http://www.missoulian.com/specials/hellsangels/ha04.html
Cities of Angels
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
Two states, two gatherings, two outcomes
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Roger Jensen gazed wide-eyed into the roaring dervish, and he wasn't scared. He was calm, ready to embrace Pandemonium.
Ignorance was, indeed, bliss.
Jensen was police chief in the out-of-the-way Rocky Mountain resort town of Steamboat Springs, a wide spot in the Colorado blacktop three hours west of Denver on a road leading nowhere particular. The Hells Angels were rumbling into his town, "Ski Town, USA," for their 1996 World Run, bringing with them a history of chaos in small towns. But Jensen really wasn't worried.
Perhaps he should've been.
Less than one week before the infamous outlaw bikers were to arrive, Jensen told the local newspaper what to expect, based on conversations he'd had with the Angels: "They'll visit our bars and restaurants," he said. "They'll go to our theater, they'll go fishing. You may see them in the parks having a picnic with their family; that's what they're here to do."
Four years later, four years after the assaults and the stabbings and the shootings and the boot-stomping bar fights, Jensen's no longer police chief, and the town still buzzes with tales of those crazy Angels whose World Run swept over Ski Town like a tattooed avalanche.
"They were essentially able to take the place over," says Kevin Bennett, president of the Steamboat Springs City Council. "We underestimated the impact of their presence."
Bennett says the town didn't meet the "gray-haired bikers, this kinder and gentler Hells Angels" promised by Jensen. Instead, he says, "we were on the verge of having it really come unglued."
Hunter S. Thompson, the journalist who spent a year riding with the Angels during the mid-1960s, described a Hells Angel run as "a massive three-day drunk that nearly always results in some wild, free-swinging action and another rude shock for the squares. ... It is a time for sharing the wine jug, pummeling old friends, random fornication and general full-dress madness."
Perhaps not much has changed in 35 years. Perhaps Jensen really should've been worried about the Angels' run to Steamboat.
Two weeks after the outlaw bikers roared out of town, after the hired-gun SWAT teams returned to patrol Denver's urban jungle, Jensen had been, in the words of one Hells Angel, "educated."
"In hindsight," Jensen says, "I would have been more direct in telling people, 'If you come in contact (with individual Hells Angels), you have to be careful. There is an element that is dangerous. If you put yourself in a confrontational situation they will finish whatever you start.' We should have said that. ... They would have not hesitated to have a confrontation with police. They are not afraid of the police one bit."
But, oddly, many of the tales from Steamboat are stories of police overreacting rather than of drunken bikers dragging the town's daughters out of their beds and beating concerned boyfriends with beer bottles.
In the end, there wasn't a single arrest. A half-dozen locals got stomped, but even they admit they started it, even if they didn't deserve it. Two Hells Angels were shot, likely by other Angels, but the bikers police themselves and gave local authorities no opportunity to intervene.
Meanwhile, Main Street enjoyed business as usual while police scrambled to get a handle on what exactly was happening to the unquestioned authority they usually enjoyed.
"For the police, it was a crisis," says Ben Beall, a Routt County commissioner. "For the rest of us, it was no big deal. I went to this meeting and there were all these cops and SWAT teams, and I thought, 'What are they doing?' But you know how it is - everything gets blown out of proportion when you're so involved."
The only time the Angels were a problem for the citizens of Steamboat, Beall says, was when "locals got in the way."
"There were incidents in the bars where the cowboys came in and wanted to see how tough these bikers are," he says, "and you can imagine how that turned out."
Generally, he says, it turned out with a bloody cowboy.
Jensen's then-second-in-command, J.D. Hays, remembers the 1996 World Run as a big deal - a very big deal, in fact.
"We had absolutely zero experience in dealing with an incident like this," admits Hays, who succeeded Jensen as chief of the Steamboat Springs Police Department. The first night the Angels were in town, he says, local law enforcement agencies beefed up patrols from three to 24, confident that a couple dozen police could handle any trouble.
"That was Plan A," Hays says, "and that was a mistake."
Cops responding to calls - to traffic complaints or to bar fights - found themselves surrounded by Hells Angels, vastly outnumbered and admittedly intimidated.
"That's when we decided, 'This is bull----. Let's go to Plan B,' " Hays recalls.
Two years later, when the 1998 Hells Angels World Run came to Ventura, Calif., police there had learned from Steamboat's experience, had called in the troops, had discarded anything like Plan A months before the bikers' arrival. In Ventura, the World Run looked more like a police parade than the madness of Steamboat.
"The difference," says Ventura patrolman George Brink, "is that in Steamboat Springs the cops didn't run their town. Here, we did."
This, then, is a tale of two cities, one where the Angels assumed control and one where police ruled with an iron fist. There is, however, one common denominator: In both towns most locals, looking back, prefer the Angels over the cops.
