OFF THE WIRE
By Carlos Miller


For the first time in history, we, the people, have true freedom of the press where it is no longer restricted to those who own the press.
And that’s not a bad thing considering the majority of news companies in this country are owned by a handful of corporations that have been consistently downsizing newsrooms, if not entirely slashing news departments as was the case with the Chicago Sun-Times last month when it fired its entire photography department, leaving the nation’s ninth largest newspaper dependent on reporters with iPhones to fill the void.
Thankfully, the First Amendment guarantees us all Freedom of the Press, meaning we have as much as right to to report on and disseminate the news as professional journalists, even if we’ve never set foot in a newsroom. In fact, it’s absolutely crucial that we step up to fill the void left by the mainstream media.
And we can begin doing that by recording police when they interact with the public,  including our very own interactions such as traffic stops. The goal is to not just record possible instances of police abuse, but to remind these officers that we are well aware of our rights to record them in public where they have no expectation of privacy (as they do to us).
After all, it is very clear that many of them don’t know we have that right or most likely would like to convince us we don’t have that right, even though numerous court decisions state otherwise, including the landmark Glik vs Boston decision that specifically stated that Freedom of the Press was guaranteed to all citizens.

The First Amendment right to gather news is, as the Court has often noted, not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public’s right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press. Houchins, 438 U.S. at 16 (Stewart, J., concurring) (noting that the Constitution “assure[s] the public and the press equal access once government has opened its doors”); Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 684 (“[T]he First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the public generally.”).
The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

The following are ten basic rules I’ve compiled to help citizens better understand their rights and to become better citizen journalists. These are just general guidelines and should not be considered legal advice as I am not a lawyer.
I am, however, a veteran journalist who spent almost ten years covering the cop beat for newspapers before launching this blog six years ago. And I have been arrested three times for photographing cops on a multitude of charges without a single conviction, except for one I had reversed on appeal where I represented myself.
I also have a book coming out next year on citizen journalism as you can see in the image above, which I will be writing over the summer.
So this is a topic I hope to frequent more often on my blog in the hopes of educating, encouraging and inspiring citizens to become part of the Fifth Estate, which is journalism of the people, by the people and for the people.

1. Learn to hold the camera: If you’re serious about citizen journalism, I recommend investing in a camera other than what you have on your Smartphone. You want something that produces high-quality video and records clear audio but that is small enough to carry with you wherever you go. Something that not only is able to record in low-light but also able to zoom in when cops force you to back up. A camera that records quality video as well as quality audio. Probably something with an external microphone jack even if you don’t believe you’ll ever use it.
Technology is advancing so fast that it would be pointless to make any recommendations, but it’s easy to conduct research on the internet to find a camera within your budget.

If you absolutely must shoot video with your smartphone, then please, for the love of God, hold the phone horizontally so your videos come out horizontally. While it may be easier to hold the camera in the vertical position, you end up with a video that uses only a third of the available screen sandwiched by two black lines.
Holding the phone horizontally usually requires the use of two hands, which usually guarantees a more stable video. Even if you’re not using a smartphone, it is recommended to hold the camera with both hands to prevent camera shake as much as possible.
The best thing to do is practice shooting video whenever you can, including of your friends, families and pets, even if you just end up deleting the video, because you want to be prepared when it is absolutely necessary to record.
You don’t want to mistakenly have your fingers over the microphone or think you’re recording when you’ve actually stopped recording.
The one advantage smartphones have over other cameras is that you can use livestreaming apps like Bambuser, Qik and Ustream to protect your footage in case your camera gets confiscated.
The disadvantages is that if police do confiscate your phone, then you’re not only out of a camera but a phone, which in many cases, is our lifeline to the world.
Legally, police can only confiscate your camera under exigent circumstances, which I will explain further down.
2. Keep your mouth shut
We’ve all seen the videos of cops violently arresting somebody, only for the person holding the camera to be shrieking hysterically that they’re pigs or that they’re going to end up on Youtube or that the person they’re arresting didn’t do anything illegal.
Keep in mind that your mouth is closer to the microphone than anybody else’s mouth, so your voice is going to be magnified as it drowns out the relevant audio that needs to be captured.
However, don’t be afraid to inform viewers of what exactly is taking place on camera. Speak clearly and stick to the facts because you want the viewer to form their own opinion of what is taking place. But it’s more important to capture what is taking place so make that your priority.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions
Many cop watching activists will tell you not to talk to police when they confront you but if you want to be a journalist, you’re going to have to learn to ask the right questions. But do so after they make their arrest so they won’t accuse you of interfering. And be professional about it. If they decide to be unprofessional, just keep the camera turned on them to expose them.
You’ll want to stick to the Five W’s, the who, what, when, where and why, which are the basic elements of journalism interviewing. This also helps in you controlling the dialogue rather than the cop controlling the dialogue. Don’t let the badge intimidate you.
Most of the time, they will refer you to a public information officer who may or may not show up on the scene, so ask for that officer’s name and phone number, even if you don’t plan to call it because it’s good to get into the habit of talking professionally with cops.
Although you are not required to hand over your identification if asked, unless you are suspected of committing a crime (more on this later), it doesn’t hurt to tell them your name and where you plan to post the video.
Remember, you need to think of yourself as a journalist, not an activist. Journalists should have no problem identifying themselves.
4. Learn the laws about public property
Nobody has an expectation of privacy in public, which is why you’re allowed to record cops, paramedics, suspects and victims as long as they are in full view of the public. If you can see them, you can record them.
But you don’t want to end up arrested for some unrelated matter just because the cop is looking for an excuse to keep you from recording. This can easily happen if you are standing on the street as opposed to the sidewalk or getting too close to police where you end up physically interfering with their investigation.
Sometimes police will threaten to arrest you for blocking pedestrian traffic if you are standing on the sidewalk, but I have yet to read an actual statute that describes this offense. Not saying it doesn’t exist but I didn’t see it in the Florida and New York statutes.
Or sometimes they will threaten to arrest you for loitering, which is also reaching because these laws usually pertain to private property or when a person is idling about on public property for an apparent reason except no good such as in areas with heavy prostitution or drug use.
But if you are recording police, then you have a very justifiable reason to stand on the sidewalk. So justifiable that it is protected by the First Amendment.
Sometimes, the best way to handle these cops is to ask them where exactly would they like you to stand to gauge just how reasonable a cop you are dealing with.
There is never a guarantee that you won’t be arrested, but you can minimize those chances by informing the officer you know your rights while continuing to record.
5. Learn the laws about private property
Nobody has an expectation of privacy when they are on private property that is open to the general public like a shopping mall, office building, local bar or a storefront parking lot.
People generally have an expectation of privacy when they are inside their homes, unless they happen to be standing by an open door or clear window where anybody walking by can see them.
For journalistic purposes, we will stick to the former in this section because it’s probably not the wisest decision to begin recording cops through their windows while they are home and off-duty (unless you have a very good reason to do so).
Business owners or private security guards have every right to forbid you from recording on their premises, even if they are recording you with security cameras as is usually the case.
But they have no right to force you to delete your footage or confiscate your camera. The worst they can do is order you to leave the premises. And if you refuse, they can have you arrested for trespassing.
6. Learn the laws about government-operated facilities
Generally speaking, this is considered the same as public property because these are tax-funded facilities, but many of these facilities can have their own policies that you need to research beforehand just to be sure.
One of the biggest problems has been government-owned train stations where police are under the impression that they are protecting the country from terrorism by forbidding citizens from recording, but most of these train stations allow photography as long as you are not shooting for commercial purposes, which generally means advertising. Journalism is considered editorial photography and protected under the First Amendment.
The New York subway system allows photography but forbids the use of light, tripods and reflectors because it could impede foot traffic and I imagine other train stations have similar policies, but do your own research just to be sure.
Photography is also allowed on public universities, Transportation Security Administration checkpoints and inside municipal buildings if you are recording your personal business.
And yes, even in the lobbies of police departments, but you need to thread carefully here because they may arrest you nonetheless or they may have their own policies in place that are not part of the state law.
The best way to avoid getting arrested is to remain professional and to state an actual purpose to record inside a police department other than just doing because you can, such as making public records requests or filing a complaint against an officer. Just tell them you are conducting official business with a government agency and you insist on getting it on the record.
However, rules and laws vary inside courthouses with federal courthouses not allowing you to even walk inside with a camera, let alone use one inside, and state and local courts having rules that apply mainly to actual courtrooms, not necessarily the corridors or offices inside the courthouse.
Again, this is something you would have to research depending on what state or county you live in, but it’s something that can usually be done with a few key strokes on Google.
The truth is, the laws haven’t caught up with technology yet so it’s up to us to set the standard before they start trying to set the standard, so we can ensure the government remains as transparent as possible.
7. Learn your state’s wiretapping laws 
It wasn’t too long ago that police throughout the United States were routinely using state wiretapping laws to arrest people for recording them in public, which is not what those laws were intended for when they were created.
The cops had realized that citizens were catching on to the fact that photography is not a crime, so they started arresting people based on the audio recordings the citizens captured. The issue came to a boiling point in Illinois that had a Draconian eavesdropping law in the books that had several citizens facing lengthly prison sentences because they had recorded cops in public who were on duty. The Illinois law has been ruled unconstitutional, so police are not allowed to arrest anybody for it.
So right now, it is legal to audio record cops in public in all 50 states because they do not have an expectation of privacy.
Massachusetts has a slight exception where citizens are not allowed to secretly record cops in public, but even that law has been questioned by a prosecutor in that state and it is probably ripe for a challenge (just in case you’re up for it).
As a citizen journalist, you should always strive to make it obvious you are recording anyway because  the point is to send a message to cops you know your right.
However, if you find yourself becoming the victim of police abuse and know that it would probably be dangerous to pull out your camera and start record, don’t hesitate to start secretly recording, even if you live in Massachusetts.
Click on this link to read up on your state’s wiretapping or eavesdropping laws.
8. Learn how to handle police intimidation
No matter how much you think you have prepared yourself, it can get downright nerve-racking when a hulking cop stands over you with a badge, gun, handcuffs, taser gun and pepper spray, ordering you to hand over your identification and/or your camera.
But you need to think of yourself as a journalist not an activist. You are there to do a job, even if you are not getting paid for it. And once you build a Youtube following, you could easily start collecting regular checks from Google Adsense, so it’s important to think of yourself as a professional.
They will usually demand your identification, but federal case law states that they must have reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime (or are about to) in order to require you to hand over your identification.
However, different states have varying “stop-and-identify” laws that make it a crime to not identify yourself if you are being detained for some perceived crime. Usually, it is permissible to verbally identify yourself instead of pulling out your identification, so I recommend just stating your name and handing them your business card if you have one, just out of professional courtesy, not because you are required by law.
If they insist on seeing your identification, ask them what crime do they suspect you of committing. Recording police is not a crime, so they need to be more specific about an actual being broken.
Sometimes cops will order you to delete your footage because they believe you have violated their privacy or the privacy of a suspect or a victim, but you are under no legal obligation to delete your footage. As stated before, nobody has an expectation of privacy in public. Not even the president.
Sometimes they try to confiscate your camera as “evidence” of a crime, but in most circumstances, the camera would had to have been used in the commission of a crime such as child pornography or upskirting.
If the camera was not used in the commission of a crime but they believe it contains evidence to a crime, then police would need to obtain a subpoena or warrant in order to obtain it. The only exception would be what the law refers to as “exigent circumstances,” which would be if they have a strong suspicion that you are going to delete the footage or disappear to the point where they won’t be able to deliver you a subpoena.
If you have recorded footage that you believe will help police solve the camera, perhaps you might not have a problem sharing your footage, but please do not give up the original footage. And post online anything you have shared with them in order to remain transparent.
Even the mainstream media will not share their footage without first going through their lawyers and even then, they would probably air it before giving police the same footage they have already shared with their viewers.
So I would recommend doing the same, but only if you feel inclined to because you are under no obligation to assist them with their investigation.

