outlaw motorcycle clubs, Mongols Motorcycle Club - book - 2011 - Out Bad

Out Bad
Donald Charles Davis
2011
247 pages

Out Bad is the other self-published (via CreateSpace) book by The Aging Rebel blogger and journalist Donald Charles Davis. The book The Aging Rebel was a collection of Davis’ better blogposts, each one a brief critique of something gnawing at the biker world. Out Bad is an in depth critique of the media discourse surrounding Operation Black Rain, a major ATF undercover operation that ultimately dismantled what was then theleadership of the Mongols Motorcycle Club.

Davis' blog is great for its sharply intelligent analysis of the issues that press against a subculture widely viewed as dumb, but Out Bad is his great contribution thus far, a book which I consider to be a major addition to the literature on outlaw bikers. It responds to media accounts of outlaw biker affairs, often taking journalists to task for simply repeating law enforcement statements on MC-related crime scenes.  Also Davis’ critique expands the picture of those scenes, giving the fuller perspective on biker issues that he suggests are absent from media representations of the subculture. Furthermore, Davis is an interesting commentary on these issues because he A) writes from an insider’s perspective, the cover of this book features a photo of him riding with the Mongols and B) he writes at an intellectual level that equals that of the academics of biker culture, Daniel R. Wolf and Arthur Veno. Davis’ prose shows his talents as a seasoned journalist who can make information engaging, but his writing is also laced with literary and philosophical references as well. Out Bad is certainly a retort to every true crime text that paints the biker scene as an engine for lurid crime-scene imagery and brute stupidity.

Out Bad is not simply a reply to journalist accounts of bike-gang warfare and meth cookery, and the base repetition of police press releases.  It also criticizes many of the books published by biker-world figures over the last ten years such as Under and Alone by Mongols ATF infiltrator William Queen, No Angel by Hells Angels ATF infiltrator Jay Dobyns, and especially, Honor Few Fear None, the memoir by short-term Mongols national president, Ruben Cavazos. In his criticism of Cavazos book, Davis presents a much different view of the club, which is more racially mixed (while Cavazos constructed it as a means for retired LA street gang members) with many members disappointed with Cavazos leadership and the changes he instituted. As a sustained work of argument against another book, Davis produced for the biker world the kind of book-length works of criticism that readers find in the more traditionally intellectual fields of political theory, philosophy, and literature.

Out Bad's relevance is three-fold: it is an intelligent piece of media criticism aimed against those lazy journalists for whom newswriting is transcribing a brief and trite witness statement into a cut and pasted law enforcement press-release, it is a work of criticism against Ruben "Doc" Cavazos book and other appearance in mass media as well as his leadership of the Mongols Motorcycle Club, and it is in itself a work of journalism that investigates and examines the events of the ATF's Operation Black Rain from the perspectives of participants in the subculture.

mongols mc, outlaw motorcycle clubs - book - 2008 - Honor Few, Fear None: The Life & Times of a Mongol

Honor Few, Fear None: The Life and Times of a Mongol
Ruben “Doc” Cavazos
HarperCollins
2008
214 pages

Honor Few, Fear None is the memoir of “Doc” Cavazos (born in 1957), the former international president of the Mongols Motorcycle Club.  The Mongols MC is one of the best known outlaw motorcycle gangs outside of the subculture’s “big four” (a law enforcement designation referring to the four largest outlaw groups: the Hells Angels, the Bandidos, Pagans, and Outlaws).  Much of the notoriety of the Mongols MC comes from a rivalry with the Hells Angels that peaked (in terms of press coverage) after a violent melee at a casino in Laughlin Nevada during the 2002 Laughlin River Run, a major annual biker gathering.  Two Hells Angels and one Mongol were killed in the course of an all-out brawl.  Doc was a high ranking Mongol that the time, although not yet president of the organization.  

Cavazos’ memoir focuses primarily on his life as a gang member.  He and his brother, Al (AKA Al “the Suit”, another former high-ranking Mongol) were raised by their father in the tough Highland Park neighborhood in the Northeast of Los Angeles.  Cavazos describes the violent climate of his neighborhood, and the necessity of joining a gang for protection from his social environment.  In his adolescence Cavazos joined The Avenues, a notorious gang affiliated with the Mexican Mafia and an eventual rival of the Mongols.  Doc described himself in typical gangster terms as someone who was always ready to act violently, and without fear, if a situation called for it, but not as someone who would instigate conflict. 

Doc also describes his personal life as an adult, presenting himself as a responsible worker and parent.  He has balanced his outlaw biker lifestyle with a career, having worked full-time as a professional radiologic technician at a Los Angeles medical institution.  Furthermore he raised his son, Ruben Jr., as a single father.  Ruben Jr. eventually became “Little Rubes”, a security professional, and a full patch member of the Mongols MC.  Doc entered the world of 1% bikers because of a desire to leave the gang life behind in lieu of adult responsibilities, but also to maintain an element of danger in his life - something he felt membership in the Mongols offered.