News tricked slowly to Steamboat Springs. An FBI wiretap tipped federal agents that the Hells Angels might be rolling into the rural Colorado town for an annual gathering. The FBI tipped the Colorado State Patrol, which tipped the Denver Police Department, which handed it to its motorcycle gang expert. Finally, about four weeks before the bikers were to arrive, somebody called Steamboat.
The Angels, it seems, had planned well for their early-August party. Steamboat hadn't. The resort town of 8,000 already had a full house, with about 20,000 tourists in town for a free concert, a special symphony, a PRCA rodeo, an international softball tournament, a national roller hockey tournament, a mountain bike race and a handful of other events.
When local police heard the Angels were riding for Steamboat, Hays says, they began a crash course in "Bikers 101: How to Prepare for the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club." They called local hotels, found out where the Angels were staying (many had booked rooms under the acronym HAMC, and hotel owners didn't know to whom they were playing host); called in motorcycle gang experts; coordinated with nearby agencies; and arranged for extra help, including state wildlife officers and federal forest rangers.
The result was - for Steamboat, at least - an impressive show of law enforcement. Two dozen officers rode two to a car, patrolling in 12-hour shifts.
Meanwhile, 50 dozen Hells Angels rode in one to a Harley, riding pretty much when and where they chose.
The first night, officer Rick Crotz and his partner responded to an early-evening bar brawl, the first of several in which locals lost the fight, some dignity, a few teeth and not a little blood.
A local drunk, as Hays describes him, had opened his mouth at the wrong time and a bar full of Angels had closed it for him. Crotz called for backup, marching in with 10 armed officers to escort their towering and tattooed suspect out of the crowded chaos.
The Angels followed.
"As soon as we walked out of the bar, we were surrounded," Crotz says. "It was very intimidating."
Ringed by 30 or 40 Angels, Crotz and his men opted against arresting their suspect. Had they tried to cuff him, Crotz says, "I have no doubt we would have had to pull our guns."
So much for Plan A.
Even George Christie, president of the Ventura Hells Angels, doesn't understand Plan A, based on a ratio of 24 cops to 600 Hells Angels.
"Wouldn't a logical person understand that if he was a police officer" in that situation "that he would be outnumbered?" Christie wonders. "Of course they're going to be outnumbered, but that doesn't mean we sat down and conspired to outnumber the police."
The day after the showdown outside the bar, Steamboat called in the troops. Reinforcements arrived - deputies from Douglas, Grand, Routt, Mesa, Boulder, Moffat, Arapahoe, Rio Blanco, Garfield, Summit, Jefferson and Eagle counties; city cops from Grand Junction, Steamboat, Denver, Craig, Colorado Springs; fire departments, search and rescue teams, state and federal law enforcement; 26 agencies in all.
"We had close to 200 cops," Hays says, "and if we'd had twice that many it wouldn't have bothered me a bit."
Most of the agencies paid their own way, but Steamboat Springs still doled out more than $15,000 for overtime, meals, gasoline, housing and other law enforcement expenses.
Even that chunk of change, however, could not purchase peace of mind.
On the Angels' second night in Steamboat, with more than 100 cops working the streets, two Hells Angels were shot inside their "compound," a motel the bikers had taken over for the weekend. By the time police got the call and responded to the Iron Horse Inn, the Angels had barricaded the entrances, set up security check stations, established a perimeter guard and posted sentries on the roof. A rampart of Harley-Davidsons had blockaded the building.
Both police and Hells Angels agree it was an extremely tense scene, everyone armed and nervous, because many of the bikers didn't know there'd been a shooting and so were outraged at what they believed was an unprovoked police raid.
"People really weren't quite sure what transpired," Christie says. "They weren't going to back down. We weren't going to back down. It took a little while to sift through everything."
"I guess we had two choices," Hays says. "We could've fought our way in, which made no sense, or we could negotiate our way in, which is what we did."
The Hells Angels wanted an ambulance for the wounded; police wanted access to a crime scene. Finally, two officers were allowed to carry out the bleeding bikers. Officer Crotz says he "grabbed the biggest cop I could find and said, 'Let's go!' "
He was escorted, for his own safety, by a handful of members from the Ventura Hells Angels Chapter into the motel room.
"There was blood all over," Crotz says, and "this Hells Angel laying on the ground bleeding."
Crotz and his partner pulled the wounded out and into the ambulance and then returned to inspect the crime scene.
The Hells Angels, however, politely but firmly told police they no longer required their assistance. A biker named "Ron" took Crotz's card and said he would call if they needed any help.