If you are jailed, you must remain calm. Do not get into arguments with the cops because at that point, you’re already lost the battle, so you need to be thinking ahead at how you’re going to win the war.
Pay attention to all the cops dealing with your arrest, handling your camera. Read their name tags and memorize their names, faces and ranks. Figure out who is the commanding officer. Listen to their conversation, read their body language, pick up on cues that they are trying to figure out what to charge you with because there is no law in the books that forbids you from recording in public.
You might want to remind them that deleting footage is a crime, spoliation of evidence, if you want to be legal about it. Destruction of evidence if you want to keep it in layman’s terms. Or you just may want to remain quiet.
If they delete your footage, keep in mind that you can eventually recover it as long as you don’t override the deleted footage by recording over it.The program I recommend is Photo Rec, which is free, but a little complex. There are other programs out there as well that are more simple to use but do not do such a great job in recovering entire video clips.
9. Remain ethical and transparent 
Our mission is to hold police accountable, so we must hold ourselves accountable to the fundamental ethics of journalism. It doesn’t mean we have to be like the mainstream media and remain blindly “objective” to the point where we can’t just come out and say the cops were being abusive.
We are allowed to give our opinion. In fact, we are encouraged to give our opinion but we must not let this get in the way of presenting the facts and allowing our followers to form their own opinions.
And we should allow these followers to state their opinions through comments without blocking, banning or deleting their comments as long as they keep their comments civil. It’s up to you to set the standards on your own blog or Youtube account, but it’s not journalism if you insist on preaching to the choir.
10. Learn to edit video 
If you want your video to go viral, you need to keep it short and concise.
People on the internet don’t have time to sit through a ten minute video. In fact, most people will probably not make it this far down in this article, so imagine them trying to sit through a video where nothing is happening waiting for something exciting to happen.
Writers use the phrase, “kill your babies,” when they edit their stories, which means to delete the portions that they find interesting but in reality, do nothing to move the story forward. Apply the same logic to video editing.
A general rule would be to keep it under three minutes. If you have an exceptionally interesting video, then extend it to five minutes.
If you absolutely are compelled to make the video longer because you believe it is necessary to tell the entire story, then try to produce a shorter version but don’t be surprised if the shorter version ends up with more views.
Also, try to include the basic information in the headline and description of the video. The five W’s as described above. Or at least a link to an article that provides more background.
It also helps if you include captions during certain scenes to provide more information, but try to keep them at the bottom of the screen and keep them up long enough so viewers can read them.
And please, no matter how cool you think it may sound, do not add music to the video.
Just because you are a huge heavy metal or hip hop fan doesn’t mean the people viewing the video will be. External music can be very distracting. Especially when it’s something people are not familiar with.
Remember, you are producing journalism, not music videos.
Here are some links that can further help you understand your rights as a citizen journalist.

• The U.S. Department of Justice last year drafted a set of guidelines that police departments are expected to abide by when dealing with citizens who record them in public. It would be worth printing out and carrying in your camera bag in case you come across police officers who are unaware of the law.
• The National Press Photographers Association regularly comes to the defense of citizens arrested for recording in public, even if they are not members. At $110 a year for membership ($65 for students), they have a lot to offer.
• The Digital Media Law Project, founded by Harvard University, also provides legal guidance and education to citizen journalists.
• The Photographer’s Right is a set of legal guidelines compiled by Oregon attorney Bert Krages, who also wrote a book called the Legal Handbook for Photographers.
• The ACLU published Know Your Rights: Photographers, which is also a good guide.

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” A.J. Liebling

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I would add only one item. Federal law (43 USC 2000aa) protects your work product from seizure either on the scene or by warrant if you intend to distribute it to the public. They can only obtain it with a subpoena, which means in those cases it makes sense to provide them with identifying information.

