Full-Patch Hells Angel Aided In Canada-Wide Biker Gang Busts
Posted April 5, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
“Project Develop” was an 18-month investigation that culminated in the arrests of 16 full-patch members of the Hells Angels Wednesday, and on Thursday it was revealed that one of their own was front and centre in the massive sting.
The project “utilized a full-patch Hells Angels member as a police agent,” said Ontario Provincial Police Insp. Dan Redmond.
The individual’s help led to one of the biggest organized crime busts in recent Canadian history. In total, 400 police officers were involved in the sting, 31 arrests were made and more than 100 charges have been laid, many of them drug-related.
There are still two arrests pending for full-patch members, though more than 200 remain scattered throughout the province.
Police activity was coordinated from New Brunswick to British Columbia, but Wednesday’s efforts focused primarily on the Hells Angels GTA headquarters at Logan and Eastern in the Toronto’s east end.
Police say taking over the group’s primary clubhouse is a major symbolic and strategic step in halting illegal biker gangs.
“This is the Toronto downtown chapter, which in relative terms is the flagship of Ontario for the Hells Angels,” Redmond boasted.
“In seizing the chapter, they no longer have a home.”
The clubhouse was able to be seized because of its possible connection to the group’s alleged criminal enterprises, which according to police included considerable drug trafficking.
“In this investigation we had large seizures of cocaine,” said Redmond.
“We purchased cocaine at the kilo level and obviously a large seizure of GHB, which is the street term of the ‘date rape drug.'”
More than $500,000 in cash and another half a million dollars in vehicles and weapons were also seized.
As for the undercover Angel, police aren’t saying much.
“I’m not going to speak a lot about our agent,” Redmond said.
“The officer’s still in the field and the case is still before the courts.”
Meanwhile, even as there was certainly an air of satisfaction and accomplishment in the air at Thursday’s press conference, OPP Chief Julian Fantino insisted the operation is on-going and that there’s still much work to be done.
“They can run, but they can’t hide,” the former Toronto Police Chief warned.
A series of simultaneous raids launched by provincial police in September 2006 saw 500 officers involved in arresting 15 members of the Hells Angels.
