Quebec's anti-patch measure was passed as part of a larger law-and-order bill on April 2 and makes it illegal to display the symbols of gangs such as the Hells Angels in public.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Spring in Quebec means melting snow, maple syrup and Hells Angels.
The biker gang with a blood-soaked history in the province typically conducts its “first runs,” kitted out in full black leather regalia, in early May to reassert its presence after a winter hibernation.
But this spring, a legal showdown is in the offing, after the Quebec government passed an “anti-patch” law making it illegal to display the gang’s symbols in public. The legislation is an attempt to crack down on a group that is resurgent 25 years after a historic sting against it.
Lawyers for the bikers have threatened to sue on free-speech grounds, but law enforcement experts say insignia such as the famed “death head” patches, rather than being mere logos, serve as intimidation tactics. Observers expect the legislation to eventually reach the Supreme Court of Canada.
“Anyone who says ‘it’s just a bunch of guys riding motorcycles’ doesn’t know their history,” said Tom O’Neill, a retired RCMP officer who was instrumental in the 2001 Operation Springtime that dealt a major blow to the leadership of Hells Angels in Quebec. “I’ll compare it to the Ku Klux Klan – we know how that is intimidating, we know how that brings up bad blood, and so it’s socially unacceptable.”
After originating in mid-century California and making a name for themselves as outlaws with a patina of counterculture cool, the Hells Angels moved into Quebec in the late 1970s. Soon they were major players in the sale of cannabis and cocaine across the province, with violent rivalries to go with it.
A war with a group of bikers called the Rock Machine in the early 1990s quickly spiralled into all-out carnage: More than 160 people were killed in the following decade, including an 11-year-old boy hit with shrapnel from a car bomb, two prison guards and, very nearly, the crime reporter Michel Auger, who survived an assassination attempt in 2000.
After initially turning a blind eye to the gangland murders, law enforcement was spurred into action after mounting violence against innocent civilians and growing anxiety that the state was losing control of the underworld, Mr. O’Neill recalled. Hells Angels leaders such as Maurice (Mom) Boucher became household names in Quebec.
“We could have teetered into a Colombia situation in which civil society and the legal system was thoroughly corrupted by organized crime,” Mr. O’Neill said.
In March, 2001, Operation Springtime helped turn the tide, leading to more than 100 arrests including most of the gang’s local leaders.
The Hells Angels have never recovered their previous clout in Quebec, but drug busts linked to the gang remain common in the province. The recent arrest of two men after the death of a 14-year-old boy, whose remains were discovered near an Angels-linked bunker in Frampton, Que., was linked to a war between the biker gang and street gangs – a reminder that they remain a potentially dangerous force.
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Quebec would not be the first jurisdiction to target biker regalia and other gang signs. Manitoba has barred gang symbols in licensed establishments, while some Australian states have more wide-ranging bans also targeting bikers.
Quebec’s Minister of Domestic Security Ian Lafrenière proposed an anti-gang sign law in December, eliciting legal threats from lawyers for the Hells Angels, who did not respond to The Globe and Mail’s requests for comment. The anti-patch measure was quietly passed as part of a larger law-and-order bill on April 2. An independent policing body is currently drafting a list of gangs to whom the law will apply.
In an interview, Mr. Lafrenière said he respects freedom of speech, but that organized criminals have been using their symbols to intimidate and extort business owners in Quebec and other provinces.
“Right now they’re rubbing it in citizens’ faces,” he said. “Quebeckers have a right to their collective rights as well.”
Few organized-crime groups are as flagrant in their use of regalia as a marketing and intimidation tool, said author Julian Sher, who has written extensively about the Hells Angels. “The Mafia doesn’t walk around with M’s on the forehead. The Russian mob doesn’t have a website. The Hells Angels have a website.”
Each element of the group’s insignia has a meaning that’s carefully policed by the gang. The Hells Angels guard the exclusivity of their brand through legal avenues – such as suing Toys “R” Us and a yo-yo maker in 2012 for trademark infringement – and by pursuing their own form of rough justice. If the bikers catch someone wearing the patches without authorization, Mr. Sher said, “they’ll beat the crap out of you.”
Having witnessed the biker war of the 1990s up close – at a time when journalists were targets – Mr. Sher thinks the anti-patch law is a valid measure to deprive the Hells Angels of some of their menacing aura.
“It’s not a surprise that Quebec is in the forefront of innovative ways to take on the bikers, because it was in Quebec that they were the most violent. It was the epicentre,” he said.
Civil libertarians are not so sure the ends justify the means. The renowned Montreal constitutional lawyer Julius Grey thinks the courts will have to grapple with whether the wearing of Hells Angels and other gang symbols poses a sufficient “danger of intimidation” to justify banning them.
“There’s a breach of freedom of expression, there’s no doubt,” he said. “There’s got to be a justification.”
If the Hells Angels sue and the case is taken up by the courts, it will likely hinge on factual details related to what the gang’s insignia mean, said Mr. Grey.
Tom O’Neill, the retired Mountie, investigated the group for years and has no doubt about “the intimidation factor of a full-patch Hells Angels member,” he said.
“In the criminal world it is known that to obtain your patches you have to have participated in a serious crime, generally murder. That is the brotherhood that links them.”