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OFF THE WIRE
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Don’t Talk To Cops Ever

OFF THE WIRE

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Acknowledgements

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This book is for you if ...

• Anti-war or environmental activists
• Recreational drug users
• Participants in the underground economy or anybody who does business in cash
• Critics of local or national powers-that-be
• Anyone whose profession involves "sensitive" information or activities
• Gun owners or dealers
• Third-party or "fringe" political activists
• Hobbyists who work with dangerous materials
• Photographers/videographers
• Religious dissidents
• People with offshore or unconventional investments (including perfectly legitimate ones)

This book is NOT for you if ...

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What exactly is a snitch?

The infiltrator/agent provocateur. This is someone (often a professional) who is inserted into a group for an active purpose, such as disrupting the group, or worst, talking formerly innocent (or at least formerly non-violent) people into committing crimes in order to bust them. Agents provocateurs may, among other things, try to turn non-violent protest into violent action, thus discrediting movements, giving excuses for crackdowns, and giving more publicity and power to government agencies.

The informer/informant. This snitch is often a legitimate member of a group or social circle who continues to be active while giving information to the police. This person may be acting under duress (to save his own skin after being arrested, for instance). This person may be hoping the cops will pay with money, drugs, or ongoing criminal immunity for her dubious "services." While this person isn't necessarily a professional agent provocateur, he may nevertheless try to talk friends into committing crimes so he can get more credibility or rewards from his police handlers.

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What makes snitches so dangerous?

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PART ONE

Recognizing and Avoiding Snitches

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FIRST RULE:

Learn and practice
good security consciousness

• Don't talk about secret or illegal activities outside your group.
• Within your group, talk about them only to people who have a need to know.
• Keep groups small. Maybe even as small as a "cell of one."
Attorney safety tip:
A lawyer who consulted on this book says:
"When dealing with police, prosecutors or their agents, do NOT base your theory-of-the-game on TV, movies, or other sources. Or on constitutional theory you may have learned in school. The other side is playing for keeps and to them rules are irrelevant inconveniences. Ask Bradley Manning."
• If you use email, encrypt it. Not only that, but encrypt all email you possibly can, not just email containing sensitive material. Encrypt your cute cat jokes and your discussions of last night's favorite TV show (that way you don't call special attention to your most confidential exchanges).
• Do not post sensitive material on social media (a no-brainer, but apparently some still do it).
• Do not post sensitive material on social media even when your privacy settings allow only "friends" to see it. A 2012 court ruling said it's perfectly okay for those "friends" to turn around and show your allegedly private info to government agents.
• Do not talk to cops or indeed any government agents — about anything. Ever. The most innocent remarks can be used against you. The "nicest" cop is still not your friend. (We'll have more on this in Part Three and in the appendixes. This is extremely important!)
• Know the laws, potential sentences, and likely prosecutorial practices against any crimes you're committing. Do not be caught unprepared.
Tip from experience:
This comes from a friend of mine who spent "the worst two weeks" of his life in jail, courtesy of a snitch: "Don't hang with people who are dishonest or lie, even in small, unimportant things. They have no honor to lose and everything they say and do is based on profit or benefit to them."
• If you're a political activist, keep your nose clean in other ways. For instance, if you're an anti-drug-war activist, don't sell drugs on the side. Don't make yourself an easy target for spurious (or worse, real) criminal charges.
• Unless you actually want to be arrested to become a test case (a dangerous but sometimes useful tactic), then do everything you can to avoid giving anyone ammunition to tarnish you or your cause.
• Do your best to make sure your associates also follow good security practices.
• Get yourself away from associates who are blabbermouths, boasters, loose-lipped drunks, or "friends" who insist on posting their (and your) every activity on the Internet.
• We repeat: GET YOURSELVES AWAY from anybody who can't keep his mouth shut!

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Recognizing a snitch

• A stranger or casual acquaintance tries to get you to do or advise on illegal activities.
• A friend suddenly starts pushing you to do or advise on illegal things.
• A person joins your group and statements he/she makes about his/her background just don't add up.
• A person joins your group and starts stirring up trouble and creating divisions.
• A person joins your group and is overly eager to be useful, to pay for the group's activities, to initiate activities, supply equipment, to escalate dangerous activities, etc.
• Someone goes out of his way to gain your trust, to be really buddy-buddy with you. Then, when you resist getting into dubious activities, he drops all interest in you (he's looking for an easier mark).
Advice from the underground
This ultra-basic piece of advice goes back at least to the agitators of the 1960s. Yet people still get entrapped by ignoring it: "You can always tell the FBI agent. He's the one who's trying to get you to bomb something."
• You're asked to do illegal or dubious business with a "friend of a friend." This is a big one. It's amazing how many "friends of friends" (where controversial activities are involved) are actually undercover cops.
• Someone asks you to do something illegal or dangerous that he could just as easily do himself or have done elsewhere.
• Someone starts agitating to have your group do something outside the group's purposes. ("Hey, we just run a little of this 'stuff' across the border and it'll make us a lot of money that we can use to do good.")
• An older, "more experienced" person joins your group or circle and soon becomes a counselor of sorts to the youngest, most edgy, most insecure, most angry, or most naive members. He "cuts them out of the herd" in order to pull them into illegal plots. (This is a classic tactic of the agent provocateur.)
• Anyone in your group starts agitating for violent action. People who agitate for illegal activities may be snitches; or they may be genuine fools who will attract snitches.

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What makes snitches so persuasive?

• Snitches play on your trust and/or your desire to go along with others.
• They may appeal to your loyalty or your fear or some other emotion ("You won't do it? Wow, and here I thought you were one of us.""C'mon, if you had any guts you'd do this.""How are we ever going to change things if we don't take radical action?")
• They may literally "cut from the herd" the most naive, trusting, foolish, or discontent of your associates, isolate them, and psychologically manipulate them into committing crimes.
• They may pretend to be your friend. — especially a friend in need. ("I know you don't usually deal, but couldn't you just sell me a little from your stash?""Look, just help me get this money out of the country; it's no big deal.""Hey, I know you have a machine shop in your garage; how about helping me cut down the barrel on this shotgun? I'll pay you.")
• They may actually be your friend — but a friend who has gotten into legal trouble and has turned to snitching to save themselves from a long prison sentence. (Same sorts of urgings as in the last bullet point, but this time coming from somebody for whom that wouldn't be characteristic behavior.)
• They may make it easy to commit crimes by not only pushing the idea, but actually supplying the funding, the equipment, the transportation, and the planning for the crime. They may come across as natural leaders ("Trust me, I know how to do this!")
• They may make hyper-strong appeals to your cause — then use the leverage they gain to make equally strong appeals for committing crimes.
• They often play upon a normal human desire to want to DO something - which is likely why, if you're a political person, you're a member of the group in the first place.
• And finally — let's never forget — some snitches play on that most basic instinct of all — S.E.X. Spy agencies have known this as long as there have been spy agencies. The KGB used to call it "the sparrow trick"; get a red-blooded heterosexual male up close with an attentive, manipulative female and said male will eventually whisper all manner of secrets into her ear. These days, it probably works the other way around, too. And no doubt homosexual attraction can blind eyes and loosen lips just as effectively.