In 2005 an ATF agent named William Queen authored a book titled Under and Alone in which Queen describes his infiltration of the Mongols MC San Fernando Valley Chapter under the alias of Billy St. John.  Queen represented the Mongols as murders and rapists, which is exactly the image of outlaw bikers (and Mongols in particular) Cavazos attempts to contradict with his text.  I believe that Queen and other undercover infiltrators of the 1% gangs exaggerate the criminality of bikers for the purpose of entrenching the value of their own positions and the expense of their operations.  Cavazos, however, pulls too hard in the opposite direction, often making the claim in his text that the Mongols are not criminal at all and any crime that has occurred at the hands of a club member was either before his regime, due to the incompetence of other leaders, or due to a lack of discipline among individual members.  The club chapter that William Queen became a full patch member of while working undercover, for example, was infiltrated due to leader incompetence and lack of adherence to club rules.  Cavazos argued that chapter president Red Dog was simply building a membership for the dues each Mongol pays, and that so he could fuel a drug habit and let recruitment measures go slack.  Incidentally, that’s what other Mongols accuse Cavazos of.

Also the Laughlin River riot occurred, according to Doc, because of the incompetence of his presidential predecessor, Roger Pinney.  Meanwhile Doc discusses his management of the club in terms of building armies, and furthermore he speaks of incidents where he directly challenges Hells Angels to enter confrontation.  He considers it a show of disrespect for the Mexican Mafia to have had a security detail in place during a meeting with their representatives, even though the Mongols had a similar unit operating at the same meeting.  Finally, he suggests that much of the brutality attributed to the Mongols (and described in Under and Alone) occurred before he achieved command over the club.  He considers a Mongol to be an individual who is ready for violence and willing to return fire but at the same time he resents the violent stereotype of the biker that is conveyed in media.

Its difficult to know what to make of Cavazos’ memoir considering the events that occured shortly after its publication.  Honor Few, Fear None was published in June 2008, shortly thereafter in August ‘08 Cavazos was voted out of the club under at a meeting in Vernon California under accusation that he was stealing from his own organization.  In October ‘08 Doc, Lil’ Rubes, Al the Suit, and a number of other Mongols members were arrested in the climax of another ATF undercover operation called Operation Black Rain.  Cavazos pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering and is now accused of having turned government informant by his former 1% brothers.  As of this writing, the Mongols MC website lists the three ex-Mongols/Cavazos family members as ‘out-bad’ which I assume means they are out of the club in bad standing.  According to a number of news items about the fallout of Operation Black Rain, government prosecution demanded the trademark rights to the Mongols patches from Doc for the purpose of preventing their public representation.  My edition of Honor Few, Fear None has all Mongols patches blacked out in the photographs section.  Earlier this summer a judge returned the trademarks, legally, to the club, and I would be interested to see if any new editions have the patches featured again.

Ruben “Doc” Cavazos memoir is inconsistent with regards to how he represents himself and his former club.  In the undertaking of such a memoir however, what else could he do but attempt to strike a balance between presenting his men as resolute fighters in the face of violent ongoing rivalries, and presenting them as motorcycle enthusiasts who get a little rough when they party in the face of a public view of 1%ers as bloodthirsty maniacs?  Cavazos’ text is interesting simply because it shows how a recently active high-ranking biker talks about the subculture.

hells angels, outlaw motorcycle clubs - book - 2007 - Running With the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels

Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF’s Infiltration of the Hells Angels
Kerrie Droban
2007
The Lyons Press
215 pages

Ahoy out there in the matrixnet.  I borrowed Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels from the Toronto Public Library.

Kerrie Droban is a Phoenix AZ based criminal defense attorney turned true crime and suspense fiction author.  Her 2007 book, Running with the Devil, explores the events of the Black Biscuits investigative operation undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to infiltrate the inner-workings of the Hells Angels in Arizona.  The publication of Droban’s book precedes the book No Angel, by Jay Dobyns, who was the lead agent of the operation, and ultimately became an unofficial full patch member of the Hells Angels Skull Valley AZ chapter.  Droban was thus the first to tell the story of Operation Black Biscuits.
   
Droban tells the story of Black Biscuits from the perspective of an external viewer to the scene, with an emphasis on the perspectives of the ATF undercover agents, undoubtedly because Droban had access to ATF documentation pertaining to the case.  Droban structures the text as a continuous narrative, and as such it creates questions as to how the narrative as its constructed by Droban is actually manifest in the documents that ground it.  For example, when Droban referrs to operative Bird’s state of mind, is that actually represented in the documents in some way?  Did Droban confer with Dobyns to accurately represent an inner-state or was she deploying artistic licence?  This isn’t to say that a reader has to take Jay Dobyn/Bird’s word for it when they’re reading No Angel, but No Angel does have a greater legitimacy on such matters as its told from an individual who was directly involved.  

