OFF THE WIRE

Listen to my new episode THE BIKERS OF AMERICA, THE PHIL & BILL SHOW at http://tobtr.com/s/4375147. #BlogTalkRadio


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 “ THE BIKERS OF AMERICA, THE PHIL and BILL SHOW ”  GO`S Live! at 6 pm PAC, 9:00 pm EST every Tuesday & Thursday  on BlogTalk Radio.
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Hits Like a bored and stroked big V-twin is the hardcore biker right’s talk show that will shift the thoughts and minds of all! Screwdriver is a member of Bikers of Lesser Tolerance, which is a "No Compromise" philosophy that rights cannot ever be negotiated and the west coast Representative of B.A.D (Bikers Against Discrimination) & Bill Kennedy of Kennedy’s Custom Cycles !!! Join us each week as we give you straight talk on what is happening to Bikers on the Left Coast along with what YOU can do to join the cause! Tune in and check us out..!!!!


  Go`s Live!  at 6 pm PAC, 9:00 pm EST every Tuesday & Thursday  on BlogTalk Radio. Check us out!AND REMEMBER, IF YOU CAN’T TUNE INTO THE “LIVE” SHOW YOU CAN LISTEN TO/DOWNLOAD THE SHOW AT YOU CONVENIENCE ANY DAY/TIME FREE OF CHARGE FOR UP TO 90 DAYS SINCE SHOWS ARE ARCHIVED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE!
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The next “THE BIKERS OF AMERICA (THE PHIL and BILL SHOW)”
will be on Tuesday, OCT /23/ 2012 at 6pm Pacific and 9pm Eastern. 
as Well As Thursday OCT /25/ 2012 night`s 6pm Pacific and 9pm Eastern.
SO PLEASE TUNE IN AND SUPPORT US, Because were here to support you...
THANK YOU,
Screwdriver &  Bill
"IF YOU VIOLATE OUR BIKER RIGHTS...
YOU BETTER WATCH OUT FOR OUR BIKER LEFTS!"

Screwdriver and Bill are hosting,
“THE BIKERS OF AMERICA, KNOW YOUR RIGHTS”
Daily Information Blog, & the Blog can be reached at,
bikersofamerica.blogspot.com
Screwdriver at Countermeasures Division (strokerz383@gmail.com).
Please note that this e-mail address is being protected from spambots so you will need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We will be featuring different topics Guests from around the World.
Bikers Rights, News off the wire and B.O.L.T updates from across the country.

Other potential topics – 
• How Bill and I have been involved, in The Biker Community,
  Supporting different cause`s the years.
• The unconstitutional roadside checkpoints.
• The motorcycle only checkpoints.
• The Helmet Law’s Unconstitutional Enforcement.
• Legislation and Politics.
• The Veterans Groups,  The V.A. Hospitals,
&  Helping Our Brothers and Sisters when asked.

Participation Options: Our show is flexible so we can either control the topic or we will be happy to turn the  podium over to you. Should you wish to hold the podium, please email me, Screwdriver  at Countermeasures Division (strokerz383@gmail.com).
Please note that this e-mail address is being protected from spambots,
 so you will need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Let’s Not Forget, To support are Good Friend, Hermis..

Hermis LIVE, Wednesdays at 9 pm Est or 6 pm Pac, http://www.%20hermislive.com./
For broader communication, since these shows are open to the public, please pass this email along to your family and/or friends, who you know are interested in Motorcyclist Rights. Remember the bottom-line; we all have a sincere involvement with knowing, sharing, and/or enhancing our understanding about our rights as members of the biker community so I am asking for you, family, and friends to support the above two (3) shows.
Thank you, in advance, for your anticipated support and participation in these important discussions.
Philip (aka Screwdriver)
BOLT of California
(760) 207-2965 or strokerz383@gmail.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For more information about Bikers Of A Lesser Tolerance, please visit http://boltusa.org/  or for California Rights information see http://www.boltofca.com/

OFF THE WIRE
This is the future – WE WILL BE HUNTED AND HARESSED. All the BEACH CITIES in California do this already – so when funds are low – and they’re looking for ways to raise them – and the general public don’t care – we’re a TARGET. I see it as 2 sided – there’s dipshits that crank their pipes at 3am – get up to go to work and let the bike idle for 10 minutes with straight pipes. You know what? I don’t like that shit either – I barely sleep as it is. I coast my Thunderheader to the main street before 8am – I coast in late at night – some people are Fucking Stupid – and we’re all going to pay the PRICE........

ML&R
Screwdriver

After they originally put out somewhat incorrect information, I provided this to the MRF last month, and they are supposed to be running it in the current MRF Reports. Feel free to distribute as you see fit.
~Tony~

ABATE, of California
SB-435 - Clearing Up The Misconceptions
January 7, 2011
Due to the many false reports and misconceptions about SB-435, it looks like it is time to clear the misunderstandings and false impressions people have concerning SB-435 and ABATE of California’s role in shaping this bill. Contrary to all of the rumors, ABATE of California did not roll over on SB-435 and in fact, was the only major SMRO to oppose SB-435 until June 28, 2010 when it was heard in the Assembly Transportation Committee. At the hearing, last minute resistance was offered by other groups who showed up to testify in opposition, and a few other groups and individuals continued to oppose the bill as it made its way back to the Senate and Governor’s desk, where it was eventually signed.

So let’s look at what happened with SB-435, and how things really transpired. SB-435 was first introduced on February 26, 2009, by State Senator Fran Pavley, (D), Agoura Hills as a bill to institute biennial smog checks for motorcycles. After vigorous opposition to SB-435 by Jim Lombardo, ABATE of California’s lobbyist, SB-435 was turned into a two-year bill and allowed to pass out of the Senate with the provision that Senator Pavley amend the bill and remove the smog check language. In Senator Pavley’s own words, “ABATE’s lobbyist killed my smog bill on the Senate floor.” Accordingly, the record reflects several amendments, which were offered by the bill author before she amended it from a smog check bill into an EPA noise label match-up bill.

The bottom line here is that California’s motorcyclists will not be burdened with a unwarranted and restrictive smog check bill, thanks to the determined efforts of ABATE of California. Once again – NO SMOG CHECKS for motorcycles in California thanks to ABATE of California and Jim Lombardo. Moreover, in the final version of the bill, which was signed into law, all motorcycles currently on the road up to model year 2013 are grand-fathered in. That is a huge concession that ABATE of California was able to achieve on behalf of the over 800,000-registered motorcycle owners in the state. Just guessing, I would estimate that this will save the average owner with after market pipes at least $600 to $1,000.
On June 28, 2010, the version of SB-435 that passed out of the Assembly Transportation Committee is the one which basically was signed into law by the Governor. With just a few weeks prior notice, ABATE of California was able to mobilize to meet the threat posed by the amended bill. The amended SB-435 called for imposition of the 1983 EPA noise label match-up language that has been in effect at the Federal level for 27 years. In addition, it called for a $300 fine, a moving violation, a point on a driving record, and it would have allowed any law enforcement officer, including meter maids to cite motorcyclists, even if the motorcycle was parked. One of the amendments ABATE of California was apprehensive would be offered was the imposition of SAE J2825, developed by the AMA & MIC.

Incidentally, both the AMA and MIC were lobbying to get SAE J2825 introduced into SB-435, and that is a bullet that California’s motorcyclists were able to dodge. In a test performed by ABATE personnel certified in the J2825 testing procedure, virtually every after market set of pipes failed the test, which leads those of us in ABATE of California to have little faith in J2825’s objective standards. Moreover, J2825 would have led to roadside testing and every county and city with officers equipped with db meters would be pulling over and citing motorcyclists given the sorry state of the budget in California. ABATE of California urges all SMRO’s to take a hard look at J2825 before signing onto that program. ONE MORE TIME -- SAE J 2825 will lead to increased roadside checks! Is that really what we need or want?

While we dodged a bullet with J2825, SB-435 as amended contained plenty of anti-motorcycling language and as written, the bill would have affected all motorcycles from model year 2000 forward. Through the efforts of ABATE of California through our lobbyist, Jim Lombardo, several concessions were achieved that removed the most unfriendly and anti-motorcycle language from the bill. Through the joint efforts of ABATE’s Jim Lombardo and John Paliwoda of the California Motorcycle Dealer’s Association, the effective date of imposition of SB-435 was rolled back to 2013, and all motorcycles currently on the road are grand-fathered in. Additionally, due to ABATE’s efforts, violations were changed from a moving violation to a fix-it-ticket, it was dropped to a $50 fine from $300, and it is a secondary violation, meaning that it can’t be the primary reason for an enforcement stop.

As can be plainly seen, the final version of SB-435 was substantially altered by ABATE of California and while we would like to have seen the bill die in committee, we did not enjoy the same support against an anti-noise bill that we did against a smog check bill. Furthermore, the co-author of SB-435 was the Chairwoman of Assembly Transportation Committee, and we knew going into the bill hearing that we simply did not have the votes to kill this bill. While there were some in the ranks of the organization that wished to pursue a hard line stance, the vote from our Political Action Committee determined that we would pursue the course of seeking to modify the bill and in this we were successful given the concessions that were achieved. Had we followed a hard line approach and simply hoped we would defeat SB-435 in committee, we would today be facing a far different reality today than we are.

While there is much Monday morning quarterbacking going on regarding SB-435, ABATE of California is confident that we achieved the best possible outcome for the California motorcycling community that was possible given the difficult circumstances we faced. Two last items on the topic of SB-435 are that this bill is likely to have the unintended consequence of driving up the fair market price for pre-2013 used motorcycles due to the fact that they are grand-fathered in. Another consequence that other states facing similar legislation should be aware of is the 2013 date, which was extended to allow the manufacturers to comply. While we still have two years before SB-435 goes into effect, other states facing similar legislation will not have the same grace period if this legislation should come up in their respective states after January 2013.

Anthony Jaime
Executive Director
ABATE of California

OFF THE WIRE
 

OFF THE WIRE
By Jeff Berwick at LewRockwell.com

Would you dial up a known criminal, like a murderer or rapist, to come help you after you’ve been the victim of a crime? No? Then why in the world would you call the police after you’ve been assaulted, robbed or otherwise violated?
The police do not consider their job to protect you. They used to at least pay lip service to “keeping the peace”, but nowadays in the USSA it is clear their job is to enforce the law. In fasco-communist America, the law stopped being about your protection decades ago. The law is about the expansion of state power and control. That’s why there are so many of them, with more coming all the time.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of reasons in the Federal Code for the police to arrest you. That’s the very essence of a police state. Everything is literally a crime. As Lao Tsu said in the 6^th century, BC: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be…”
In an environment like this, police cannot merely be keepers of the peace. They must be enforcers of the law. And enforcers use force, of course – intimidation and sudden and shocking violence in order to make you obey. And compliance is exactly what the police expect. They long ago stopped being “public servants” and became more akin to plantation overseers. Rapper and philosopher KRS One pointed out the similarities in his track, “Sound of da Police”:

“The overseer rode around the plantationThe officer is off patrolling all the nationThe overseer could stop you what you’re doingThe officer will pull you over just when he’s pursuingThe overseer had the right to get illAnd if you fought back, the overseer had the right to killThe officer has the right to arrestAnd if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!”