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"Mere" snitching vs active entrapment

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Dangerous myths about
snitches and undercover agents

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What to do if you believe a
snitch is personally targeting you

• Again, get away from the person
• Do not try to outsmart the person
• Do not feed the person false information (because if that person is an undercover agent this could be a crime in and of itself)
• Do not commit violence against the person
• Just get away — even if it means leaving a group
• If you think you've already said or done something compromising with this person, see a good lawyer and read the section of this booklet on how to conduct yourself if you get arrested.
• Another tip from this book's helpful attorney: "Consider making your OWN complaint to the authorities about this 'nutball' [the person you suspect of being a snitch]. This a) puts you on the record as NOT being in bed with the snitch, b) alerts the snitch and his handlers that you're aware of him and are thus less likely to be an 'easy target,' c) creates an appearance that you're not one of the bad guys - since you're not hiding anything, and d) maybe - with a little luck - the snitch ends up in jail himself for some time. I would not consider this 'do not try to outsmart' described above (which I agree with)." Of course, if he turns out not to be a snitch, you may have harmed an innocent person by calling the cops on him. It's a risk. But if the person really is an agent of the government, this can be a pretty good act of self-protection. Oh, and one of my friends who speaks from experience, points out that if you're going to report a snitch to the cops, it's best to do it through a lawyer. Otherwise you're talking to cops, which is a no-no.

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PART TWO

A Snitch Uncovered

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If you believe there's
a snitch in your group

• Document your suspicions.
• If possible, conduct some careful, subtle investigation to see if your suspected snitch's background and life matches her claims. Does she really live where she says? Has she been seen with police? Do her statements about her education or her friends hold up? If not, you may not have a snitch, but you have an untrustworthy person, for sure.
• Share your specific reasons for suspicion with people in the group that you trust. Yes, we know that snitches destroy trust, so be very careful when choosing one or two others to confide in.
• If you can do so without violating your state's law, quietly begin video or audiotaping all interactions with the suspected person. If state wiretapping laws forbid recording without the consent of all parties, then at least consider openly recording meetings to counteract any lies the snitch may tell his handlers.
• Start a 'Facts, Acts, and Circumstantial file.' After each incident write details down. Facts are the time, date, occasion, incident, characteristics of the person(s). Acts are what they did. Circumstantial is the impressions and anything odd about the situation. Use the FAC file and keep notes from unsettling situations and see if a pattern emerges. (Note: This item also appears in Appendix 2, where you will find details on how to do this, along with many other commonsense OpSec tips.)
• Do not make open accusations unless you have proof positive of snitchery or copness (as when New York Libertarian Party activists (see below) spotted a former "suspicious" member in the New York Times, helping the FBI with an arrest).
• Discuss with your most trusted associates what to do.
Here's one way to spot a snitch!
Online commenter BusyPoorDad writes:
Years ago, when the New York Libertarian Party was starting up, a new member joined and became active. He said he was from a low-income neighborhood, worked a manual labor job, and did not know much about politics. He looked the part but things just did not add up.
He knew how to set a table for a formal dinner, used the Robert's Rules very well, and fit in very well with the highly educated members. After about four months of working with us, he just stopped coming. This sort of thing happened a lot but there were no signs of discontent. He was always willing to do everything he was asked to help do (petition, run Nolan chart tables, etc.).
About a year later he was spotted in the NY Times holding on to someone arrested by the FBI for something.
His background just did not fit with him. We never saw him reading books, he talked about watching TV and working at a warehouse, but he was able to be cultured, had a good vocabulary, and really wanted to be part of everything.
• Just as your first individual move is to keep away from the suspect individual, the best group action may be to simply shut the person out. Stop talking with them. Stop inviting them to meetings. Stop asking them to be involved in projects. Freeze them out of all activities and discussions.
• In a serious case, you may end up having to shut down the entire group to foil a snitch or agent provocateur. If so, have a plausible excuse if you can.
• Always, always make sure that you and the other "on the up and up" members of your group remain on record as NOT advocating illegal, and in particular violently illegal, activities. Got a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page? Make your opposition to certain activities clear and public.
• Furthermore, make sure you stay on record as NOT advocating things that the snitch wants. Do not line up behind, or even pretend to agree with, that person's policy recommendations, strategies, or tactics. Remember, you may well be being recorded. You do not even want to appear to superficially agree with things an undercover operative is trying to talk you into.
• Again, finally, you may have to recognize that you can neither help nor save those who do not wish to be helped or saved. It may be that your final act has to be turning your files over to some other trusted member of the group and leaving. You always have a chance of finding another group. You're not going to have a chance to find another you.

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HISTORICAL ways of dealing
with known snitches

• The IRA used to shoot betrayers in the kneecaps. It wouldn't kill them, but everyone who saw a former activist lurching down the street on destroyed knees knew what he was.
• The Mafia would famously send stool pigeons to "sleep with the fishes."
• Resistance groups, particularly during wartime, have been known to leave the bodies of betrayers in public squares with messages pinned to them — or even carved in them. While still saying it's a bad idea, it did have the effect of discouraging the general populace from working with the enemy. Today snitches and betrayers often see benefits and face nowhere near enough drawbacks for their dirty work.
• In the 1980s and 1990s, the African National Congress punished perceived collaborators with the monstrous method called "necklacing." They'd shove a gasoline-filled tire over a miscreant's neck and arms and kill the person by setting the tire alight.
• After World War II, many women who had slept with or otherwise collaborated with Nazis were humiliated by having their hair hacked off while mobs screamed, "Nazi whore!" This might not sound like much compared with beastly punishments like necklacing. But public humiliation, shunning, and the attack on their femininity was hugely degrading and psychologically damaging.

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How do YOU treat an exposed snitch?

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Repairing the damage snitches do

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Beware of accusing someone
who might not be a snitch

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PART THREE

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET BUSTED?

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You may be pressured to become a snitch

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Do NOT talk to cops. Period.

• No, you may not search my vehicle.
• No, you may not enter my home.
• I do not consent to any search.
• Am I free to go?
• On the advice of my lawyer, I cannot talk to you.
• I will not talk without my lawyer present.

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The police officer is NOT your friend

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The Prisoner's Dilemma

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Mindset: The common territory
between snitches and victims

• Overly naive and trusting
• Unprepared for bad things happening to them
• Cocky and overly confident
• Loudmouthed or prone to blat information without thinking
• Prone to believe that "nice" cops really do want to "help" them (yes, it's another form of being overly naive and trusting, but it bears repeating because if you get caught because you trusted a rat you're more likely to turn around and trust that rat's handlers)
• Very good at rationalizing their own less-than-stellar behavior
• (Or conversely) So idealistic and starry-eyed that reality, when it hits, knocks them for a loop.

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What happens if you refuse to snitch?

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What happens if you become
a snitch — and regret it?

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What happens to you if you
snitch and your friends find out?

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The rest of your life if you do snitch

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Appendix 1

The Reid Interrogation Technique^TM

By "Just Waiting"

Repeat the question before answering? That answer is a lie.

Little or no direct eye contact? You're evasive.

Too much direct eye contact? You're cocky and/or confrontational.

Change from "is" to "was" or "a" to "the"? You're changing your story to hide something.

Sit up straight, slouch, fold your arms in your lap, fold them across your chest? You're scared, you're cocky, you're defensive. Every movement, posture and expression has a meaning to LE.

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Appendix 2

Some Commonsense OpSec

Addendum on note-taking (Facts, Acts, and Circumstantial)

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Appendix 3

Line up a lawyer

How to hire the right lawyer

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Appendix 4

Other helpful resources

Dealing with snitches

How cops deal with snitches

Online advice on dealing with police

An online guide to interrogation techniques

Books

OFF THE WIRE
   Police officers hate to hear these words:
 

MOTORCYCLE CLUBS ARE NOT STREET GANGS ™
is a trademark and service mark of MCANSG PROGRAM, a California nonprofit corporation.

