Looking for a Few Bad Men

Law enforcement officials call Saturday’s fatal biker brawl in the Nevada resort town of Laughlin a symptom of a quiet but dangerous trend nationwide: Low profile for years, motorcycle gangs are growing again. And they are becoming more violent.

Renewed rivalries have prompted legendary outlaw groups such as the Hells Angels to launch recruiting drives, often absorbing smaller clubs wholesale in an effort to increase their strength, officials say.

“We’ve seen a real resurgence in recruiting by biker gangs. And as they grow, so do their problems,” said Lt. Terry Katz, a Maryland State Police officer who has studied biker gangs for more than 25 years.

“The attitude is, ‘I’m bigger than you are, so I should get more respect,’” he said.

Authorities say the overwhelming majority of motorcycle clubs are made up of harmless enthusiasts. But up to 600 outlaw biker gangs are also active across the country, investigators estimate.

Among the largest on the East Coast are the Pagans and the Outlaws. The Bandidos, based in Texas, is considered the nation’s largest biker group with more than 2,500 members.

In California the largest groups are the Mongols and the infamous Hells Angels, which claims about 1,500 members worldwide. That membership is up dramatically from just a few hundred members a decade ago, Katz said.

Outlaw motorcycle gangs emerged in the late 1950s. Their fearsome reputations, however, began to fade by the 1990s as many gangs accepted peace deals brokered by leaders such as the Hells Angels’ George Christie of Ventura. But those agreements have faltered for reasons that are unclear, authorities say.

Some recent examples of violence include a February brawl that left one man dead and 10 wounded at a Hells Angels convention in Long Island. A Philadelphia tattoo parlor belonging to a Pagans leader was firebombed in March during a melee between the Pagans and Hells Angels.

The latest chapter came Saturday night, when an argument exploded between several Hells Angels and Mongols members at the annual Laughlin River Run for bikers. Captured on surveillance cameras at Harrah’s Casino & Hotel about 2:15 a.m., the fight left three dead and at least 12 hurt.

The renewed tensions are driving demand for new members, as biker gangs try to prove that they are the strongest by being the biggest, said a Riverside Police Department detective who specializes in motorcycle gang investigations.

“They need members to compete with each other,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve his safety.

“George Christie has even started taking in 18- to 21-year-olds, which used to be verboten. But he took a bunch of white street gang members and turned them into Hells Angels.”

Law enforcement officers said the newest trend is right out of the Italian mobster handbook, with many of the large biker gangs adopting smaller crews to do their dirty work. Once the smaller crews prove their loyalty, they are “patched in,” meaning they can proudly claim themselves as Mongols, Outlaws or Hells Angels.

“It’s like becoming a made member of the Mafia,” Katz said. “Being patched in is a compliment. You’re one of them.”

Such tactics used to be fiercely rejected by the tougher biker groups because they considered other biker gangs beneath them, authorities said. But a need for rapid expansion in light of the renewed rivalries has changed that attitude, experts said.

The prospective biker gang members are expected to prove themselves by committing any number of crimes: drug smuggling, auto theft, arson, assault and even murder.

Their crimes in recent years have grown well beyond smuggling methamphetamines, for decades the biker drug of choice. With much of that market taken over by smugglers from Mexico, outlaw biker groups have taken to selling cocaine, auto theft and prostitution rings, investigators said.

These facts run contrary to an image long promoted by outlaw biker gangs. As police focused on inner-city gang violence in the 1980s, the biker groups crafted an image as middle-class, middle-aged enthusiasts.

Biker gangs worked hard to stay out of the public eye. And when they did emerge, it was often only long enough to pass out teddy bears to sick children or participate in other charity events.

Photographs of Christie running with the Olympic torch in 1984 were even splashed across area newspapers.

Some contend that the kinder, gentler face of bikers presented to the public in recent years is the true picture of the motorcycle clubs today.

“Most of the Hells Angels are presently eligible for membership in the AARP,” said Robert Sheahen, a Los Angeles attorney who represents the best-known biker group. “These are good, civic-minded people.”

Sheahen represented Christie and several other members of the Hells Angels organization in a sweeping Ventura County drug case this year. Prosecutors alleged that Christie led a drug ring that sold stolen prescription narcotics to teenagers on high school campuses in Ventura and Ojai.

More than a dozen Hells Angels members, Christie’s ex-wife and their 25-year-old son were indicted. But many of the counts were ultimately dismissed and Christie was sentenced last month to three years’ probation.

Sheahen pointed to the prosecutor’s failure to net prison time for Christie, despite a five-year, $2-million investigation, as an example of overzealous investigators chasing nothing more than an image of what biker gangs used to represent.

“The police and prosecutors’ fear of them is irrational,” Sheahen said. “They fear a mystic to the point of prosecutorial lunacy, and there is nothing to fear.”

Authorities, however, are on standby after Saturday’s violence in Laughlin, carefully watching for signs of retaliation.

“It’s almost like after a terrorist strike,” said Chip Patterson, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department in San Bernardino, where a large Hells Angels clubhouse has operated for decades. “There was a lot of bloodshed in Laughlin, and we just don’t know where and when it might happen again.”

Times staff writer Charles Ornstein contributed to this report.