The most egregious example of this switch from protection to abuse is the so-called War on Drugs. The heightened prosecution of drug use (which was entirely legal a century ago in the US and in fact widely used in many products) has been right at the heart of the state’s increased monitoring and intrusion into personal life.
Do you want protection from theft and physical aggression? Or do you want “law enforcement”? Law enforcement is what allows the police to bust down your door and arrest you on suspicion that you may be using a plant that the state doesn’t like. Protection from theft and physical aggression is something that could be much better provided by free market transactions. You could simply buy yourself an alarm system or weapon. Or you could pay for bodyguards and remote ’round-the-clock monitoring and dispatch from a firm who will send people to actually help you and not gun you down. These people would also never bust down your door, kill your pets and hold automatic weapons to the heads of your children on suspicion that you might own plants that some politicians and voters don’t like. In every way, the private market protection option seems much better than the public option.
An 83-year-old grandmother recently learned the hard way of the dangers of calling the police. Debra Towler of Altavista, Virginia, called 9-1-1 and hung up without making a report. This triggered an automatic officer dispatch to her home. The police claim to have heard gunshots from inside Mrs. Towler’s home. But even if that’s true – and police regularly lie to cover up their mistakes – odds are that Mrs. Towler fired those shots for the same reason she called the police: she thought her home was being invaded. That would explain why she ran out the back door to her sister’s house when officers tried to get in the front door. It would also explain why this church-going octogenarian wouldn’t drop her gun when the police started barking orders at her from afar. They responded by gunning her down.

CALL THE COPS AT YOUR OWN RISK
This woman would have been alive if she’d simply defended herself instead of calling the publicly funded police. If there really had been intruders, she probably frightened them off by being armed. In any case the police would not have arrived in time to save her from being robbed or assaulted. All the police can do is show up to ask a few questions and interrogate the victim or some witnesses in case the victim is dead. Sometimes, apparently, the police themselves cause the victims death.
If just one private protection company did this one time, the typical statist would be calling for that company to be shut down with the murderers jailed. Yet when the publicly funded police botch things up this badly, the typical person finds a reason to blame the victim. A free market protection company – perhaps provided by the same company that insured Mrs. Towler’s home – would have treated Mrs. Towler like a customer whose harm they are paid to prevent. The publicly funded police force is under no such pressure to provide customer service. Their priorities are to enforce whatever nonsense laws are on the books and to use whatever lethal violence they deem necessary to keep themselves out of harm’s way.
Why do people put up with a monopolistic police force? Think about it. You are forced to pay (with taxes) for police who aggress against you for personal behavior that’s not anybody else’s business.

I HAVE NOT NOR WILL EVER CALL THE PUBLIC POLICE
Again, the police cannot stop a criminal from harming you or from stealing your property. They can only show up to “investigate” the crime after it’s been committed. The only way police can be truly proactive is when it comes to enforcing intrusive laws about personal behavior that doesn’t harm anyone else, like driving faster than the ridiculously low posted speed limits, or not wearing a seat belt or bicycle helmet, or using plants that politicians and your neighbors don’t like.
In my 41 years I have never once called the government (9-1-1) for any type of emergency. I’ve always instinctively known it was immoral and, in most cases, useless. Here in Mexico no one would ever consider calling the cops for anything – they know what the Americans are now learning. Here, the police are far more like tipsy Barney Fifes than they are like robocops.
A month ago my wife called. She was with our $10-a-day bodyguard, but he didn’t have his pistol on him that day and she said three very large men were following her in Walmart. I told her to go to the very back of the store and tell some staff what was happening and wait for me.
I arrived in less than 5 minutes on my scooter with my gun and sprinted to the back of the store. I saw my wife and bodyguard safely standing there and was relieved. We then went to the kitchen area of the store and got both my wife and my bodyguard some sharp butcher knives. We then went through the checkout and cautiously exited the store, with everyone well-armed (not to mention my bodyguard is a professional boxer and my wife takes kickboxing and Kung Fu lessons each week and is a powerlifter – and I’m a former amateur boxer).
By that point the three men had left. Whether it was a real threat or not is anyone’s guess. But this form of self-protection beats government protection any day. Not only was my response time certainly faster, and my “skin in the game” meant I’d fight anyone to the death to protect my wife, whereas government police will almost always choose their own safety over yours. But a really interesting thing happens when you stand up for yourself and don’t depend on others for your protection. It feels great.
Plus, there is the fact that the government police who we could have called likely would have tried to beat, rob or kill us. This happens all the time, worldwide – not just in the USSA. In Tunisia, for example, women are charged with indecency for being raped by cops. In the US, beatings and shootings by cops are the issue, not rapes (usually). Look at this recent thug scrum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. After watching police pile on and abuse this young man, even the guy who called the police wishes he hadn’t called to report the young man sleeping in the community center.
“I regret making the call,” says the caller, “I should have let him sleep.” 
Call the Cops at Your Own Risk

Would you dial up a known criminal, like a murderer or rapist, to come help you after you've been the victim of a crime? No? Then why in the world would you call the police after you've been assaulted, robbed or otherwise violated?
The police do not consider their job to protect you. They used to at least pay lip service to "keeping the peace", but nowadays in the USSA it is clear their job is to enforce the law. In fasco-communist America, the law stopped being about your protection decades ago. The law is about the expansion of state power and control. That's why there are so many of them, with more coming all the time.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of reasons in the Federal Code for the police to arrest you. That's the very essence of a police state. Everything is literally a crime. As Lao Tsu said in the 6^th century, BC: "The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished...The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be..."
In an environment like this, police cannot merely be keepers of the peace. They must be enforcers of the law. And enforcers use force, of course – intimidation and sudden and shocking violence in order to make you obey. And compliance is exactly what the police expect. They long ago stopped being "public servants" and became more akin to plantation overseers. Rapper and philosopher KRS One pointed out the similarities in his track, "Sound of da Police":

"The overseer rode around the plantationThe officer is off patrolling all the nationThe overseer could stop you what you're doingThe officer will pull you over just when he's pursuingThe overseer had the right to get illAnd if you fought back, the overseer had the right to killThe officer has the right to arrestAnd if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!"

 
The most egregious example of this switch from protection to abuse is the so-called War on Drugs. The heightened prosecution of drug use (which was entirely legal a century ago in the US and in fact widely used in many products) has been right at the heart of the state's increased monitoring and intrusion into personal life.
Do you want protection from theft and physical aggression? Or do you want "law enforcement"? Law enforcement is what allows the police to bust down your door and arrest you on suspicion that you may be using a plant that the state doesn't like. Protection from theft and physical aggression is something that could be much better provided by free market transactions. You could simply buy yourself an alarm system or weapon. Or you could pay for bodyguards and remote 'round-the-clock monitoring and dispatch from a firm who will send people to actually help you and not gun you down. These people would also never bust down your door, kill your pets and hold automatic weapons to the heads of your children on suspicion that you might own plants that some politicians and voters don't like. In every way, the private market protection option seems much better than the public option.
CALL THE COPS AT YOUR OWN RISK
An 83-year-old grandmother recently learned the hard way of the dangers of calling the police. Debra Towler of Altavista, Virginia, called 9-1-1 and hung up without making a report. This triggered an automatic officer dispatch to her home. The police claim to have heard gunshots from inside Mrs. Towler's home. But even if that's true – and police regularly lie to cover up their mistakes – odds are that Mrs. Towler fired those shots for the same reason she called the police: she thought her home was being invaded. That would explain why she ran out the back door to her sister's house when officers tried to get in the front door. It would also explain why this church-going octogenarian wouldn't drop her gun when the police started barking orders at her from afar. They responded by gunning her down.
This woman would have been alive if she'd simply defended herself instead of calling the publicly funded police. If there really had been intruders, she probably frightened them off by being armed. In any case the police would not have arrived in time to save her from being robbed or assaulted. All the police can do is show up to ask a few questions and interrogate the victim or some witnesses in case the victim is dead. Sometimes, apparently, the police themselves cause the victims death.
If just one private protection company did this one time, the typical statist would be calling for that company to be shut down with the murderers jailed. Yet when the publicly funded police botch things up this badly, the typical person finds a reason to blame the victim. A free market protection company – perhaps provided by the same company that insured Mrs. Towler's home – would have treated Mrs. Towler like a customer whose harm they are paid to prevent. The publicly funded police force is under no such pressure to provide customer service. Their priorities are to enforce whatever nonsense laws are on the books and to use whatever lethal violence they deem necessary to keep themselves out of harm's way.
Why do people put up with a monopolistic police force? Think about it. You are forced to pay (with taxes) for police who aggress against you for personal behavior that's not anybody else's business.
Again, the police cannot stop a criminal from harming you or from stealing your property. They can only show up to "investigate" the crime after it's been committed. The only way police can be truly proactive is when it comes to enforcing intrusive laws about personal behavior that doesn't harm anyone else, like driving faster than the ridiculously low posted speed limits, or not wearing a seat belt or bicycle helmet, or using plants that politicians and your neighbors don't like.
I HAVE NOT NOR WILL EVER CALL THE PUBLIC POLICE
In my 41 years I have never once called the government (9-1-1) for any type of emergency. I've always instinctively known it was immoral and, in most cases, useless. Here in Mexico no one would ever consider calling the cops for anything – they know what the Americans are now learning. Here, the police are far more like tipsy Barney Fifes than they are like robocops.
A month ago my wife called. She was with our $10-a-day bodyguard, but he didn't have his pistol on him that day and she said three very large men were following her in Walmart. I told her to go to the very back of the store and tell some staff what was happening and wait for me.
I arrived in less than 5 minutes on my scooter with my gun and sprinted to the back of the store. I saw my wife and bodyguard safely standing there and was relieved. We then went to the kitchen area of the store and got both my wife and my bodyguard some sharp butcher knives. We then went through the checkout and cautiously exited the store, with everyone well-armed (not to mention my bodyguard is a professional boxer and my wife takes kickboxing and Kung Fu lessons each week and is a powerlifter – and I'm a former amateur boxer).
By that point the three men had left. Whether it was a real threat or not is anyone's guess. But this form of self-protection beats government protection any day. Not only was my response time certainly faster, and my "skin in the game" meant I'd fight anyone to the death to protect my wife, whereas government police will almost always choose their own safety over yours. But a really interesting thing happens when you stand up for yourself and don't depend on others for your protection. It feels great.
Plus, there is the fact that the government police who we could have called likely would have tried to beat, rob or kill us. This happens all the time, worldwide – not just in the USSA. In Tunisia, for example, women are charged with indecency for being raped by cops. In the US, beatings and shootings by cops are the issue, not rapes (usually). Look at this recent thug scrum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. After watching police pile on and abuse this young man, even the guy who called the police wishes he hadn't called to report the young man sleeping in the community center.
VIDEO, http://youtu.be/BnF2rq74Zqo
Rule #1: Never call the cops. Just like with health, prevention is a far best treatment for criminal acts. Check out TDV Homegrown for more details. (If you have the option of getting free of the USSA police state entirely, then try out a TDV Weekly Basic subscription for some great insights on expatriating.)

DON'T EVEN TALK TO THE POLICE
VIDEO, http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc
The police cannot help one bit once the crime is committed. They are unlikely to figure out who committed the crime. And they care more about somebody getting convicted for the crime than they are about the right person getting convicted for the crime. Police will lie in court. They don't care about finding the culprit. They just want a conviction. And any patsy will do. So don't talk to them. Ever. They will happily see innocents carted off to jail as long as they get to look like they're doing their jobs.

OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com

Many readers, including defense attorneys, continue to seem confused by RICO. The usual response to a RICO charge is, “How can they do this?” The following passages, from the book Out Bad, might help clear up some confusion.
From Out Bad
RICO was the centerpiece of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. The law was written by a Senatorial aide named G. Robert Blakey, who is now the William and Dorothy O’Neill Professor of Law at Notre Dame. And, it is named for the fictional character Rico “Little Caesar” Bandello who was inhabited on film by Edward G. Robinson.
Robinson’s Rico character, in turn, was a parody of a notorious entrepreneur named Alphonse Gabriel “Scarface” Capone. “Every time a boy falls off a tricycle,” Capone once lamented, “every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there’s a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler ‘get Capone.’”
Capone regretted his reputation as a criminal. Starting in 1926 he tried to diversify into legitimate businesses. Eventually he discovered milk. “Honest to God, we’ve been in the wrong racket right along,” Capone exclaimed when he discovered that the profit margins were higher in milk than in whiskey. In February 1932, three months before he went to prison, Capone invested $50,000 in a legitimate business named Meadowmoor Dairies. In the 1960s the descendants of Capone liked to invest in bowling alleys because they were a good way to explain where the money came from. The upshot of that was that the main supplier of automatic pin setting machines, the AMF company, became prosperous enough to buy, and almost ruin, the Harley-Davidson company.
The original intent of the RICO statute – at least by the Congressmen who voted for it – was to protect legitimate dairies, bowling alleys and other businesses, from investment by thugs like Al Capone. That did not work because the threat posed to the nation by the Italian-American Mafia was always overblown and because as years went by the very same acts the Mafia had always been condemned for doing began to be accepted as standard business practice. The Mafia used to sell sin. The gangsters profited from gambling, usury, prostitution, liquor, drugs and theft. Now states, the nation, Indian tribes, rural counties in Nevada, credit card brands, mortgage lenders, banks in general and asset confiscating police all profit from exactly the same sins.
This may or may not be a good thing. It is certainly not something new in the American pageant. Wyatt Earp enforced the law for big banks and mining companies. Before that he was “muscle.” Before that he was a pimp. Honore de Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Crime used to be understood as a kind of cheating for personal gain. Now a crime is anything. Racketeering is anything. The point is to find an excuse to make people suffer.
RICO, as it has evolved, is not intended to punish what most people consider to be crimes, which is to say actions like murder, robbery or what Roman Polanski did to that 13-year-old girl – crimes that lawyers call malum in se. RICO is designed to punish crimes lawyers call malum prohibitum which is Latin for actions that are illegal because they are illegal – like possessing illegal intoxicants or talking on the telephone about illegal intoxicants or smoking in a public place or having a loud and embarrassingly ugly argument with your wife on a Saturday night.
RICO prosecutions virtually ignore malum in se crimes, the actions you have always thought to be a “crime,” although at least a dozen of those did occur or emerge during the Mongols investigation. The predicate crimes that RICO exploits are often trivial and are always state crimes that until 1982 would have been prosecuted in state courts. For example, after the Labor Day Murders, none of the Hells Angels who were charged were ever found guilty of the murders. They confessed to talking about the murders. They confessed to hating Mongols.
Turkette
Then, almost five years later, on June 17, 1981 the law changed. Congress did not write a new law. The United States Supreme Court did. In a case called United States v Turkette, the Supreme Court changed the meaning of an existing law, called the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. The decision wasn’t even close. Conservatives and liberals agreed.
Turkette opened a philosophical and legal Pandora’s Box that redefined the meaning of words like “crime” and “racket;” and redefined whatever separation or connection might once have existed or not existed between local, state and federal crimes. Today a federal prosecutor can federalize virtually any crime he wants federalized. Under federal law punching somebody in the nose can be a “predicate crime.” This evolution of federal law also created a special circumstance under which defendants can be denied a presumption of innocence.
The Turkette decision changed the meaning of “criminal enterprise” away from a legitimate bar, bowling alley or labor union that had been corrupted by “the mob.” The Scheidler decision a decade later decreed that the “criminal enterprise” no longer had to exist for the purpose of making money. After Turkette and Scheidler, a class reunion could be a criminal enterprise. A federal prosecutor only had to imagine it.
Scheidler
National Organization of Women, Inc. v Scheidler was a civil RICO case brought on behalf of abortion providers against a political organization called Operation Rescue. Joseph Scheidler, for whom the decision is named was one of the leaders of Operation Rescue. Members believed that first-term abortion was morally wrong and should be legally prohibited. They protested outside abortion clinics and harassed and intimidated the women who tried to enter. There was a national consensus that members of Operation Rescue were loutish, cruel and unreasonable. The National Organization of Women accused them of being a racket.
“’We cannot tolerate the use of threats and force by one group to impose its views on others,’” NOW’s lawyer. Fay Clayton explained.
A Federal District judge, dismissed the case on the grounds that RICO could only be applied to “enterprises” motivated by financial gain. The Supreme Court overruled him. A racket could then be any group who members were contemptuous of the law. It was a great victory for federal policemen and prosecutors.
Professor G. Robert Blakely, who wrote the RICO Act and gave it its ironic name, lamented that he had never meant for his law to be applied to political and fraternal groups. He said he was “concerned” that after Scheidler RICO might be used against labor unions and other fringe groups like gay rights activists. Since Scheidler, RICO has been most commonly used a basis for the prosecution of outlaw motorcycle clubs.
RICO Praxis
There are several obvious reasons for the federal prosecution of state crimes. First, RICO allows the investigation of these local crimes by vast police bureaucracies like the ATF. These bureaucracies are self perpetuating and have virtually unlimited resources. All they need to persist are crimes to investigate and RICO provides that. Secondly, RICO allows federal prosecutors a legal fiction that can be used to connect what are actually, in reality, unconnected crimes into a vast, imaginary, criminal conspiracy. Additionally, RICO prosecutors do not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants actually committed the “predicate crimes” of which they are accused. State prosecutors do but RICO allows federal prosecutors to prove crimes by the civil standard which is a “preponderance of the evidence.” Finally, RICO provides a nice, secure, recession proof way for many lawyers, policemen, and prison guards to make a good living.
Under RICO, if Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates and Angelina Jolie all like to attend an annual seminar together, and if three people at the seminar have committed two or more criminal predicates, like making a false statement to a federal official or shoplifting, they may be collectively and individually charged with racketeering. They could all be convicted of “the affecting interstate commerce” clause in the RICO law if they sent each other Christmas cards. And the penalty for that racketeering is twenty years in a federal prison.
Many bright and cynical people who should know better still blindly assume that what police do is investigate and solve real crimes. The opposite is true in racketeering investigations. What the ATF, particularly in biker investigations, does is find a way to tie crimes to many related individuals and then create crimes that can be used to prosecute them all. This law enforcement approach is called the “Enterprise Theory of Investigation” and it has a long and twisted history.
A sociologist named Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white collar crime” in the 1930s and wrote a book on the subject in 1949. Sutherland in essence, believed that all businessmen were criminals. With all the best of intentions, after the heartbreak of the Great Depression, Sutherland thought unethical businessmen should be treated worse than murderers. He thought they should be punished for their economic crimes so he advocated that a “person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Sutherland also attacked the legal concept of mens rea, or guilty mind, which states that a person cannot be guilty of a crime unless he intends to commit a crime. Sutherland’s theories became popular in two seemingly disparate communities – academia and the FBI.
A Sutherland protégé named Donald Cressey created the “enterprise” concept that quickly became the Enterprise Theory of Investigation. Cressey was particularly not talking about bands of anti-materialistic, socially alienated bikers. He intended to oppose what he saw as social injustice. “The people of the business world are probably more criminalistic than the people of the slums,” he wrote in a book he co-authored with Sutherland. The idea of factoring wealth and privilege into the criminal justice equation was attractive to intellectuals. The federal police liked the parts that made prosecutions easier. Of course, in the manner of police bureaucracies everywhere, lest the amateurs know what the professionals are talking about, the Enterprise Theory of Investigation has become simply the ETI.
“The ETI has become the standard investigative model that the FBI employs in conducting investigations against major criminal organizations,” an FBI author explains. “Unlike traditional investigative theory, which relies on law enforcement’s ability to react to a previously committed crime, the ETI encourages a proactive attack on the structure of the criminal enterprise. Rather than viewing criminal acts as isolated crimes, the ETI attempts to show that individuals commit crimes in furtherance of the criminal enterprise itself. In other words, individuals commit criminal acts solely to benefit their criminal enterprise.”
The current idea of the criminal enterprise is very close to what Hannah Arendt meant when she wrote, “Classical totalitarianism predicts possible crimes on the basis of one’s status as an ‘objective enemy.’”
By “criminal enterprise,” the FBI author means any group any Federal Prosecutor decides to prosecute. The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America have not yet been prosecuted as rackets because to do so would create a terrible public backlash. But there is no backlash when the organization is an outlaw motorcycle club. The Scheidler decision completed the legal magic trick by making the “financial motive” disappear.
In motorcycle club cases, in general and against the Mongols in particular, the government uses RICO to enforce a de facto “Bill of Attainder.” Bills, sometimes the word is “writs,” of Attainder are specifically prohibited by Article One, Clause three of the Constitution. This prohibition appears so early in the principal American law because it was one of the “rights” for which the revolutionaries fought and died. Technically, in America it is not illegal to belong to Al Qaeda, the Nazi party, the Ku Klux Klan, La Cosa Nostra, the Communist party or even a motorcycle club. In a case named Uphaus v Wyman in 1959, the Supreme Court called guilt by association “a thoroughly discredited doctrine.”
But RICO allows prosecutors to turn that ruling on its head. It is the same when mass media leads the general public to believe that motorcycle clubs, right wing militias and “cults” are criminal.
Motorcycle clubs are particularly prone to prosecution under RICO because that are so blatantly “organizations” and because their members tend to believe, as Harley-Davidson’s ad agency put it, “in bucking the system that’s built to smash individuals like bugs on a windshield.” More than tribes, more than thugs, motorcycle clubs are an American ideology. And, also for better or worse, a national consensus seems to be building that America is better for renouncing this ideology.
Under RICO, state crimes punishable by months or a year in jail can be punished like murders. RICO also allows the seizure of assets like motorcycles because, the indictments always allege, no motorcycles no motorcycle gang. The enterprise theory also allows indicia searches, which are searches for proof that someone actually belongs to a motorcycle club. In effect, these searches are house wrecking parties. They are inevitably very terrible. Doors and windows are blown open with explosives. Threats like pets are eliminated. Men are beaten and sometimes executed. Wives and children are roughed up. Much glass is broken. Family photo albums, computers and mementos are confiscated.
The nature and practice of modern policing and particularly of racketeering law may help readers understand the trivial nature of many of the charges made in the indictment against the Mongols. The fact that the Mongols are a gossipy family also worked against them because the men who infiltrated the club wrote down all of the gossip. The “preponderance of evidence” rule in RICO cases made that gossip more damning than it would ever be in an ordinary criminal case. The fact that club members often disagreed about Doc Cavazos gave undercover investigators an excuse to get members talking. And, in the end RICO meant that prosecutors didn’t have to use any of the mountains of “evidence” they had collected. They only had to threaten defendants with it. Actually, in many cases they didn’t even show defendants the “evidence.” In many cases prosecutors only alluded to the “evidence” or spread their arms wide and told public defenders the evidence was in two boxes “this big.”
Summing Up
Most of the nonsense that is written about motorcycle outlaws, that they are “international crime empires” and all of that, is based on an amalgamation of sixty years of American history and on a conflation of what most people understand to be the definition of racketeering with the technical, legal definition of racketeering. Most people understand racketeering, a term coined in the 1920s, to refer to something like “protection rackets” or corrupt labor unions, fixed horse races, loan sharking or the Countrywide Home Loan racket. But the Scheidler decision four years before had made it possible to convict almost any fringe group of racketeering.
Depending on where you draw the lines, there were at least four Mongols racketeering cases although subsequent RICO cases against the Pagans and the Outlaws resulted from the same investigation. The main case which began in one Los Angeles courtroom and eventually spread to another Los Angeles courtroom and a courtroom in Orange County, was named United States versus Cavazos and Others. A much smaller case called US versus Maestas and Others was adjudicated in Denver. The smallest racketeering case, against a lone Mongol, is called US versus Christopher Ablett and years after the Mongols bust it is still being contested in Oakland. The fourth case, a civil case over the matter of whether any cop can simply seize what he believes to be “Mongols paraphernalia” when he sees it, was called Ramon Rivera versus Ronnie A. Carter, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); John A. Torres, Special Agent in Charge, ATF Los Angeles Field Division; and Eric H. Holder, United States Attorney General.
The obvious clumsiness of even naming the main court cases hints at, but does not begin to explain, why so little was written about the Mongols after the raids in October 2008. None of the usual biker experts has written about the investigation. The prosecution has been, for all practical purposes, secret. But the case is still important enough that even people who detest the Mongols and “their ilk” should know about it because it is a bright marker on the road of flight from the old to the new and improved America.
The point of Operation Black Rain was to put every outlaw in America out bad – to seize his cut, his motorcycle and his memorabilia, to rough him up, wreck his home, scare him and tell him “don’t come around this club no more.” It was, simultaneously emotionally, financially and legally devastating for the men involved. The point of the “enforcement effort” described in this book was never to punish “criminals.” The point was to crush a set of seductive, romantic, dangerous, and maybe obsolete, ideas.