Email	mcansg2@gmail.com
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OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
First Published
Mon, Oct 27, 2008

Everyone agrees, we must be stopped by any means necessary, fair or foul. The latest weapon against us is the “noise pollution” law.
Right out of the gate, let’s not dance around. First thing, let’s state two self-evident truths.
“Noise pollution” laws are a most excellent example of what Clinton guru Dick Morris used to call “bite-sized” laws. And, the political concept behind “bite-sized” laws is: Government at all levels is impotent to do anything about anything that matters but self-serving politicians can at least win elections by conjuring problems out of the thin air and then creating the illusion that they are solving those imaginary problems.
Secondly, in case you haven’t noticed, municipal governments are gathering more and more of their revenue these days from the enforcement of traffic laws. Have you been seeing more cops on the road lately and you still are not sure what is behind all that “police presence?” Money. Now you know. Money.
One way to increase revenue from traffic fines is to find more efficient ways to enforce existing laws-like “red light cameras” which automate the enforcement of laws against turning right on a red light after less than a full two-second stop. Right turns on red after a rolling or too brief a stop account for about 99 percent of these tickets. In Los Angeles these tickets result in a $385 fine and that amount is split evenly between the city and the private firm that franchises these devices and stores the video evidence.
A second way to increase revenue from traffic fines is to invent new traffic offenses, like motorcycle “noise pollution.”
Noise Pollution
Noise pollution is one of those new problems that have been created as if by magic. Sure, people who live near railroad tracks and airports have been bothered forever. But, the idea of noise as a kind of pollution, like smoke or dust, was just invented in 2004. And, the inventor was a college professor named Ted Rueter.
Rueter, who taught “political activism” at UCLA, founded a “group,” with a membership of “one,” called “Noise Free America.”
“A lot of people get off on noise and think that there’s something wrong with peace and quiet,” Rueter told the Utne Reader in 2005. “We’re still fighting a public perception that this is a trivial issue and anyone who’s concerned or interested in curbing noise is a crank.”
Note Rueter’s use of the imperial “we.” Isn’t that great? We. “We are still fighting….”
Rueter went on to tell the Utne Reader that he (or maybe we) “dreams of the day when a forward-thinking class action attorney decides to take offending manufacturers to court. ‘It would be a monumental case-much stronger than anything you could throw at the fast food industry…no one is being forced to go to McDonald’s.’”
Harley’s Brave Stand For Us
As Rueter’s crusade pertains to motorcycles, the manufacturer he is soliciting underemployed lawyers to sue is, naturally, Harley-Davidson. And, nothing so terrifies any big corporation more than the phrase, “Class Action Lawsuit.” So, in case you have been wondering why Harley CEO Jim McCaslin went on the company website in 2006 and wrote these words about motorcycle noise:
“So what if you’ve picked the wrong pipes? Then you have a very important individual decision to make. We all do. No one expects everyone to change out their straight pipes overnight. But we all must consider changing out our thinking. We need to think about the consequences our actions have on others, before others take action against us.”
Yeah. Us. Now you know that, too.
The “action” McCaslin was talking about was a class action lawsuit. And, the us he was talking about was him. And, now you also know why Harley has been so timid about this subject in general.
Victims Of Noise Pollution Speak Out, Newz At Eleven
The “noise pollution issue” has offered cynical local politicians and highly paid cops a new means to increase revenue and exercise social control over people like us who tend to have unruly hair and colorful tattoos.
Rueter sent out press releases. Of course, he did. What else does a “political activism” professor do?
Local newspapers printed these releases virtually verbatim and thus alerted the American people to this new threat. “Laura!”
“What is it this time, George?”
“Have you seen this in the paper? About noise pollution. No wonder we ain’t happy no more like we was.”
After reading about their new problem, people demanded that something be done by somebody. And, of course the police and the politicians proved that they were doing a good job by ticketing us.
This time us means us. Okay? If you are reading this chances are good you are one of us. Us.
The magical, lucrative, travelling, “noise pollution,” medicine show has passed through many American towns in the last four years. In the last month it has been strumming and dancing its way through Myrtle Beach, SC on the east coast and Temecula, CA on the west.
Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach passed an ordinance on September 23 that states: “Motorcycles built after Dec. 31, 1982, must have unmodified exhaust mufflers bearing federal Environmental Protection Agency stickers or stamps. Motorcycles built before Dec. 31, 1982, must not be louder than 83 decibels when measured from 20 inches away.”
Bikes that are louder than 83 decibels must be impounded and are not released until the owner shows up with a tow truck. Once impounded the bikes cannot be ridden out of Myrtle Beach.
Now, eighty-three decibels is an entirely arbitrary number. It is a sound level somebody picked out a hat.
By way of comparison, a telephone dial tone is 80 decibels. Which is also the Federal standard for a motorcycle exhaust. Eighty decibels. Consider that. Someone in Washington with the power to invent new laws thinks that a motorcycle should be exactly as loud as a dial tone.
The decibel level inside a closed car in traffic is 85 decibels. That is two decibels louder than the Myrtle Beach standard for a bike. So, the Myrtle Beach standard guarantees that if you are in a car and there is a motorcycle in your blind spot you will never know he is there.
A subway train at a distance of 200 feet is 95 decibels. And, the crescendo of “Ode To Joy” the fourth movement of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony-a tune you know and you have hummed even if you do not recognize the title-is about 125 decibels. Joy. Beethoven wanted to make the great, overpowering sound of joy.
So, soon a call must go out in this great land. One of the great musical treasures of western civilization will be discovered by television news to be loud. Loud! And so, we-and by we I mean them-must ban Beethoven! We must ban Beethoven now or who is to say where all this Beethoven pollution will ever stop!
Temecula
California also has a number, 95 decibels. And again, it is a number that the California Highway Patrol (CHP) more or less picked out of the air. It is not a bad number. It is a better number than the Myrtle Beach number.
But then, since when does a California cop need a number? In an article in the Malibu Times in 2005, CHP information officer Leland Tang admitted that whether a motorcycle is too loud or not too loud is “open to the officer’s interpretation, with experience and training, as to what is too loud.”
Got that? Trust the policeman. He is your friend. You know he will do what is right. That is the actual California standard: “The officer’s interpretation.”
Consequently, Temecula which has in the past been a destination for weekend riders, issued 60 tickets during the first three weekends in September. And, the tickets were all issued on an individual officer’s “interpretation,” based on his “experience and training” of what was “too loud.”
Why Loud Pipes
If you changed out your pipes you know why you did it. First, it allowed you to go from 58 horsepower to 68 horsepower. And a 15 percent increase in power makes a huge difference in your ability to accelerate away from danger. Secondly, and more importantly, loud pipes save lives.
People who have never been on a motorcycle routinely mock the notion that loud pipes save lives. Ted Rueter has repeatedly mocked the “myth” that loud pipes save lives. Critics of the “myth” always argue that most motorcycle accidents occur in front of the bike so it must have been the biker who was at fault and the loudness of his pipes could not have made any difference.
Of course you know how loud pipes save lives. Accidents happen in front of the bike because somebody has turned in front of you. Or somebody has pulled out of a side street or a driveway in front of you.
And after they do this, while you and the bike are both laying there, leaking oil and blood all over the asphalt, when the first witness arrives, these motorists always say the same thing. They say, “I never knew he was there.”
Oakland
Even cops know loud pipes save lives. Take for example, the Oakland, CA Police Department.
Oakland is an old school department that still rides Harley-Davidsons and last spring, the city did a study that indicated that their police bikes might be noise polluters. Consequently all 30 of the department’s Harleys were fitted with quieter, stock exhaust systems. These were the exhausts that come with the bikes, the exhausts you drive out of the dealership.
And, that improvement in the way things are lasted all the way until March, 2008 when an Oakland motorcycle cop riding a Harley with a stock exhaust was struck by an automobile driver who said he never knew the motorcycle was there.
According to Oakland Deputy Chief Dave Kozicki, quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, “the decibel drop sparked a chorus of complaints from other officers, who said they felt less safe.” The department concluded, Kozicki went on to say, that “it was in the best interest of the officers to put more-audible pipes back on.”
So, Oakland paid $15,000 to put new louder pipes on 30 department bikes and when the city bought another 15 bikes they came with louder, non-standard exhaust systems as well.
The new exhausts, when tested, averaged 93 decibels. So, all 45 bikes would be impounded in Myrtle Beach. And, how they would do in Temecula would depend on the moon, the tides, astrology and the mood of the local cops that minute in that hour on that day.