The story of Running with the Devil is that Dobyns, referred to only as Bird through the text, goes undercover with a team of ATF agents as a chapter of the Solo Angeles outlaw motorcycle club in Arizona, and ingratiates himself with the Skull Valley chapter of the Hells Angels.  The operation lasts from 2002 to 2003, during which time Dobyns et. al. go from being Solo Angeles to becoming Hells Angels hangarounds, then prospects, then after staging the murder of a Mongol (a rival biker gang to the Angels) became full patch members.  Much of the book describes the delicate acting Bird and his associates perform to insert themselves into the world of Outlaw bikers and maintain their cover without actually committing crimes themselves.  The focus of the text is on Bird, his close calls with exposure, his relationship with his family, his relationship with the ATF, and his drive to go as deep as he can into the biker world.

Droban frames undercover work as a form of theatre, a mode of thought about such police-work that is, if I recall correctly, absent from Dobyn’s book, and also from William Queen’s Under and Alone, a 2002 memoir about infiltrating the Mongols Motorcycle Club.  Considering undercover policing to be theatre raises questions about the stage, where it ends, what are its limits.  Clearly, performing as a Hells Angel while actually employed as a federal agent has an intrinsic conflict embedded into it.  The question that can never be satisfactorily answered by these kinds of texts is whether or not, and how, was that conflict preserved.  The conflict within,  the biker who knows that he or she is a federal agent is necessary.  An actor on a space designated as stage does not have to worry about preserving the parts of themselves that are not the characters they play.  Droban manages to scratch at this inner conflict by representing scenes of strained interaction between Bird (in biker appearance) and his family, but also in portraying Bird’s drive, to go as far as he can with his Biker persona, as an ideal for ATF success.

There was one particularly important aspect of Droban’s text that I thought was underdeveloped.  Pretty well every figure depicted is little more than a one-dimensional tough guy with a nickname.  Kerrie Droban was a lawyer prior to becoming a true crime and suspense author.  I assumed, due to her experience as a defense attorney, that she would give the individual members of the Hells Angels a sense of humanity, however what she actually presents the reader with is a collection of mean men who say and do mean things.  Dobyns and Queen create a greater degree of depth for the outlaws in their portrayals.  Droban conveys the human in Bird and many of his law enforcement associates, however the other side are not given the same treatment.

Drogan’s text was an interesting although somewhat shallow portrayal of the events of Operation Black Biscuit. This shallowness may perhaps be a reflection of the materials she worked from; and while Jay ‘Bird’ Dobyns could speak from direct experience for his book, Drogan had to spark life to dry case documentation.  One area where Drogan’s telling of the events is superior to Dobyn’s is in regards to the practical matter of the investigations carried out by other Motorcycle gangs into the roots of the Solo Angeles MC.  Solo Angeles are a real MC based in Mexico, and Bird and associates were playing a dangerous game pretending to be a far-flung chapter of the club.  Furthermore, once they staged the murder of a Mongol, they knew they couldn’t perpetuate the ruse much longer, the Mongols would have to look for their lost member, and the lack of a lost member would be a suspicious thing.  Drogan considered a wide and interconnected world of biker clubs who keep tabs on one another.  Dobyns, by contrast, constructs the situation as himself in the middle of an Arizona Hells Angels vs Mongols rivalry.

There are a number of these books about federal investigations into outlaw motorcycle clubs, and the result is that they only focus on these clubs as criminal enterprises.  These books highlight the criminal side of the clubs although when they are read carefully a reader may notice that many of the club members are petty criminals at most.  The worst of them (Hells Angels members with the ‘Filthy Few’ patch on their cut) are experienced killers, or are habitually engaged in an illegal trade of some kind, but the clubs do not seem to have a systematic, organizational interest in any particular criminal enterprise.  There is no question that violence seems to occur wherever outlaw bikers are present, and that many bikers are indeed criminals, but many members are just weird guys who like that lifestyle.  They may be tough and willing to do violence, but there’s not any particular criminal commitment made by individual Hells Angels when they join the club.  William Queen, for example, noted that the Mongols chapter he infiltrated was constantly short of money, and always trying to come up with criminal to find cash but often fell through.  Much of the Hells Angels’ income has come from merchandising their deaths’ head logo.  They have even brought lawsuits against companies who have infringed on their trademark.  Droban’s final chapter, listing the charges against the Angels who were indicted as a result of Operation Black Biscuit, noted that while several of the Angels were handed prison terms, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges were dropped against everyone.  This was not the first time Hells Angels were unsuccessfully charged under RICO, as the US government has consistently been unable to prove that the Hells Angels have an organization-wide commitment to any particular criminal enterprise, despite counting many experienced criminals among their members.

Yesterday, in fact, the president of the Toronto chapter of the Hells Angels was sentenced  to six years in prison for drug charges.  According to the Toronto Star, "last month a jury found the bikers guilty of those charges but not guilty of belonging to a criminal organization."