CONTINUE READING
agingrebel.com

OF THE WIRE

- Be Respectful --- sharing the road goes both ways.

• Don't rely on loud pipes to keep you safe, loud pipes often startle people and poison the attitude of car drivers toward motorcyclists.
• Other vehicles are not required to make space for motorcycles to lane split.

- Be aware Roadways and traffic can be hazardous.

• uneven pavement
• wide trucks
• distracted drivers
• weather conditions
• curves
• etc.

You should NOT lane split:
- If you can't fit.
- At a toll booth.
- If traffic is moving too fast or unpredictably.
- If dangerous road conditions exist --- examples include water or grit on the road, slippery road markings, road construction, uneven pavement, metal grates, etc.
- If you cannot clearly see a way out of the space you're going into (for example, if a van or SUV is blocking your view).
- Between trucks, buses, RVs, and other wide vehicles.
- Around or through curves.
- If you are not fully alert and aware of your surroundings.
- If you are unable to react to changing conditions instantaneously.
- If you don't feel comfortable with the situation.
 Messages for Other Vehicle Drivers

1) Lane splitting by motorcycles is not illegal in California when done in a safe and prudent manner.

2) Motorists should not take it upon themselves to discourage motorcyclists from lane splitting.

3) Intentionally blocking or impeding a motorcyclist in a way that could cause harm to the rider is illegal (CVC 22400).

4) Opening a vehicle door to impede a motorcycle is illegal (CVC 22517).

5) Never drive while distracted.

6) You can help keep motorcyclists and all road users safe by

Checking mirrors and blind spots, especially before changing lanes or turning

Signaling your intentions before changing lanes or merging with traffic

Allowing more following distance, three or four seconds, when behind a motorcycle so the motorcyclist has enough time to maneuver or stop in an emergency

OFF THE WIRE

OFF THE WIRE
THANK YOU, JOHN
LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
A collection of lane-related information
 
                                             by John Del Santo
 
GENERAL
If our bike is equipped with working electric directional signals the law requires that we use them when changing lanes. (CVC 22110).  The State handbook also suggests that during times of heavy traffic, or poor visibility, that we also  use hand signals so that cars are better able to see what our intentions are.
 
SIGNAL LANE CHANGES             Before each lane change….Check your mirrors……Signal your intentions……Check your blind spot…..Make your move.
 
The CA Drivers Handbook suggests that at freeway speeds we signal for at least five seconds  before a lane change.
 
Traffic lanes are often referred to by number. The left, or “fast” lane is called the “Number 1 Lane”.  The lane to the right of the “number 1 lane” is called “The Number 2 Lane”  ,then the “Number 3 Lane” etc.  
 
If you are pulling a little camping trailer behind your motorcycle or car you now come under the same 3-axle category as a tractor trailer.  You are restricted to the two right lanes of the freeway,  restricted to 55 MPH,  and not allowed to use the HOV lane.  (P-35 CA Drivers Handbook)
 
FOLLOWING DISTANCE   California Vehicle Code 21704 (a)   States that ) “ The driver of any motor vehicle that is operated outside of a business or residence district, shall keep the vehicle he is driving at a distance of not less than 300 feet to the rear of any other motor vehicle”.  That’s a space that would fit about five tractor-trailers, or is almost a football field long.
                                           ---------------------------------------------------------
ON THE FREEWAY
Miles per Hour...Times 1 1/2 …Equals  Feet-Per-Second traveled. At 65 MPH  a vehicle is traveling  about 100 feet  Every Second.
 Many motorcyclists prefer traveling on the freeway in the Number 1 lane (far left).  This leaves the rider able to only worry about bad moves from the vehicle to the right,  and the vehicle behind.  Riding in the number 1 lane also leaves the shoulder on the left as an escape route to avoid dangerous moves from other drivers.
  Unlike many other states,  If you are traveling in the left lane….the number 1 lane…and you are maintaining the the posted speed limit….There is no legal reason for you to move out of that lane unless an emergency vehicle comes up behind you showing lights and/or siren.
The California Motorcycle Handbook (p-13)  tells us “There is no “best lane position” for riders in which to be seen and to maintain a space cushion around the motorcycle.  Position yourself in the lane that allows the most visibility and space around you”.
Generally speaking, I have been told by highway police that their attention is most drawn to vehicles that are jumping around from lane to lane, not to those that stay mostly in one lane.
 
the drivers handbook suggests that at freeway speeds we signal for at least five seconds  before a lane change.
 
GROUP RIDING
“If you ride with others, do it in a way that promotes safety and doesn’t interfere with the flow of traffic” If the group is more than four or five riders, divide it into two or more smaller groups.  Use a staggered formation and keep a  2-second following distance from the rider directly in front of you. (P-32  CA DMV motorcycle handbook).
When we are riding in a group on the freeway with five or ten other vehicles, WE ARE NOT AN EXCLUSIVE GROUP……..to the law and to the rest of the world, we are just ……five or ten individual vehicles.  If other vehicles want to, or need to, make a lane change into our lane,  they have every right to do so,  and we have no right to try to stop them from doing so. Even convoys of army trucks or funeral processions lose their right to exclusivity when they are on a freeway.
 
HOV  LANES  (HIGH OCCUPANCY VEHICLE )(Carpool lane)
 
No vehicle may cross double yellow lines into or out of an HOV LANE .
  In some areas, such as near Los Angeles ,   the double-yellow lines are about 18 inches apart.   These are still  double-yellow lines which no one may cross into or out of an HOV lane……..Contrary to some popular belief,  these are NOT teeny little HOV lanes for motorcycles.
 
 ONE OR TWO PERSONS ON A MOTORCYCLE OR TRIKE (3-wheeled motorcycle)   ARE ALLOWED TO USE AN HOV LANE, unless otherwise posted. (P-34  CA Drivers Handbook).
 
No vehicle pulling a trailer may use an HOV Lane .
 
EMERGENCY VEHICLE STOPPED ON FREEWAY
CVC-21809.  (a) A person driving a vehicle on a freeway approaching a stationary authorized emergency vehicle that is displaying emergency lights, a stationary tow truck that is displaying flashing amber warning lights, or a stationary marked Department of Transportation vehicle that is displaying flashing amber warning lights,
 
shall approach with due caution and, before passing in a lane immediately adjacent to the authorized emergency vehicle, tow truck, or Department of Transportation vehicle, absent other direction by a peace officer, proceed to do one of the following:
(1) Make a lane change into an available lane not immediately adjacent to the authorized emergency vehicle, tow truck, or Department of Transportation vehicle, with due regard for safety and traffic conditions, if practicable and not prohibited by law.
 (2) If the maneuver described in paragraph (1) would be unsafe or impracticable, slow to a reasonable and prudent speed that is safe for existing weather, road, and vehicular or pedestrian traffic conditions.
 
OFF  THE FREEWAY
 
CENTER LEFT-TURN LANES  A set of yellow solid lines with dotted yellow lines just inside them.  These are to be use to start or complete left turns or to start u-turns.  We may not stay in them for more than 200 feet (three tractor trailer lengths). 
 
DOUBLE-DOUBLE YELLOWS    SETS OF double-double yellow lines are considered a barrier or island.  We may never cross those even to get into or out of our own driveway Or to make a u-turn.
 
NARROW STREETS   When riding in parts of town with small, narrow streets…..where there is not a centerline painted in the street,   A CA Driver Handbook suggests that we ride out near the middle  of the street, when no traffic is approaching us from the opposite direction.  This reduces the chances of someone in a parked car making a move that would surprise or endanger you.  Naturally, near an intersection we would be back towards the right side of the roadway.
 
TURNOUT AREAS AND LANES  Special “turnout” areas are sometimes marked on two-lane roads.  Drive into these areas to allow traffic behind you to pass.  If you are driving slowly, you are required to pull in if there are five or more vehicles behind you that want to go faster.  (p-35  CA Drivers Manual).
  SOMETIMES THESE TURNOUT AREAS ARE UNLIT AND UNPAVED, AND ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT, MOTORCYCLISTS WOULD HAVE TO MAKE SERIOUS CHOICES TO USE THEM OR NOT.  
 
PEDESTRIAN SAFETY ZONE   A "safety zone" is the area or space lawfully set apart within a roadway for the exclusive use of pedestrians and which is protected, or which is marked or indicated by vertical signs, raised markers or raised buttons, in order to make such area or space plainly visible at all times while the same is set apart as a safety zone. CA Vehicle Code 540.
  
   CROSSING BICYCLE LANES    As long as there are no bicycles using the bicycle lane anywhere near enough  to you to be a hazard,  you may cross a bicycle lane to turn into or out of a driveway.  If there is a bicycle lane, and no bicycles are using it, and you plan on turning right at the next corner, you should check your mirror, signal,  check your blind spot,  and move into the bicycle lane  NO MORE THAN 200 feet from the corner (three tractor-trailer lengths)  to approach your right turn.    You may park in a bicycle lane, as long as there is no sign that proclaims “ Bike Lane  No Parking”.
Motorists Passing Bicyclists  Be patient when passing a bicyclist. Slow down and pass only when it is safe. Do not squeeze the bicyclist off the road. If road conditions and space permit, allow clearance of at least three feet when passing a bicyclist.
 
Would you like to check out any vehicle laws or rules ?  go to  http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/vc/vc.htm  Ca Vehicle Code    OR    http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/driver_handbook_toc.htm  CA Driver Handbook.
 
 
THESE RULES AND LAWS MAY BE DIFFERENT WHEN LEAVING CALIFORNIA AND ENTERING OTHER STATES.
                    --------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER AND WARNING :This guide is to provide accurate and authoritative information on this subject. If expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought
   John Del Santo
At Intersections,  and
  In Your Blind Spots,
 "Check Twice for Motorcycles". 

P.S.
I was just reading my article "Life in the fast lane"  which is a collection of info regarding lane laws and rules....and I realized that I had not mentioned "Lane Sharing"  so I entered these  lines into the article    FYI     thanks  John

The California Vehicle Code does not allow “lane sharing, lane splitting, etc.  
   

OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
There is a battle for history going on in America. The winners will write it and for all the rest of human time the losers will be whatever the winners say they are. The fight is hardly over truth, justice, philosophy or perspective. It is all about the dollars. And a good illustration of this new history in our recently commoditized world is a book “written” by a self-proclaimed hero currently named Charles Falco with the assistance of the “true crime” writer Kerrie Droban.
The book is titled Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs. It will be officially published by the Thomas Dunne division of St. Martin’s Press on February 5, 2013.
I started looking for this Falco guy in May 2012 after he was interviewed by a Fox crime reporter in Los Angeles. The reporter’s name is Chris Blatchford. His “investigative report” was titled “The Green Nation is on a mission to replace the Hells Angels as the baddest outlaw biker gang.” The Green Nation – for anyone who just stumbled upon these words while searching for discounted beauty products or classic rock CDs – refers to the Vagos Motorcycle Club. Members of that club tend to wear a lot of green.
Police have long accused the Vagos of being a ruthless mafia. And, although the Vagos sincerely feel exactly the same way about the police, correct thinking Americans are compelled by both right wing and left wing social orthodoxy to agree with the cops. At the same time there is no denying that outlaw bikers are now a mass media commodity. You’ve probably noticed this. If you haven’t there may be other subtleties of the post-millennial world that yet elude you. Like, that little thing you see everywhere that looks like a model of one the black slabs in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is called an iPhone. Yes. It is spelled just like that. Welcome to Eisenhower’s nightmare.
An unignorable segment of the world’s male population, with a correspondingly obvious pile of loose cash, is fascinated with men like the Vagos. Motorcycle outlaws are the new James Bond. Like Bond, no one wants to defend them, no one wants to know them, no one in his right mind even wants to stand next to one of them lest they get blown up but very many men want to be them: Because of the untraceable guns; the uninhibited stompings and stabbings; the beautiful, easily available, wanton, multi-orgasmic women; the forbidden intoxicants; and, best of all, because outlaws demand the fear and respect that is usually reserved only for political nerds and the business school graduates who majored in stealing other people’s houses and pensions. The Vagos represent something unacknowledged but unforgotten in postmodern males. And, this fantasy identification with capable, confident, free, proud and dangerous men may say something about what has gone wrong with America. It might even partly explain the continuing cablecast of Sons of Anarchy on FX and The Devils Ride on Discovery. But, history is no longer about meaning. Blatchford illustrates that.
Blatchford was working both sides of this street during his two part, Sunday night, sweeps month news event. The story was so important that Fox devoted almost 15 minutes to the subject, divided between two newscasts, betting that Blatchford could manufacture enough vicarious thrills that his audience would tune in and then not change channels minute after minute after endless, commercial free, television minute. Fox accused the Vagos of being traffic scofflaws, psychopaths and sexists. Blatchford owns a George Foster Peabody Award, but in L.A. he is more famous for his dramatic delivery. He is to Los Angeles something like what John Facenda once was to Philadelphia. Blatchford explained one snatch of footage with a stentorian, “Even their own women, as you can see spelled out on the back of their jackets, are branded property of the Vago who owns them.” No matter how this pronouncement might look on a page it sounded more important when Blatchford said it.
Falco was one of the biker authorities Blatchford interviewed on camera. Falco is a large man with a slight lisp. He wore cool, dark glasses and the television reporter identified him as “Charles Falco who infiltrated the Vagos for two and a half years.”
I have a long and continuing interest in the world of motorcycle clubs and it seemed to me at the time that what Blatchford’s story really meant was that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was preparing for the long-expected racketeering case against the Vagos by softening up the jury pool. Now I think Blatchford’s expose had at least as much to do with history, cross media synergy and, of course, bucks.
The ability to type words into the Google search field also revealed that Falco was the subject of a forthcoming book then titled Inside Out: My Life Undercover with the Vagos. It took months to find the capsule review Blatchford wrote for Falco’s book. Chris loved it. “The paranoia of crooks, the desperation of incarceration, the fear of getting whacked, and survival working undercover in a brutal biker world devoid of common decency. You can read about it all in this book. But Charles Falco actually lived it and miraculously came out a better man. Chris Blatchford, author of The Black Hand”

2

I started looking for Falco approximately as an ugly, old drunk looks for love. I blindly bumped into bodies until eventually, one metaphorical closing time, I got lucky.
Falco’s name used to be Ashley Charles Wyatt. I don’t quite believe him when he tells me this but I later learn that he is at least named Ashley Wyatt and he has always answered to Charles. He went to high school in the San Fernando Valley and he has Wyatt tattooed on the back of his head. At one point he also had a Vagos Victorville side rocker tattooed on his right torso. Vagos remember him well.
In the club he was called Charles or sometimes Tijuana Charles – the latter because he was almost arrested one night for pissing on a wall down Mexico way. The club name he gives himself in interviews including his interview with Blatchford and in “his” book is Quickdraw. That phrase was a jest thrown at him one night in a bar. The throwaway line was preserved on audio, in a device hidden in his asthma inhaler and apparently, after almost seven years reflection, he decided he liked Quickdraw better than Charles. There isn’t anything particularly wrong or unusual about revising one’s personal recollections. “Yes, I have a thousand tongues,” Stephen Crane confessed, “And nine and ninety-nine lie.” I think the lies mean something different with Falco than they did with Crane though, because Crane was honest and self-deprecating about his life while Falco now seeks to alchemize his personal recollections into a valuable commodity.
“What do you think when you hear that? ‘Quickdraw,’” a gracious gentleman asks me as I prepare to write this.
“Gunfighter,” I answer. The gentleman makes a silent, contemptuous gesture.
Falco also claims that members of the American Outlaws Association may remember him as “Chef,” possibly a reference to a previous career he claims as a methamphetamine manufacturer.
Falco has a Reno phone number but, he tells me, “I do not live in Reno and never have. I entered the Witness Protection Program in 2007. Thus, I was given a complete new identity which is what I use now.”
After riding with the Vagos the snitch earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, mostly online, in Bible Studies from Liberty Christian University and he went significantly into debt doing it. That surprised me. I had not previously known that a seeker could actually go into debt studying the Bible but Falco told me he had. And, even the United States Marshals are powerless against the kingpins of the student loan racket. “The Marshals do not allow you to get out of past debt,” Falco explains. “So in my case I owed several thousand dollars in student loans that I still pay under Ashley. These bills are sent to Marshal mail drops, which are then sent to DC, which are then sent to my area Marshal field office, who then sends them to me. I have several of these Marshal mail drops in California and Nevada that I use. Kind of cool on how this works! I am no longer in this program, but they still forward my mail. Even after you leave the WPP you keep your new identity, since it is now your legal new name. I hope that makes sense.”
The logistics made sense even if the part about going into debt reading the Bible did not. A face-to-face interview might have helped me better understand but my conversations with the snitch were accomplished in writing, by email with his muse and chronicler Kerrie Droban acting as an intermediary.
Falco has a GMX.com email address. Global Mail Exchange is a German telecommunications company. And, after I wrote to him at charlesfalco@gmx.com he insisted that we use one of Droban’s email accounts. I suspect he is in Phoenix. If he wanted to avoid Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws as he has reasons to do, he might feel most safe in Cave Creek near Sonny Barger’s home, but that is only my blind hunch.
Even if Falco is exactly where I think he is as long as he is careful he will remain virtually invisible. There are at least two other Charles Falcos in Arizona. One of them is an almost famous, Harley riding, physics professor in Tucson. That Charles Falco was one of the curators of the Guggenheim museum’s famous exhibit “The Art of the Motorcycle.” So if you just Google Charles Falco and Arizona and motorcycle you will get the wrong man every time. The professor and the snitch both wear dark mustaches. A second Charles Falco in Arizona is an old guy in Yuma.

3

Falco agrees to be interviewed. “I am not doing this interview because I think you will make my book a best seller,” he explains. “My main purpose is to give you correct information.”
I begin with the obvious. “Will you be answering the questions or Kerrie? I’m sure it would be lovely to have a conversation with her but I would prefer to have a conversation with you.”
“I don’t know how to prove to you that I am not Kerrie,” the snitch replies promptly, “but I can tell you that she is a much better writer than me.” He answers multiple questions in a single paragraph. “I have never had anything to do with the HA. They were hunting us as Outlaws though, so I know how they operate. I never heard of a five part plan to get rid of motorcycle clubs. The ATF is not interested in motorcycle clubs, just motorcycle gangs. I think the ATF has done a great job in decreasing the amount of criminal activity these gangs participate in. If you compare the U.S. biker gangs of the seventies and eighties with current U.S. biker gangs, they have about ten percent of the criminal power they once had. I believe this (is the result of) the great job law enforcement (has done) in bringing these gang members to justice. I truly believe that.” Maybe he truly does.
The interview with the snitch stretches out. Near its conclusion, I while away a pleasant evening near the Beverly Hills end of the Sunset Strip with some gracious gentlemen who knew Ashley Charles Wyatt during all of his adventure with the Vagos. In the course of the conversation, as the night turned cold and I began to shiver, I asked the gentlemen to summarize Ashley Wyatt for me.
“Pussy,” one answered immediately.
“Snake!” A gracious gentleman shook his finger and another nodded his head up and down. “In a word, snake.”
“Punk,” one of them added in case I missed their point.
“Also, he is stoned all the time.”
“Like obnoxiously stoned. Constantly.”
“And, he’s not very smart.”
Falco’s stupidity may be why he, unlike most biker authorities, has heard of me. “I have been reading your articles for years,” he tells me, “and I know you lean toward the one percenter side of stories.” He is broadminded and tolerant of my shortcomings. “While, I know most of what you believe about the ATF is incorrect I still value your right to free speech.”
If only we had been able to meet face to face I’m sure I would have said, “Thank you.”
Falco is evasive and vague about the events that led him to betray a group of men who all call each other “brother.”
The gracious gentlemen in West Hollywood are much more straightforward. “Charles was arrested in 1995 in Las Vegas for armed robbery. He got 5 years. Not sure if it was suspended or how that ended up. He was then rearrested at LAX for failing to declare over twenty thousand in cash that he was carrying on his person. Then he admitted it was drug money. He sold himself to the world and in March 2004 he started hanging around the Vagos. The raids were in March 2006 so he was around the club for a few days less than two years. Does that help?” It helped.
While Wyatt/Falco was awaiting sentencing, “he called every police force he could find and volunteered to work for them. He finally hooked up with the DEA and then with the ATF.”
Falco’s version is more cinematic. It is also contradicts what I have been told by multiple sources. Not that that means anything. Truth plus two dollars will buy you a cup of coffee.