OFF THE WIRE

OFF THE WIRE

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

For the Illusion Motorsports bike builders, life has been one wild ride

OFF THE WIRE
 The information posted below is from a well-known article written by Jim March on 5/16/2002 titled, "California Knife Laws: A Comprehensive Guide," url:
http://www.ninehundred.com/~equalccw/knifelaw.html
Also Sy Nazif, Esq. article is from the Bailingwire, newsletter.
ML&R
Philip & Bill

FOR THOSE OF US HERE IN O`SIDE CA, it is written out below.
THE LAWS  VARIE  FROM CITY TO CITY, TOWN TO TOWN,
 COUNTY TO COUNTY ALSO....
 California Knife Laws, Since Oceanside PD follows the state statue here it is,
Oceanside City Code 20. 10

1. 
SECTION FIVE: DEALING WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT WHEN PACKIN' STEEL
First thing: don't get nervous. If you've read this, you're not going to be breaking any knife laws.  California's knife laws are actually pretty decent, better than most states (even the shall-issue gun permit ones).  If you're nervous, the cop will read that, and he won't know what to think - but the conversation WILL go downhill.
If you're walking past a cop with a legally concealed knife, DO NOT "pat the knife" to make sure the concealment is still effective.  That's the number one way cops spot people packing guns illegally.  They'll think that's what you're doing.  The resulting conversation won't be pleasant.
If there's any chance at all that the guy is gonna search you, politely declare that you're carrying a "pocketknife legal under state law".  Got that?  Tell him where it is on you, let him take control of it.  DO NOT SCARE THE DUDE WITH THE BADGE AND GUN.  Don't reach for nuthin' unless he tells you to do so.  At all times, act like this is just a normal business transaction.
So what if he/she thinks your piece(s) is/are illegal?
You explain that California knife law has changed a bunch of times starting in 1997 and twice more that you know of, so you're not terribly surprised there's confusion.  Calmly explain as much of the relevant Penal Codes as you can recall...if you're into big folders, PC653k and the bit in 12020 about "not readily available if concealed in the closed position" is a start.  If he ain't buying, calmly ask for a supervisor.
If he wants to confiscate your cutlery, ASK FOR A RECEIPT.  If he says anything about "that'll mean you'll get a ticket too, and/or an arrest", stand your ground and calmly ask for a receipt.  He's bluffing because he wants your knife.  Sorry if any cops reading this are offended, but it happens - I've met enough people it's happened to to be a believer, although it hasn't happened to me.  If he just plain takes it without a receipt, get his badge number and/or car number (if the latter is all you can get, record the TIME).  If it was a city or county cop, make a THEFT complaint in detail with your nearest California Highway Patrol station (they investigate local wrongdoing).  If it was CHP, hmmm...complain to the CHP supervisors maybe, or the Sheriff, but for God's sake don't let 'em off clean.
IF YOU HAD TO THREATEN AN ASSAILANT WITH A DRAWN BLADE:
You have two choices: get the hell out of there ASAP and travel far and fast, because odds are, crooks that get chased off by an armed citizen love to file a "he threatened me" complaint and bust YOU.  Bug out.  NOTE: we're talking about a situation in which you haven't committed a crime, and since no actual violence occurred neither did anybody else.  So "fleeing the scene" rules don't really apply.  And you also don't want the SOB coming back with reinforcements and/or heavy artillery.  Time to go!
If that's not possible, because the crook knows where you are or who you are (or have your car's license plate number), jump on 911 and report an attempted crime, pronto.  There are too many lazy cops that just believe the first complaint.  Make yours first.  You'll probably have one major advantage: the crook will have a violent record and you won't.
IF YOU HAD TO ACTUALLY DRAW BLOOD IN DEFENSE:
When the cops show up, there are only three things you should say: I was in fear of my life, I'm too shaken up to talk, I want a lawyer.  (If there are witnesses you know of, point them out to the cops and tell the cops to talk to them.)
Bernie Goetz didn't do that.  He was furious at the four attempted muggers, he made that anger plain in a long discussion down at the station, and he ended up getting charged with murder and attempted murder when it was absolutely clear-cut self defense.
When a cop gets involved in a shooting, they understand that immediately afterwards, he's too shaken to explain clearly what happened.  So most departments give him 24 hours to settle down before talking to him.  But if you're involved in lethal force, some will take advantage of your rattled state to pry garbled statements out of you.  You HAVE the right to remain silent.  Use it.
I'm assuming here that if you drew or used steel, you had a damned good reason.  That's a subject for a much more detailed (not to mention PROFESSIONAL) treatment - see Introduction for some reference works.

Oceanside City Code 20. 10

 Knife Laws in California:  Is It Legal Carry One?

Written by Sy Nazif, Esq Taken from the BAILING WIRE,

 was given to me by John, From ABATE,  of CA 

For my first Bailing Wiring Column, I was asked to write about knife laws in California.  After researching the law, I certainly understood why some confusion exists as to what is legal to carry and what isn’t: there are over a dozen statutes on the subject, as well as numerous municipal codes, and inconsistent court decisions that further muddy the water.  This article is intended to shed some light on the rules and inconsistencies in California knife laws.

Switchblades  - Penal Code § 653k

Switchblades and other spring-loaded knives are generally illegal in California. Included in the legal definition of switchblade is "[any] knife having the appearance of a pocketknife and includes a spring-blade knife, snap-blade knife, gravity knife or any other similar type knife, the blade or blades of which are two or more inches in length and which can be released automatically by a flick of a button, pressure on the handle, flip of the wrist or other mechanical device, or is released by the weight of the blade or by any type of mechanism whatsoever."  The statute expressly excludes pocket knives that can be opened with one hand by pushing the blade open with one's thumb, as long as

Concealed Knives, Dirks, and Daggers - Penal Code § 12020

Cane Swords and other Disguised Blades - Penal Code § 20200 et seq

Possession of Knives on School Grounds - Penal Code § 626.10

Brandishing Knives - Penal Code § 417

Local Ordinances - Here's Where the Law Gets Messy

Where does all this information leave us?  The short answer is, in a mess.  There are certainly things that are illegal: any switchblade with a blade 2" or longer, or concealed possession of any knife with a fixed blade.  Other knives may or may not be legal,

OFF THE WIRE
Source: 10news.com
SANTEE, Calif. -- Authorities say a Santee-based gang, whose members include convicted felons with long rap sheets, is recruiting kids as young as 14.
Members said the group known as the "Peckerwoods" is nothing more than a motorcycle club.
An undercover police officer, who has been tracking the Peckerwoods since 2005, told 10News the group's ideology is illustrated in its members' clothing.
Jackets taken from arrested Peckerwood members showcase Nazi symbols, including the iron cross and SS bolts.
Additionally, the name Peckerwood has a deeper meaning -- it is what America's slaves called their masters.
Police said, in Santee, members wear the name as a badge of honor.
"Sometimes their beliefs -- from what we can tell -- their symbols and colors, they teach at home," the undercover officer said.
Santee resident Lyle Snow has two African-American children and was attacked by 15-year-old Trevor Solis last year. According to court records, Solis' father, Trenton, is a known Peckerwood who served prison time for crippling an African-American Marine in 1998.
"I have had a lot of cases that have involved juveniles that have looked me straight in the face and said, 'I was born a racist; I was raised a racist and you can't change that,'" the undercover officer said. "Coming out of a 14-year-old's mouth is just real surprising."
Police said the Peckerwoods recruit new members by using things such as T-shirts that say "Support your local Peckerwoods."
In 2007, police said weapons and drugs were found in a raid at the Peckerwoods' Santee clubhouse.
"I have to say, and I'm not just saying this to cover my tail, they've treated me with respect," said Santee Mayor Randy Voepel. "They are an organization that, like anyone, has a few bad apples."
10News asked Peckerwood president Ronald Luetticke for an interview, and he said in a voice message: "My attorney advised me that I probably shouldn't do it, and the other consideration I got is I have two young kids. I got two kids; I don't want to put them in any harms way."
Luetticke works professionally as a contractor and is licensed by the state of California.
The Department of Justice won't allow police to disclose how many Peckerwood members there are in San Diego County. Police did say a large majority of the members have criminal convictions.
Peckerwood board secretary Deron Jaffe came to the 10News studios unannounced Tuesday and left the following statement:
"Peckerwood Motorcycle Club was established 23 years ago with the intent of providing a brotherhood for riders of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Our club members are not racist and we do not recruit children or anyone else to become members of our club. We cannot control people outside of our club who might be racist and call themselves "Peckerwoods." We are nothing more than a motorcycle club and are not affiliated with any other groups of individuals who refer to themselves or others as "Peckerwoods." Our members are working class people with families. We don't advocate or engage in violence towards others. The Peckerwood Motorcycle club is proud of its involvement in charitable causes such as the Amber Dubois Memorial Fund and annual toy drive to benefit the orphanage in Rosarito Beach Mexico."