It was two hours before the phone rang, a long two hours during which police fumed, incensed that a gang of hoodlums was running their crime scene for them. By the time police again entered the room, Crotz says, the blood was gone; the bedding was gone; the carpet was cut out and gone; large sections of the walls were gone; wall studs were gone; and there was no trace of bullet holes, blood or smoking guns.
"It was sterilized," Hays spits, still angry after all these years.
Christie understands Hays' anger, but he takes a more philosophical, if not smug, outlook on the cat-and-mouse game of power and authority.
"Nobody likes to lose control of a situation they believe they're the master of," Christie says. "It was an education for everyone."
Police learned their lesson quickly. The next day, Christie says, "there was definitely a police presence on the street." He called it a "circus atmosphere of law enforcement" that only served to escalate tensions.
The cops, who as a minority had feared where Angels dared to tread, were now secure in their numbers, and they weren't in a good mood. Neither were the outlaws.
And Hays - despite his anger at being frustrated by the bikers, despite the tension, despite the town's sense of a siege laid down by both Angels and police - says he wouldn't change a thing if the situation were repeated.
"Some townsfolk said, 'You're the police. You should've stormed in,' " he says. "Well, look what happened when they stormed their way into Waco. Look what happened when they stormed their way into Ruby Ridge. It made more sense to negotiate."
In addition, the Angels' weekend gathering in Steamboat wasn't over, and Hays had his biggest worry in front of him: a PRCA rodeo at which the stands would be packed with cowboys and Angels. And according to Tom Ross, then managing editor of the Steamboat Pilot, "You know what a cowboy is - he's a cocky rooster who won't take s--- from anyone, and in many ways that's also what a Hells Angel is."
What would happen with all those roosters rubbing wings in the bleachers? What if some redneck tossed an insult into the Hells Angels' crowd? What if, in Bennett's words, things "came unglued"?
Chuck Vale's job, as Routt County's emergency management director, is to deal with what-ifs.
"Planning is all about what-ifs," he says. "What if you have a crowd of redneck cowboys at a rodeo where lots of beer is served? And what if you mix in a group of Hells Angels? Because I have a very redneck mentality, I could see it not going well at all."
And so, Vale concocted the idea of separating the roosters, putting each in self-contained coops. The Hells Angels were given their own bleachers, their own entrance gate, their own bathrooms. The cowboys were penned on the other side of the arena.
Meanwhile, the hill above the rodeo grounds crawled with law enforcement personnel, a half-dozen SWAT teams ready to - to what? To fire into the melee? To rush into the fray? To take charge and restore order? Most likely, Vale says, they were merely ready to clean up the mess when all was said and done.
But there was no riot, no roiling brawl, no cockfight in the stands. Routt County Sheriff John Warner says police entertained themselves by pointing their laser-sighted rifles at the Angels, getting a kick out of seeing the deadly red dot slide from denim-encased crotch to tattooed chest.
The rodeo, Warner says, "was the biggest non-event that ever didn't happen."
Warner remains angry that gang experts and police sources initially misled him, indicating, "It was going to be this wonderful hand-holding experience between the Hells Angels and the community. Everybody said they would come and be peaceful tourists."
The reality, he says, was a long way from that sunny myth.
The Angels, he says, thundered into Steamboat and immediately set up surveillance on police, following their movements with binoculars, cameras and high-tech radio communications. A communications van, he says, was parked for days across from his offices, seven antennae sprouting from its roof.
"We never did find out what frequency they were communicating on," Warner says. "They had a better communications system than we did."
At one point, he says, a Colorado State Patrol aircraft was monitoring the hotel "compound" from 10,000 feet above when the Angels broke into its secure aviation frequency and told agents to "get the hell off our ceiling."
Warner's deputies, shaken by the constant surveillance, began swapping name tags, trading cars and switching shifts, all in an attempt to throw off the bikers - who for their part admit to some surveillance but say Warner and his men were paranoid to the point of absurdity. Still, it wasn't until help arrived that officers felt relatively safe again, Warner says
"Once we got the SWAT teams in here, all of a sudden these guys changed their tune," he says. "I believe if we'd had 100 cops here from Day 1, we wouldn't have had half the problems. Once we got the numbers in here, the violence stopped. Every time they moved, there was a group of cops on them."
That blue-shadow strategy is exactly the approach Ventura authorities adopted from the start, and it also is the approach that has Angels like Christie complaining that police often create tense situations - and trample civil liberties - by overreacting. Police perceive a threat, Christie says, even when the actions of the Angels don't justify that perception.
Steamboat's experience, says Ventura's Mark Coronado, "scared the heck out of law enforcement here."
Coronado is a patrol officer and resident motorcycle gang expert with the Ventura Police Department. He helped coordinate the multijurisdictional effort to contain the bikers when they arrived for their 1998 World Run
The chaos in Steamboat, Coronado says, "opened our eyes, and it should have."