4

“I started as a DEA informant,” Falco says, beginning where all good story tellers begin, in the middle of things, “and I was one for two years before I became an informant for the ATF. Prior to becoming an informant for the DEA, I was a drug dealer.
“I was one of the most loyal criminals I had ever met. I made most of my closest friends a small fortune. During those years I would have died before turning. That was before I was betrayed by everyone, loved ones, friends and business partners. Of course, shortly after this life changing betrayal, the DEA and US Customs raided my house. I had been betrayed in every way even though I had been loyal in every way. When the cops raided my house I was in a bottomless pit and that day my life was saved. I became an informant. But not by betraying friends. Instead I worked the streets like an undercover going after criminals that I had no prior relationship with. I started to enjoy the work and started realizing the horribleness of my past deeds. Working undercover made me feel like I was repenting for my misdeeds and I felt like I was paying back society.
“After two years of working for the DEA I decided that I wanted to do something big, like infiltrating a gang, but I was not sure which kind or which one. I convinced my DEA handler that me infiltrating a gang was the best way I could help society and myself. My handler referred me to a Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups. I spoke with this detective and told her I could infiltrate any gang that a white male could become a member of and that all I needed to know was where they hung out. She said the gang that was committing a high amount of serious crimes was the Vagos MC. I had heard of them, but I had no prior relationship with any biker gang members, period. So she gave me the names of the bars where they hung out and from that information I was able to infiltrate the Victorville Chapter of the Vagos. Once I started to get close to some of the Vagos and it seemed I might be able to get in I was introduced to Koz and Carr (ATF Agents Darrin Kozlowski and John Carr). From there, the DEA handed me over to the ATF and Koz became my handler.”
“Koz is my hero. No other man has done more for me than him. He is a great man! You have wrong impressions of this guy and the rest of his team. They never, ever, went after these gangs as a personal vendetta. The ATF works gangs, that’s what they do.
“Koz is a great man. He always treated me with respect. He never looked down on me. He became a friend. He has always been there for me. Since I was an honest and devoted CI the ATF treated me as one of their own. In fact, they told the Vagos this when they arrested them. They still treat me this way. In fact, everyone I meet in law enforcement treats me as an equal, which is awesome. The government is much more loyal, fair, respectful and honest than any biker gang, criminal organization or maybe even any organization period. They are a true brotherhood of loyal, and honest friends.
“Ciccone (ATF Agent John Ciccone), Carr and Koz work biker gangs not because they have something personal against biker gangs but because it is their job to bring gang members to justice. The conspiracy stories are fiction when it comes to these three guys.”
In his book Falco describes himself as “a former Marine and ‘hard-core drug dealer,’ a ‘coyote’ who once smuggled human cargo across the border from Mexico.”
When asked to elaborate on his days in the drug business the snitch tells me, “I did move weight…I was a horrible man. From 1991 to 1995 I was a mid-level cocaine dealer. In 1996 I switched to selling meth. From 1998 to 2001 I manufactured about 125 pounds a year in meth, mostly in LA.”
I wanted to know more about his tragic betrayal by his friends.
“My betrayal I will not go too much into because I have forgiven and gone on with my life. It is very painful to reflect back, but I will tell you that everyone I was close to, with the exception of one person, betrayed me. Shortly, after the betrayals I became addicted to my own meth and shortly after that I was busted, so the police came at the perfect time. I was near death when they raided my house which turned around my life. After getting out of federal jail, I gave up meth and gave up living as a criminal.”
Falco’s statements to me and in his book are all a weird mix of truth and lies. It is obvious that he thinks I am so stupid that I will never catch on – and that I am so clueless that I will never try to verify what he says. For example, he does not tell me the name of the “Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups.” In his book Falco calls her “Samantha Kiles.” Multiple public documents call her “Shelli Kelly.” The lie about Samantha/Shelli/Kiles/Kelly stands out in hindsight because it is blatantly gratuitous. I began to realize that Wyatt/Falco lies because he likes to lie and also because he can’t stop himself.
He tells me: “I was not paid anything for Operation 22 Green…. You don’t work for the ATF for money. If you are doing it for money you would work for the FBI or DEA…. I did it because I felt like I was doing something great for our society and the government asked for my help.”
So I asked him, “How did you survive while you were doing volunteer undercover work? The usual procedure is that registered CIs earn a salary, which is now up to about $2,500 a month. In general, CIs participate in criminal activity. That is the point of CIs. Officially UCs, undercover agents and TFOs, tactical field officers, cannot commit crimes so CIs do the crimes instead. In general, CIs keep the profits from their crimes. Additionally, CIs are paid a performance bonus that typically reaches six figures when their work on their case is done. Let me ask you again, what and how were you paid?”
He replies, “While I was doing the Vago case I was told even a DUI could put me back in jail. We knew I would have to get in bar fights occasionally, but that was it. I took it on myself to take a hit of a marijuana joint if it was passed around and I was in front of a large group of Vagos. I did this so that they would not think I was a law enforcement officer. The ATF did not want me to even do something as minor as smoking a joint, but I thought I needed to. Otherwise, I would have looked too clean. If a CI is committing serious crimes while working undercover he or she would be charged for a crime just like anyone else. Just because you’re a CI does not mean you are above the law.”
I am still too dull to understand how Falco kept a roof over his head, food in his belly and gas in his tank.
“It was fair that I did not get paid for Operation 22 Green; I was still under heavy charges. Even though I had already done a couple years of work for the government I felt like and still do that I owe them my life. For me Rebel, the government saved me, so I feel forever indebted.”
“I am a Christian. I teach the youth group at my church. For me God and the Government saved my life.”
“I do not have anything personal against one percenters. I look at them as the same as any other gang, no worse no better, but they are a gang. They fight and kill over territory they do not own. While doing the Vagos’ investigation I worked a 9 to 5 job. I delivered car parts for a dealership. I also worked as a handyman for the Vago chapter president of the chapter I infiltrated.”
That Victorville chapter President was Scott “Psycho” Sikoff. He was Wyatt/Falco’s most loyal friend and defender in the club and his only visible means of support. The snitch later reported to his handlers that his friend had sold him weed and fought by his side. Sikoff was subsequently charged with assault with a deadly weapon and distribution of marijuana.

5

When I become too annoying Falco writes, “I think you still look at our society from a one percenter view point which is anti-social. I could be wrong but your opinions seem slanted that way. I hope that does not offend you. In no way do I think I am better than you or anybody else. As an ex-criminal the first thing I had to change when going straight was the way I thought. When you’re a criminal or gang member you try to justify why you do what you do. When I was a criminal I thought the only thing that was wrong to do was hurt or kill the innocent or snitch. That is a completely anti-social way of looking at the world.”
“These one percenter clubs, gangs, are not as loyal as people think. After Operation Black Diamond (Falco’s last infiltration for the ATF) more than half the members (of the American Outlaws Association that were) charged turned. The loyalty and brotherhood these clubs say they have for each other is one hundred percent bullshit. Not only do they betray each other after being arrested, but they were doing it all the time behind each other’s backs – fucking each other’s old ladies, lying, gossiping, and backstabbing each other for power. Betrayal is the normal part of the outlaw lifestyle and I don’t say this just because of my betrayal when I was a drug dealer, but because it was a constant part of what the outlaw bikers did to each other. I witnessed it day in and day out. It is not CIs and UCs these gangs should be watching out for. It is themselves.”
Some of what Falco tells me about this counterculture is true and some of it is not. The Vagos, like all outlaw clubs, strictly forbid adultery with a club brother’s woman. The old lady to whom he refers was the wife of the other ATF confidential informant in Operation 22 Green. All motorcycle outlaws gossip and they probably gossip a little more about each other than the general population because clubs tend to be very closed societies. I am not sure Falco really wants me to pursue the subject of truth and lies with him.
“I have told some people that I am interviewing ‘a snitch,’” I write. “Is that a fair term, in your opinion? Do you consider yourself a cop? I watched a little of a bad Tommy Lee Jones movie called Black Moon Rising the other day. The blurb described Jones’ character as a ‘freelance FBI agent.’ Ever consider yourself a ‘freelance ATF agent?’”
“Calling me a snitch is a little harsh, since I did not snitch on these guys, but I can picture you referring to me as a ‘snitch,’” he answers. “Again, I was never (one of those) one percenter(s) who got busted and decided to rat his friends out so he did not have to go to jail. From the first second, I met these guys I was working for the government. Their true brothers that betrayed them would be snitches, not me. I always called myself a private government contractor. Of course, I don’t think I am a cop. I’m not crazy. But they do treat me as one of their own.”
I sought and interviewed Falco/Charles/Tijuana Charles/Ashley because I was interested in the psychology of men who do what the snitch did. My first guess was that maybe he identified with the police. And near the end of his book he or Droban wrote, “Post-traumatic stress – it floated through my subconscious…. I escaped into the company of other agents. We formed our own brotherhood bound by common trauma…. All of us prepared each day to sacrifice our lives for a greater cause…. Like the other agents, I lived my life off duty.”
I conclude the snitch is a narcissist and probably a psychopath. No, I am not a psychologist. You don’t exactly have to be Sigmund Freud to see that Falco is a narcissist. You only have to have gone to community college. That one time. For a couple of days. Or so.

6

Factually, Falco was a participant in three, intertwined, ATF run, biker investigations. All three were connected to a small cadre of ATF agents that members of the Bureau have frankly called “Ciccone’s Gang” after ATF biker specialist John Ciccone. Ciccone, who expects to retire in another two years, has spent most of his career in the Bureau investigating, collecting intelligence about and making cases against outlaw motorcycle clubs. He has – by his own account but there is no reason to doubt him – participated in more than 200 motorcycle club investigations. He works out of the ATF Field Office in Glendale, California. And since 1997, beginning with a “One Percenter Task Force” investigation of the Hells Angels and the Sundowners Motorcycle Clubs in Los Angeles, Ciccone has worked with ATF agents William Queen, Jay Dobyns, Vincent Cefalu, John Carr and Darrin Kozlowski on multiple occasions. Ciccone is a short, appealing and handsome man who has taken pains to avoid public attention but two of the associates, Queen and Dobyns, have written best selling books. Dobyns and Cefalu have reinvented themselves as “ATF whistleblowers.” Carr has participated in a direct way in at least four investigations of biker clubs. Kozlowski has participated in undercover investigations of the Vagos twice, the Warlocks twice, the Outlaws, the Hells Angels, the Mongols and the Sons of Silence. An outlaw named Kevin “Spike” O’Neill who is now serving a life sentence has called Kozlowski a psychopath.
Most Americans think police investigate crimes. Ciccone’s gang tries to catch club members in the act of committing crimes. Sometimes they suggest the crimes. Frequently, these government agents facilitate real or imagined crimes – going so far as to act out episodes of “guerilla theater” (a term used by an Assistant U.S. Attorney following one of these investigation) including staged gunfights and game planned drug transactions. Typically, these investigations involve extensive electronic and other surveillance and data mining of club members in the hopes of catching someone somewhere doing something illegal. What those members get caught doing are usually minor assaults and minor drug and firearms transactions that would be prosecuted in state court if they were committed by anybody but a motorcycle club member. But, motorcycle club members and associates are almost always prosecuted under the racketeering statutes called RICO and VICAR which carry penalties of up to life imprisonment. Although it is not illegal to belong to a motorcycle club, club members are frequently coerced into pleading guilty to that non-existent crime. The ATF, to a lesser extent the FBI, and with increasing frequency the Department of Homeland Security are all at war with motorcycle clubs. The war is international and it is intended to drive all motorcycle clubs out of existence. Creative legal strategies have been devised to punish members for simply belonging to clubs like the Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws.
In the most successful investigations, ATF agents or their proxies, called Confidential Informants or Sources of Information, actually join clubs in order to both gather information about the membership and practices of the target organization but also, when the opportunity presents itself, to discover or manufacture reasons to prosecute club members. It is an astonishingly expensive war on social and political dissent. It has intensified since the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. It is, in fact, the greater part of the domestic “war on terror.” This part of the war against Al Qaeda is legitimized by rhetoric. Members and associates of clubs like the Vagos and the Outlaws are routinely called “domestic terrorists” and “street terrorists.” The clubs themselves are usually called “transnational gangs.”
Falco was an agent proxy in Operation 22 Green, Operation Black Rain and Operation Black Diamond. The names of these investigations are coined by bureaucrats for their estimated public relations effect.
Operation 22 Green employed two confidential informants, many dozens of ATF Agents and local police and lasted three years. During that time Falco and another informant made 25 alleged contraband purchases. At the conclusion of the long investigation police seized 132 legal firearms and two illegal firearms, 46 grams of cocaine, a total of about ten ounces of methamphetamine (I neglected to ask Wyatt/Falco if he cooked that crank), $15,000 in currency that was all later returned, firecrackers which were identified in the press as “explosives,” more than one thousand rounds of legally purchased and owned ammunition and numerous articles of clothing that indicated the wearer belonged to or supported the Vagos. Police also confiscated personal computers, photo albums, family souvenirs, cell phones and other personal items. The raids themselves were intended to punish their victims for belonging to a motorcycle club. At the conclusion of 22 Green 700 militarized police carried out an infantry assault intended mostly to punish club members and their families by wrecking their homes.
During the raids one Vago was found to have a Chinese throwing star embedded in a wall. He was charged with possession of a deadly weapon. Another Vago, a former martial arts instructor, home made a set of nunchucks thirty years before then literally nailed them to his garage wall as a decoration. He was charged with manufacturing a deadly weapon. During the dawn raids, a mother was pulled from her shower and dragged outside naked. A nine-year-old girl was only allowed to urinate if she let two Sheriffs watch.
Falco’s crowning achievement in this investigation was the tape recording of incriminating statements by a man who had knowledge of a homicide. The homicide was the result of a drug robbery gone wrong. One shot was fired, arguably by accident. One man was killed and a woman was wounded by the same bullet. Two subjects were charged with murder. One of them became a cooperating witness and was sentenced to one year in jail for voluntary manslaughter. The other suspect, Daniel Lee Foreman, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. It was not an open and shut case. Foreman would later write, “I was originally offered a seven year plea agreement on this same case…. The fact is, I turned it down on principle. Why should I accept any time for a crime I hadn’t committed?”
Falco told me, “Operation 22 Green was successful in my eyes, just for the murder case alone….”
After entering the witness protection program in 2007 Falco relocated to Lynchburg, Virginia and worked as a mechanic. He decided the next year “to return to my life undercover, but this time as a well-paid informant.” He volunteered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to try to infiltrate the Hells Angels in Ontario in return for $1 million. When that fell through his mentor and hero Kozlowski introduced him to the Richmond, Virginia chapter of the Mongols. At the same time, Kozlowski was working undercover as a member of the Cypress Park, California chapter of the Mongols. It was the conclusion of ATF Operation Black Rain and the Virginia Mongols were entirely the invention of the ATF. The Bureau, using a paid confidential informant named Daniel Horrigan and a source of information named Lars Wilson, established the Virginia Mongols as a way to gain information about other motorcycle clubs in Virginia. After the raids that officially concluded Black Rain, the three ATF agents and two paid confidential informants who comprised the Virginia Mongols applied for membership in another motorcycle club, the American Outlaws Association.
That investigation was eventually named Operation Black Diamond. Twenty-seven Outlaws were indicted for racketeering in June 2010. Most of them pled guilty to racketeering, which might sound impressive unless you understand that under current case law every organization is a racket and every member who has broken any law in the last ten years is a racketeer. The Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church are, technically, rackets. Virtually no one beats a racketeering charge at trial. Everybody except for the very rich and powerful pleads guilty to racketeering because it is usually the smart move. One Outlaw was gunned down by federal agents in Maine. The charges against another were dropped. The racketeering acts with which the men were charged included having illegal slot machines in Outlaws clubhouses, buying and selling contraband and several minor and not so minor assaults.
The big target in Operation Black Diamond was Outlaws National President Jack Rosga, a 53-year-old grandfather with no criminal record who was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Falco/Chef played virtually no part in Operation Black Rain and was mostly an observer during Operation Black Diamond. All of the war on the motorcycle outlaw menace in this moment in America is a kind of a circus. And in that circus Ashley/Falco/Charles/Chef was once one of the clowns. And that proves to be the single most annoying thing about “his” book. The putative author has no story to tell.