Peckerwoods M.C.

OFF THE WIRE
BY: Luke Short
Source: isurfhopkins.com

HOPKINS COUNTY, KY—In recent political ads funded by incumbent Hopkins County Attorney candidate, Todd P’Pool, opposing candidate and Nortonville City Attorney, John C. Whitfield, is portrayed as the member of a potentially “dangerous” biker club called the Iron Order.

To find out more on these issues, iSurf News contacted both P’Pool and Whitfield to get their sides of the story.

“John Whitfield is the organizer of the Iron Order Motorcycle Club, LLC nationwide. It’s not just one small, local clubhouse,” said P’Pool. “You can look at the Kentucky Secretary of State website and you can look at organization number 0750057, and that will show you that he is the organizer of the Iron Order Motorcycle, LLC for the entire nation.”

After reviewing the specific portion of the KY State Secretary’s website P’Pool is referring to, which can be found at

https://app.sos.ky.gov/ftshow/%28S%28233zdf551tohxi55b4xcaq2z%29%29/default.aspx?path=ftsearch&id=0750057&ct=06&cs=99999

, iSurf News found that John C. Whitfield is listed alongside 4 other Organizers in the “Initial Officers at time of formation” category.

P’Pool went on to reference the Iron Order’s website as well, listing off several of the officers’ names—which include monikers like, “CGAR,” “QBALL,” “RAINMAN,” and more— and said that, “The ‘SHARK’ is our very own John Whitfield of Hopkins County.”

“So far, there’s no problem,” said P’Pool. “You’ve just got a guy who wants to have a nickname and ride around on a motorcycle. The problem comes in when you Google ‘Iron Order Jessup, Georgia,’ and you find out that their members have been arrested for unlawful acts of criminal street gangs; they were in a bar fight, shots were fired, members of the Iron Order have been arrested for criminal street gang activity. The problem arises when you Google ‘Iron Order Virginia Pagans,’ and you see where a member of the Pagan motorcycle gang was fatally shot by the Virginia State Police tactical team when the ATF were trying to execute a federal search warrant—he was a known meth dealer. The Iron Order attended the funeral and actually rode with the Pagans in honor of the fallen meth dealer who was shot and killed by ATF agents when they tried to execute a federal search warrant.”

“There’s a further problem when members of law enforcement in Hopkins County receive Officer Safety alerts, because the Outlaws have declared war against the Iron Order,” said P’Pool. “The Outlaws are on the FBI watch-list, the Pagans are on the FBI watch-list, and I have in my hands an Officer Safety alert that tells our local officers to be on the lookout because the Outlaws declared war on the Iron Order—and the ATF feels that this is a credible threat. This was issued back in December of ’09. The month before my opponent filed for County Attorney, the Outlaws declared war on the Iron Order. We received that intelligence from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol’s criminal intelligence analyst. I contacted the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and they did verify that they issued this Officer Safety alert. Why would our local officers receive an Officer’s Safety Alert here in Hopkins County? It’s because John Whitfield brought the Iron Order to downtown Madisonville, and that puts officers at risk, because of this kind of activity.”

iSurf News acquired a copy of the above mentioned Officer Safety alert, which states that it was issued by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol Criminal Intelligence Analyst, B. Diane Hogue, on December 18th, 2009. What follows is a direct transcription of the main body of information found in this particular alert.

“Subject: Officer Safety—Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
Please disseminate to OHP law enforcement personnel..Officer Safety Issue.

The Outlaws have declared war against the Iron Order MC. The Outlaws and Bandidos have been helping each other the last year, and in this recent incident the Bandidos were with the Outlaws when this proclamation was made. The importance to this in Oklahoma is the Iron Order has several police officers that are members and this may spread to other motorcycle clubs that are law enforcement strong. Oklahoma has a large Bandido population in the southern part of the state and the Outlaws have been in OKC, Ardmore, as well as SE Oklahoma and Tulsa. In the last 24 hours there have been incidents involving those clubs. Further, the Hells Angels (whom we have only a few known members in Oklahoma) have shot and killed 3 officers in recent weeks throughout the US.”

In addition, the alert mentions that the ATF “feels that this is a credible threat.”

Though iSurf News has attempted to contact the OHP Headquarters to verify the accuracy of the alert and to find out any additional information with regards to Hopkins County, as of this report, the OHP has not responded to our inquiries.

P’Pool also mentioned that, “Last month, we had a stand-off here in Hopkins County with a boy who is not an official member of the Outlaws, but his father was an official member of the Outlaws, and he [the boy] was absolutely part of what’s called a ‘feeder gang’—the Double Pistons, I think—out of Clarksville, TN.”

“So all of this is connected,” said P’Pool. “It’s dangerous. I support responsible motorcycle ownership, I have no problem with people who ride motorcycles, but I do have a problem with gang colors, nicknames, and criminal activity. And I have a serious problem when an individual wants to be a prosecutor, to have access to sensitive government information, and he runs in these circles. That’s dangerous.”

“The local Iron Order chapter does have a meth dealer who was convicted and he is a member of the local club,” said P’Pool. “If you look in the HopNMad Chapter, you’ll see Mike ‘Lollipop’ Melton, who does have meth charges, was arrested for trafficking methamphetamine, and pled guilty to the lesser charge of possession of methamphetamine. He’s displayed throughout the website here at the HopNMad Chapter. And if you look at their photographs, you can see liquor bottles in there, too. That’s where they party. It’s where they party, and, quite frankly, if you’re consuming alcoholic beverages on a place of business, then you’re presumed to be selling alcohol, and you’re supposed to have a liquor-license. That’s in the ABC Law. So if they are serving alcohol in there, which I believe they are, they are in violation of the law.”

After speaking with P’Pool, iSurf News contacted Hopkins County Attorney candidate, John C. Whitfield, to obtain his response to the allegations mentioned above.

In regards to the Officer Safety alert and the Outlaw’s “declaration of war against the Iron Order,” Whitfield stated that, “It’s an absolute fabrication. What you’re talking about was a bogus alert from one of the outlaw clubs—I think it was The Outlaws themselves—that made its way to the ATF. It has no credibility at all; it’s bogus. In fact, one of the guys in our club is an ATF agent, and so we called him at Oklahoma and told him to check on this— and this has been a year ago—and he found it out to be non-credible. That’s the truth.”