As soon as he learned the bikers were riding for his town, Coronado began briefing other cops about the realities of a possible Hells Angels takeover.
"Chief (Michael) Tracy decided we weren't going to let them take over our city," Coronado says. "They were going to come whether we liked it or not, but they were going to come under our rules."
Those rules, laid down beneath the palms that line the sun-soaked streets, were enforced by a phalanx of cops, making the town look like an occupied city, according to some downtown merchants.
"The whole thing was real successful because we policed them to death," Coronado remembers. "There were more cops here than they had ever seen."
Because Coronado knew Christie well, and because the Hells Angels were a regular presence in his town, he wasn't, like Steamboat's Jensen, lulled by the promises of the roaring dervish. Instead, he listened, he negotiated and he called for backup.
"Every expert we talked to said the only thing the Hells Angels respect is a show of force, but you've got to have the manpower to back it up," he says.
And manpower was one thing Coronado had more than enough of. He had cops on horses, cops on bicycles, cops with dogs, cops in cars, cops on foot, cops in uniform, cops undercover, even cops on Harley-Davidsons.
He takes pride in the fact that the Angels "didn't have a real good time while they were here, because there were cops everywhere."
If he ruined a 50th anniversary reunion and vacation for 500 bikers, he says, if he cut into the economic boost many merchants expected, then so be it. He ran his town.
Christie, however, still wonders why all the police were necessary. There were no confrontations, he says, no "incidents" between Hells Angels and locals. The tens of thousands of dollars police spent on increased patrols, he says, could have been put to better use in some community charity. That's the kind of public-relations message that makes the cops cringe.
One of the most costly and frustrating parts of the "police invasion," as Christie calls it, was the forest of "no motorcycle parking" signs that cropped up overnight in Ventura. Downtown suddenly was off limits, and bikers were forced to park their hogs and head out on foot.
"It ticked off the Hells Angels and it really ticked off the merchants as well," Coronado says. But it was worth it. "We clamped it down. We were there to stop it. If we hadn't stopped it, who knows?"
Christie, meanwhile, wonders what "it" was that Ventura police stopped. The no-parking signs came down shortly after the Angels roared out of town, leading many citizens to believe they'd been erected only as harassment and intimidation, a public statement designed to reinforce the idea that the police, not the Angels, were still the authority.
"We just slammed them," Coronado says. "They know that if you step in it in front of the uniform, you're going to get stepped on. They understand that. I personally like the zero-tolerance approach. Even with our zero-tolerance plan, they tested us. If we wouldn't have come down on them, we would've lost control. They would've done whatever they wanted."
What they wanted, Christie says, was room to get together without constant harassment. The Hells Angels gain nothing by terrorizing the towns they visit, he says. Stories like those from Steamboat only make it more difficult the next time bikers gather. Left to themselves, Christie says, the Hells Angels will get together, party, renew old friendships and scream back out of town astride those gleaming, growling steel steeds, leaving a wake of cash in the tills of local business owners.
But seldom are they left to themselves.
Their mystique draws in the curious, and among the curious are always a few who decide, for whatever beer-drenched reason, to challenge the bikers. The result usually is the kind of contained explosion that draws police, and among the police are always a few who decide, for reasons of principle and power, to slap back this denim-clad dervish.
In Ventura, there were no run-ins with locals, no fights, no trouble. But there were four arrests, seven impounded bikes, 63 citations, 10 warnings and 166 field interviews.
"If everyone would just calm down and stay out of the way," Christie says, "there would be no problems."
From Christie's point of view, the trouble comes when local toughs and local cops push too far.
The run to Steamboat was wild, he says, because a handful of drunks wanted to test the Angels, because the police overreacted to what were essentially a handful of barroom scraps, and because the media latched on to it and ran pictures of SWAT teams armed to the teeth.
From Christie's point of view, Ventura was peaceful because his club was on its home turf, able to seclude visiting bikers within the fence surrounding the Hells Angels Clubhouse, safe from provocation by citizens or police.
But from law enforcement's view, Steamboat was violent only until enough officers arrived in town, evidence that the Angels are the provocateurs and that they will restrain themselves only when faced with a large enough opponent.
And Ventura, police say, was peaceful due to constant and heavy police pressure, pressure they say persuaded many Angels to leave town early.
"Cops, cops and more cops," Coronado says. "That's the only way you're going to keep it in control."
Up north, in Steamboat Springs, where people still tell the 4-year-old stories as if they happened yesterday, Chuck Vale agrees. "If you have a good plan and enough cops, you can really squeeze the Hells Angels and make it not fun for them," he says. "But if you don't have a plan and a couple hundred cops, man, what are you biting off? Think about it."
![[linked image]](http://www.teamstrange.com/buttlite3/bakersfield/DSC01248.jpg)
>