7

“How did you connect with Kerrie Droban?”
“I saw Kerrie on Gangland,” the snitch answers. “So, I read her book. I thought it was great. I found her email address and asked if she would be interested in writing my book.”
Blatchford?
“Blatchford was doing a story on the Vagos and he was referred to me. We talked on the phone and I told him I would love to do an interview with him. I watched him for years in L.A. and have always enjoyed his reports. He was very nice, professional. Other than that I don’t know much more about him.”
“Who referred you?”
“Blatchford was referred to me by my agent. He seemed to be a bright and nice guy. He loves to expose the truth about gangs, which I think is a noble thing.”
Falco’s agent is San Diego literary agent Jill Marsal. Marsal politely declined to comment about the Falco book. But she probably represents Falco in only a limited way called “hip-pocketing” which means she represents Falco for this one project. Her relationship with Kerrie Droban is more established.
Droban is an attorney, a former prosecutor and a mother who practices law in a country club suburb north of Phoenix. She aspires to earn what Robert Frost’s called the “gift word,” which is “poet.” Droban is widely reviled in the outlaw world. Many club members think her total lack of sympathy for and her fatuousness about motorcycle outlaws is annoying. And, just when she is starting to enjoy some commercial success she seems to be fading as a writer. Long before she became a biker authority Droban wrote a few lines I particularly like.

I’ll tell you about my days in Kenya:

 

                                                          Inevitably, flying termites litter the porch

With wings in the season of heavy rain.

Males struggle naked on the stones,

Their female mates already gone.

Umbula, the cook, fries them in chocolate.

 

I cannot describe the taste

There has never been much money in poetry and after her days in Kenya, if there actually were days in Kenya, Droban became a prosecutor. Her prince turned out to be a Glendale, Arizona homicide detective named Sergei Droban. She turned to prose and she had no more success than most writers until her social and professional connections introduced her to the ATF infiltration of the Arizona Angels. Her first publishing success was Running With The Devil. It was the best book published about Operation Black Biscuit. Although, that is faint praise. The other writers were the pompous and self-important Julien Sher, the psychotherapeutically intriguing Jay “Bird” Dobyns and the children’s book author Nils Johnson-Shelton.
Voila! The poet began to appear in publicity photos wearing a black leather jacket. Step by step, Droban stopped being a writer and instead became a “brand.” As dogs learn to sit up and beg, she learned to say, “My author brand is graphic realism. Raw, gritty stories that demand an audience.” Marsal became her agent and she sold Droban’s second biker book, Prodigal Father, Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Club, to a mystifyingly successful writer and editor at St. Martin’s Press, named Rob Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick, 43, became a big success after he wrote a bad and un-insightful book about the year 1969 called 1969. He sold and was paid for what the world most needs now, yet another biography of Bruce Springsteen, and he published a biography of former Senators shortstop Cecil Travis. He has been described as “a journalist, a historian, a sociologist, and a sportswriter.” He has been a talking head on the History Channel and he “also writes about film, music, sports, and cultural issues for The Huffington Post.” After he published Prodigal Father, Pagan Son he bought the rights to Droban’s collaboration with Wyatt/Falco in November 2011.
About his work as an editor Kirkpatrick has written, “I specialize in narrative nonfiction and have built an eclectic list including history, sports, pop culture, and biography/memoir. I look to publish entertaining and compelling stories – especially books that should have been written before but hadn’t – and seek to effectively position all my books with memorable titles, enthusiastic blurbs, and eye-catching covers. In my ‘free’ time, I’ve also completed a PhD in English….”
Kirkpatrick ignored a request to answer basic questions about the Falco book. The questions he would not answer included “How was the book fact checked? Was it submitted to the ATF for authorization?” “Should a ‘true-crime’ book be true? Is it necessary that it be true?” And, “Briefly, in what ways are you responsible for this book?”
I believe he wrote the book blurb that he expects will “effectively position” the Wyatt/Falco/Droban collaboration. The blurb argues, “In separate investigations that spanned years and coasts, Falco risked his life, suffering a fractured neck and a severely torn shoulder, working deep undercover to bring violent sociopaths to justice.” Falco’s injuries are significantly overstated. The snitch couldn’t keep up with an ATF agent while riding his motorcycle in the rain in Virginia, ran onto the grass and went over the high side.
Kirkpatrick continues, “Falco’s engrossing account of the dangers of the biker underworld and justice is perfect for fans of FX’s Sons of Anarchy as well as Hunter Thompson’s classic Hell’s Angels.”
Kirkpatrick’s job is to create book products that pander to niche marketing categories. With this book he is chasing the Sons of Anarchy audience. He is also chasing after people who have read Hunter Thompson’s book about the Angels. He wants to tell those audiences a story that looks to him like a proven success. In other words he thinks the snitch’s tale is the exact same story that has sold well for almost fifty years. And also, he thinks Falco’s book is exactly the same as a story that was invented in a conference room in Hollywood. He either doesn’t care or notice that neither Droban or Falco is exactly in Thompson’s league as a writer, or for that matter even Kurt Sutter’s.
You should know about Kirkpatrick because whatever story Falco told Droban, and whatever story Droban wrote, it has now been tailored to fit a well worn editorial formula. This is simply how modern publishing works – just as Blatchford trading his cache as a journalist to ingratiate himself to Marsal and Kirkpatrick is exactly how modern journalism works. This is how Jenna Bush became a best selling author and journalist. Kirkpatrick exemplifies what Jay Dobyns meant several years ago, by “some 5th Avenue pogue whose biggest risk in life has been to decide how much of his 401k to take out to buy his yacht.” St. Martin’s offices are on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.

8

The product of all these invisible social and economic forces, of Wyatt/Falco’s egomania, Kirkpatrick’s fatuousness and Droban’s ambition, is a dismal and bloated vampire novel with Falco starring in the role of Van Helsing. Just as the snitch now called Falco truly believes in his own importance I truly believe that publishing this waste of perfectly good trees should be prosecuted as an environmental crime. Most of what Wyatt/Falco/Droban/Kirkpatrick tell readers are lies. Not mistakes, not hyperbole but simply lies. There are so many lies that a legion of fact checkers would go blind trying to correct them all. Over and over, Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws are described as rabid, ravenous wolves. Civilians are innocent, fluffy, little bunnies. Oh no, little bunny! Don’t go in that bar! No! No!
Because Falco did so little other than get stoned and incriminate a man who may or may not be guilty of murder, much of the book attempts to describe what Wyatt/Falco dreamt. “I dreamed of rushing rapids, of light shallow water, of warning Vs in the ripples. There’s something down there, I shouted into cold winds. But no one heard me. River left. I paddled furiously toward shore. River left. Get out. Get out. Eddy the boat. Obstacle ahead.” Apparently Droban thought that if she just free associated enough of this crap, the word count might eventually total the number specified in her contract.
Most of the book is written in a narrative voice authors usually use to manipulate their readers into closely identifying with a fictional hero. “My heart hammered against my chest. Surrounded by dark shapes clad in denim and dirty patches of heat, I had never felt more alone. As an informant, I had no backup, no surveillance team, no one to hear the bullet penetrate my skull if things soured…. Not only had I confirmed for the government that the Vagos trafficked in drugs and illegal weapons; I had also established they were involved in committing homicides, the violent trademark of motorcycle gangs. I swelled with a sense of duty, of serving society. My role was no longer about self-preservation, it was about justice.”
Over and over Falco wears his duplicity like a Silver Star:
“I wanted to shout out, ‘Not me, not me, I’m not one of them. I’m one of the good guys.” “I wasn’t my costume, I wasn’t a badass. I was one of the good guys.” “Through our testimony we would likely join the ranks of other ‘brave and noble’ men who paid the price to crush Al-Qaeda terrorists or chill further mob violence.” “Meanwhile, Koz worried that I had become too soft, ‘too nice, too much of a gentleman’ gangster. He didn’t want me to be like ‘fucking James Bond,’ but he urged me to ‘be more aggressive, act more like a real gangster.’” “For three years I knew my role, and the culmination of my life’s work.” “Strangely, the lying bothered me the most even though I had been deceptive about my life since I was nineteen years old: first as a drug dealer, then as an informant and now as a completely revised person.” “Like soldiers returning from war, I imagined I experienced similar post-traumatic stress.” “Neither Twist nor the Vagos loved me or each other, they loved the idea of me and their brotherhood.” “For the briefest of moments I felt what a celebrity must.” “The whole idea that Vagos would defend each other, even die for each other, was bullshit. Code, club colors was all illusion and delusion. The seduction of being someone else was an addiction.” “I drifted off to my safe place, my subconscious.” “Some experiences are too profound to translate: war, military service, and life undercover.” “In a few hours, I would return to that lonely place, to the underworld, inhabited by undercover operatives, where my life completely transformed.”
Really sings doesn’t it? Maybe it was the prose Blatchford loved. How about you? Do you think you would like to read another 70,000 words of this?
The phony Falco informs his eager audience that all Vagos are phonies. “The notion that motorcycle gangs had any interest in charities or children was perverse. They needed money to fund their drug and arms deals. And they fit into the real world the way sociopaths blended, by mimicking human emotion and wearing acceptable masks, by pretending to care about children’s causes.”
And, among other atrocities, members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club are anti “little people.” In one of the dozens of story lines in this insider account Falco becomes afraid that his new club brothers might force him to fuck the three-foot-tall porn star Bridget the Midget. “That night I crawled into the van, but sleep eluded me. Bridget floated into my conscience.” Into his “conscience.” Not his consciousness but his conscience.