In explaining what the Iron Order motorcycle club is all about, Whitfield stated that, “The Iron Order is the largest, law-abiding club in the country. It was started by a former secret-service agent in 2004. It’s based out of Louisville, but it’s all over the country now. More than half of our guys are military or law enforcement. We have doctors, a lawyer—I’m the only lawyer—we’ve got professionals, CPAs, and we have working ‘Joes’ too, that just have nothing else better to do than to ride bikes. But the goal of the club was, and is, to try to change the image of some of these outlaw motorcycle clubs. The Outlaws, Pagans, Hell’s Angels—they call them ‘one-percent’ clubs—and those are ‘bad guys.’ There are a lot of people that we have found that like to ride Harley’s, that enjoy riding Harley’s, and didn’t really have anywhere to go because it was the ‘one-percent’ clubs or nothing really. You had Christian motorcycle groups, which were great, but there was a pretty good niche for people wanting to do this kind of thing, so that’s how the club started; that’s how it evolved. I got involved with it a couple of years ago and I developed what’s called, ‘The Division of Legal Affairs,’ that deals with making sure that the club remains lawful and that all the legal aspects of it are taken care of.”

“We have what’s called the Hopkins County-Madisonville ‘HopNMad’ chapter of the Iron Order. It’s right down here on Franklin St. next to the courthouse,” said Whitfield. “It’s probably the most ‘white bread’ biker place you’ve ever seen. We’ve got a pool table in there, it’s clean, we’ve got a kitchen upstairs, and on Friday nights it is open and we have families come in and little kids. We had a Nintendo Wii Bowling Tournament during April last year for Big Brothers-Big Sisters. So we had all our guys down there playing Wii Bowling—I mean, that’s the kind of club this is. A couple of weekends ago, we went to the Taylor Patterson Poker Run, and we were the only bikers that showed up. We donated money for that. One of the guys from the HopNMad chapter is serving in Afghanistan right now, too. Most of our Board is made up of military guys as well. So this is the kind of club he [P’Pool] is kickin’ on.”

“I’m on the International Board of the Iron Order because I’m a lawyer and I can handle things that need to be handled,” said Whitfield of his involvement with the club. “We don’t permit felons in the club and we’re the largest law-abiding motorcycle club that wears a 3-piece patch in the country. I’m on the Board of Directors for the Iron Order—we have a president, we have regional directors, and if you get on the website you’ll see all of this—and all the guys on the website are military and one of them is a doctor. What I did here is, we had to organize the local HopNMad chapter, and so we needed to prepare corporation papers—they call them LLC papers because this is a Limited-Liability Corporation—so I drew them up for the HopNMad chapter incorporated here in Madisonville so that we had legal protection. It’s like any company, and we’re non-profit. That’s it.”

In response to P’Pool’s statement that the Iron Order’s presence in Madisonville could pose a threat to our local law enforcement, Whitfield stated that, “Let me tell you something. I’m a grandfather, OK. I take my 4 year-old grandchild down to the clubhouse all the time. I mean, it’s like ‘Happy Days.’ It’s not anything like what you would consider a ‘biker bar.’ There are kids in there all the time. To say it’s a threat is absolutely incredible. You ask any of the police—we have an unbelievable relationship to the police. We’re right next door to the fire department, we’re right next door to the police department, and we get along with them fine. We’ve no issues at all. In fact, as I told you, most of our guys are law enforcement or military throughout the country.”

Replying to the criminal incidents and questionable behavior mentioned by P’Pool, both of which he stated involved members of the Iron Order (occurring in both Virginia and Georgia), Whitfield stated that, “There was a guy that was in the Pagans. He was shot and killed, and that was in Virginia. I think it was his uncle that was friends with one guy in our club, who happened to be the doctor I was telling you about, who is also an ornate minister out of Louisville. The uncle and my guy—the doctor—were best friends. So the Iron Order guy drove to Virginia to attend the funeral of this fellow. That’s it. He went to a funeral of his best friend’s nephew.”

“Let me tell you about what happened in Jessup, Georgia,” said Whitfield. “I went down there when this happened to make sure I knew what was going on. 5 or 6 of our guys were in a bar, and there was another club that they call a ‘one-percent’ club—these national ‘one-percent’ clubs, like the Pagans, Outlaws, and the Bandidos, all have these ‘support’ clubs that are associated with them—and one of these associated clubs jumped our guys in a bar and beat 2 of our guys down. They hurt our guys pretty bad. That’s what he’s [P’Pool’s] talking about there. They just arrested everybody. They’re getting ready to dismiss the charges against my guys, because they didn’t do anything wrong. I went down there and saw it and talked to the prosecutors and the lead investigator.”

In regards to what could have prompted the altercation, Whitfield stated that, “The Iron Order is not liked by the ‘one-percent’ world. The Iron Order is not liked by these outlaw motorcycle clubs because we’re law-abiding and we let everybody know we’re law abiding. We don’t break the law, we’re getting bigger, and it’s a threat to some of these outlaw clubs. We’re the anti-outlaw motorcycle club. We provide an outlet for guys that want to ride, have fun, and wear a 3-piece patch. When you wear a 3-piece patch, it’s kind of a big deal in the motorcycle world, and these other outlaw clubs say that you have to have permission from them to wear a 3-piece patch, but we don’t; we don’t ask permission from anybody, we just do it. And because we’re law-abiding, and we’re full of cops, a lot of the outlaw clubs don’t like us—they just hate ‘cop clubs’ and that’s what we are. So, as a result, every now and then, you’re going to have little issues, and that was one of them in Jessup. This had nothing to do with us here in Madisonville.”

Whitfield also rebuked allegations that a felon, Mike “Lollipop” Melton, was a member of the Iron Order—who P’Pool also stated had been convicted of methamphetamine possession.

“He’s not in the Iron Order,” said Whitfield. “We call him ‘Lollipop’—his name is Mike Melton, he’s a great guy, and he works at J-Lock. He had an issue with the law in the past and he pled guilty to a felony, but he’s not a member of the Iron Order. We know him. I know who he is—he’s a friend of mine—but he’s not in the Iron Order, because he can’t get in. We don’t like drug dealers, and we don’t let felons in. We don’t let them in—period.”

On the topic of alcohol consumption within the HopNMad Chapter’s headquarters in Madisonville, which P’Pool said he believed was occurring without the acquirement of a liquor-license, Whitfield said that, “I don’t have any kind of clue what he’s talking about. Do we serve alcohol without a liquor-license? No, sir.”

In regards to the nickname, “Shark,” Whitfield stated that, “I’m kind of proud of that actually. I tell you what, it’s strange, because every now and then, these guys will call the office and say, ‘Is Shark there?’, and it took the girls a while to figure out who ‘Shark’ was. Now they give me grief about it. It’s on my bike, too.”

“To say that we are a threat to the community is an absolute joke,” said Whitfield. “Have you ever heard of a guy named Bob Saget? Bob Saget was the dad on ‘Full House’ and he was the host on ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ Well, he’s got a new reality show coming out called, ‘Strange Days,’ that will be on A&E, and the whole premise is to put Bob in a funny situation to see how he reacts. Well, they ended up needing a motorcycle club, so they contacted us. So we filmed in February, leaving from Louisville and going all the way to Bike Week in Daytona—a whole week with Bob Saget—and that episode is going to be aired December 1st on A&E. It’s going to have me in it, the president of our local chapter, Ronnie Hayes, and I’ve seen the take and it’s really funny. It’s just about how goofy we are. I mean, we’re going to be on a national TV show on December 1st with Bog Saget—the dad on ‘Full House’ and probably one of the biggest nerds that ever lived. So if that’s going to happen, you tell me how in the world we’re going to be a threat to anybody. They chose us. These producers weren’t going to go to a ‘one-percent’ club, but they went to us because we’re a law-abiding military-cop club. In fact, we made Bob an honorary member. So Bob is an honorary member of the Iron Order.”

“We’re not anything close to what P’Pool tries to make us out to be,” said Whitfield. “It’s a desperate move.”

When, and if, more information arises in regards to this matter, iSurf News will bring it to you as soon as possible.

Luke Short
iSurf News