waco case, Mr. Draskovich predicted, “the majority of these people will walk.”

Officials, however, have defended their handling of the arrests and the $1 million bonds. “I set that bond because there was nine people killed, and I felt that was appropriate for the incident that occurred,” said Walter H. Peterson, the justice of the peace in McLennan County who made the decision.

Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton, a spokesman for the Waco Police Department, said the three bikers who had been released — Juan Garcia, Drew King and Jim Harris, all of Austin — were back in custody. The three men were arrested Sunday after they rode up to the scene carrying weapons and wearing motorcyle-gang colors, Sergeant Swanton said. After their release, new arrest warrants were issued for them, and bond was set at $1 million for each, he said.

“They were not mistakenly released,” he added.

Law enforcement officials and gang experts said conflicts between two motorcycle groups, the Bandidos and the Cossacks, had led to the shooting outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in south Waco on Sunday. The shooting, which left nine bikers dead and 18 others wounded, stemmed from both petty disputes and broader tensions over the smaller group, the Cossacks, failing to pay respect, and money, to its larger rival, the Bandidos, officials said.

According to a spokesman for one of the biker groups and to law enforcement officials, a regional coalition of motorcycle clubs, including the Bandidos, gathered at the restaurant on Sunday for one of its periodic meetings. Motorcyclists showed up from other gangs that had not been invited, including the Cossacks and the Scimitars, a group affiliated with the Cossacks. In all, officials say, five gangs were involved.

“When those individuals showed up, there was a disturbance in the parking lot,” Sergeant Swanton said, referring to the uninvited groups. There was also an altercation inside that may have involved a parking dispute between the bikers as well as anger after someone’s foot was run over, he said.

The rivalry between the Bandidos and the Cossacks dates to the 1960s, when the clubs were established, and the two groups have had numerous run-ins in the past two years. Much of the recent conflict stemmed from members of the Cossacks refusing to pay “taxes,” or dues that smaller gangs pay larger ones, to the Bandidos, a law enforcement official said.

The Bandidos are the biggest motorcycle club in Texas, and their dominance allows them to enforce rules on other biker organizations. In El Paso, where the Bandidos’ founder, a Marine Corps veteran named Donald Eugene Chambers, lived for a time, the Bandidos were known to require other biker gangs to get approval before they could wear their “colors,” or group logos.

Similarly in Waco, the violence may have been tied to who gets to wear the “bottom rocker,” or the lower curve of a motorcycle patch that denotes a state where a club has a presence. In this case, the bottom rocker says Texas.

Generally, in order to wear a bottom rocker, a club needs the approval of the local confederation of clubs, which are largely controlled by the dominant motorcycle group in the area. In Texas, that would be the Bandidos. The confederation decides whether another club can wear the bottom rocker. Experts suspect that the Cossacks were wearing the Texas bottom rocker ultimately without the blessing of the Bandidos.

The authorities collected more than 100 guns and more than 100 other weapons, including knives and chains with padlocks affixed to the ends. And they have released the identities and mug shots of a portion of the 170 people, most of them men in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

C. Daniel Jones III, a lawyer who represents one of the arrested bikers, Jimmy Dan Smith, said Tuesday that the $1 million bond was excessive for Mr. Smith, a 59-year-old shop manager for a construction company. “There may very well be justification for $1 million bonds for other individuals, so we want to have a hearing to show we feel like that bond is too high,” Mr. Jones said. “I don’t think he did anything. I think the problem is he was there and there was an injured person that he helped take to the hospital.”

At least two men who were charged work for local governments in Texas. Mr. Garcia, an engineer for the public works department in Austin who has worked for the city since 2009, was placed on administrative leave on Tuesday, a department spokeswoman, Carolyn Perez, said. A spokeswoman for the City of Killeen said another suspect, Justin Waddington, was a drainage maintenance supervisor and had been employed by the municipality for 13 years. His status is “currently employed,” the spokeswoman said.

The court cases of the 170 bikers could drag on for months and even years, experts said, not only because of the sheer number of defendants but also because of the nature of the charges and the difficulty prosecutors will probably face in getting witnesses to assist them. Officials have been interrogating the jailed suspects, but, as one Waco police official put it, the level of cooperation “varies from individual to individual.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/us/waco-texas-biker-shooting.html?_r=0