Postcript

I finish Falco/Wyatt/Charles/Droban/Kirkpatrick’s rotten book and abandon the interview with him. I know before I write half of it that this article is already a loser. I don’t want to write about Falco. I don’t like Falco. I want to punch him in the face.
I want to punch Falco in the face that night on the Strip. I want to punch somebody in the face as I make the always thrilling, diving right turn from Sunset onto La Cienega with a very important taxi in a hurry just behind me. I want to punch the cab driver in the face. I want to punch somebody in the face because I have been told, by people who love me, that I have anger issues.
And, also I want to punch somebody in the face because we now live in a moment of lies. The government lies to us. The government lies to itself. The police lie to judges. Doctors lie to patients. Charles Falco, Kerrie Droban and Rob Kirkpatrick are all lying. And, I know those lies are tomorrow’s historical truth. And, if I throw enough punches at history maybe I will leave a mark.

OFF THE WIRE

OFF THE WIRE
Edmond Dantes
copblock.org
QUOTE THE CONSTITUTION
As many of you probably know, the State of California recently passed a law saying a warrant is needed for police to search your cellphone if you are placed under arrest. Policeone.com picked up the story and the police officers who commented on the story let their true feelings on the Constitution be known.
In the story, the author noted that this law, which forces police officers to follow the Constitution, was opposed by The Peace Officers Research Association of California. Why did the oppose it? Well because it threatens their auhtority to do whatever they want, law be damned.

The Peace Officers Research Association of California, which opposed the law, argued: “Restricting the authority of a peace officer to search an arrestee unduly restricts their ability to apply the law, fight crime, discover evidence valuable to an investigation and protect the citizens of California.”

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, the quotes on the PoliceOne website and on their facebook page just go to prove what we already knew, cops are not fans of the Constitution when it comes to restrictions on their authority. These people crave power, whether or not it is why they took the job, the power gets ahold of most officers and like the famous saying “power currupts”
PoliceOne.com user kas9kas posted this on the website,

A person arrested loses their fourth ammendment when Peace Officers seize their person and property. Anything found on an arrestee has always been fair game in the courts eyes. If we find counterfeit money in a wallet, a childs porno picture, or narcotics, it was still evidence that was legally obtained by arrest.

User sevans is really in favor of “Law Enforcement” Officers following the law

Boy am I glad I left California. The whacko legislature and governor know not what they do, unless allowing more criminals to avoid prosecution is their intent. I cannot believe they enacted this law after the California Supreme Court, one of the most liberal in the Country, upheld the search. I started in California and retired from Oregon. I’m truly surprised the liberal Oregon Court (either Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court) didn’t follow California.

I’ve noticed time and time again that anyone that is opposed to something a cop does, or just pisses them off in anyway, is a liberal in the minds of a PoliceOne.com commenter. I’ve yet to figure that out. But before I go on, let’s just take a look at what the US Constitution has to say about searching a persons property

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is an amendment that was written because British soldiers and were allowed to search any home they liked, at any time and for whatever reason they wanted. And since many Founding Fathers were smugglers, they did not like this. But if you want to piss off a cop, just quote the 4th amendment. Make sure you tell them that you have the right to be secure in your effects. This really sets them off, especially PoliceOne user rhaney1313

OK everybody…lets all of us standup and applause the absolute morons in Sacramento and that awesome looser Gov. Jerry (Sunshine) Brown. He and his merrymen and dancing babes did it again. Another BAD law………….From all of us real Californians…My apologies to the United States of America and to the citizens in each State.

That’s right, a real Californian is against getting a warrant to search someones property, and that is what your cell phone and any other electronic device you have in your car is, your private property. Now not all cops are against the Constitution restricting their path to absolute authority, USO131  is one of the good guys.

When you start eliminating the need for a warrant you start to go down a very slippery slope of the loss of your constitutional rights..
If you can’t wrap your head around what I am saying then wrap it around this… Some one is arrested for DUI and all the contents in their electronic device was downloaded? The key here is the subject was arrested… Their cell phone was searched even when the reason for the arrest had nothing to do with possibly of any evidence to USE AGAINST THEM MIGHT BE ON THAT CELL PHONE…
Again remember this YOU CAN AND WILL BE SEARCHED LIKE THIS AS WELL…

Glockman39 is another one of the good guys, however small that group may be. Here he responds to rhaney1313

You want to stand up an applaud the upholding of the constitution? That document which you were, I assume, sworn to uphold?
Tell me, what reason would you have to search an individual’s cell phone for, say, an open container arrest? Are you hoping to find pictures of him imbibing on previous occasions?
We have the fourth amendment, and warrants signed by judges for a reason. The same reason we have the second amendment right to protect ourselves with individual firearms ownership.
Really, folks, I can’t fathom why some of you are so upset by this, unless you are too lazy to put in the extra effort required to protect individual liberty.
And this isn’t a left/right issue. It’s a rule of law issue.

A warrant isn’t always needed, most people are too afraid to say no to an officer, and they know it. One trick cops use all the time, one which I fell for during a traffic stop a few years back, is just simply asking the person if they can search their property, as coolcoin points out

Hey, just ask for consent, most of the time you will get it, just like consent to search a car. The morons think they are smarter than you, and if they give you permission, they are banking on you being too lazy to follow through, because “they have nothing to hide”, right?

Yep, you heard it correct, this officer thinks we’re all morons, at least he admits it. Over at the PoliceOne.com facebook page, where officers are always more bold and hateful, commenter Matt Osborne expresses his disdain by claiming his job will me millions of times harder if he has to follow the rules he swore to uphold.

damn bunch of tree huggers. California is the i hate police state lets make their job 8000000000000 times harder. Every police officer just needs to take a day off at the same time and see how they fill about that.

Nothing says “fuck you, respect my authority” like an idle threat written with the wrong word (see how they FEEL about that)
Hey Johnny Lubeck, what do you think about this?

The best thing that can happen for the country is a west coast earthquake, where it seperates Cali, and it floats out into the pacific.

Oh, I see. That was rather……harsh.
Hey Thomas John Staubly Jr., you’re the next contestant on “I hate you private citizens who make us follow the law, I hope you fucking die” (In case there is confusion, I don’t hope he dies, I’m implying he wants you to die)

next their gunna make officers get a warrant before they can even knock on their door….this is absurd. thank god i live in a redf state that is actually pro-law enforcement and actually let them do their damn jobs

Oh I’m sorry Thomas, you weren’t done? You had something else to say about freedom loving Americans who love the Constitution and limits on governmental power, like someone else, who was it? Oh yeah, the Founding Fathers. But anyways, I believe you had something else to add to the conversation later on

 lets face it, these people who take issues with these type of searches arent hurt or offended by the searches. the ones who take issue with this are the anti leo and/or thuggin gangbangers trying to get out of a charge. if you dont have anything to hide and arent committing any crime, then quess what, you likely wont get searched. keep your nose out of crime and this wont be an issue. the majority of supreme court decisions are made from some thug trying to get out of a charge or some liberal nut case who is super anti-leo

Oh that’s right, anyone who stands up for their rights must be a….hold on, I wanna get this term correct…..thuggin gangbanger. Well he showed us! Good upstanding people wipe their ass with the Constitution, thuggin gangbangers are the ones who want their rights to be upheld.
Like I said earlier though, there are good cops who are in favor of this new law, I was unaware there was so many thuggin gangbangers with badges, like Christopher Powell.

some of you are crazy or lazy…how is it anti-le to say that someones cell phone is subject to protections of the 4th ammendment? Ask somebody if you can look at their cell phone, if they tell you no, than get a warrant…if you don’t have PC or enough to get a warrant, then you probably have no business looking anyway.

It’s really scary to see what cops honestly think of this ruling. So many of them are bold enough to come right out and say they don’t want to have to get a warrant to search a persons property, even though they swore to uphold a document that says they do.
But the real problem is that Probable Cause is never really defined in the Constitution. Cops use this all the time, they just saw “I had probable cause to believe that…….” and they can search anything without a warrant.
It’s time to stand up for your rights, if you aren’t already. If you are pulled over, and a cop asks if he can search something (your car, cell phone, laptop, whatever) tell him no. Just be prepared to deal with a pissed off cop, and maybe carry a pocket constitution with you at all times.

Bottom-line, the majority of the cops today are punk ass cowards who are in their line of work because they can prey on civilians. Cops either want to take your money and property or injure you. It’s why they’re cops. Take away their badges and guns and their true pussy character comes out. Ever notice how often lone cops shoot unarmed civilians or that most physical confrontations involve several cops beating the shit out of one person?
That’s because the cops these days are pussies. When I was a kid almost all of the cops were World War II or Korean War veterans. They weren’t afraid to duke it out, one on one with a suspect. They almost never pulled their guns. Nowadays, nothing but a bunch pussies. They will shoot you or gang thump you for looking at them wrong. They will shoot your dog for target practice. Not only are today’s cops sadistic cowards, they also break more laws than the average civilian. And that’s because they think they are superior to everyone else The law doesn’t apply to them. In California, most cops game the system for their own benefit. One example is the well documented phenomena of the majority of cops getting some kind of disability within a year of retirement. That way they pad their already outrageously large pensions with tax free disability payments. In the civilian world that’s called fraud. In the cop world it’s them taking something from civilians that cops are owed because they are superior.
Probable cause was never meant to be read as one term, viewed as reasonable suspicion of any “crime”. The most legitimate way in which we should read that phrase: probably have a cause or the cause is probable. And that one simple way of reading this often misinterpreted clause clears up all the mystery.
A cause in the common law of England meant a cause of action, a suit, a claim. And in these actions one would have to prove up their standing by presenting the corpus delecti, the actual proof of harm or injury. Thus, properly understood and enforced, the probable cause requirement of the 4th Amendment would eliminate the enforcement of virtually all victimless crimes. Too bad, so sad, it ain’t like that.
The blatant misconduct of law enforcement officers is horrifying. These are the people that we trust to uphold the Constitution of the United State of America, protect our civil liberties, and keep order in our society. When any one of them has the audacity to break the trust that has been placed in them by the citizens, it sickens me to my core.
I am all for doing the job that needs to be done, especially in the case of felons. However, what I am NOT a supporter of is the willingness of those sworn to uphold the law to break it. That spells doom and gloom for our nation if we allow those with authority, of any kind, to misuse it and abuse it.
A lawyer once came to speak at my college for Constitution Day. He had recently defended a man charged with murder, who was later found not guilty. When asked why he would choose to defend a person like that, he said, it may have been reprehensible for him to defend a person like that, but just because they are accused of a crime doesn’t mean that they lose the rights afforded to them by the Constitution of the United States of America. It may not always be what’s right, but that’s at least fair.
There should be no isolated incidents,but like you said,there are, most search warrant “probable cause” is gained, when a cop gives a “snitch” a break on an arrest, for information about other “crimes”,and a snitch will stretch the story as much as “it” has too.I’m sure you know the “MAJORITY” of the time,cops word the police report to their benefit. Most judges hand out search warrants like Halloween candy,and thats the real “SOB STORY”. But you believe cops should break the law,in order to enforce it. Bet back in school, when the teacher left the classroom,you filled her in on who did what. Then went home to tell mom your version of how you were, “KICKIN ASS AND TAKIN NAMES” Sorry I’m merely voicing an opinion from the other side.

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