Author Topic: Police Are Profiling Bikers When They Should Be Destroying Gangs  (Read 452 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Law Enforcement Today by James E. Lewis | Apr 14, 2019

With social media, overtly liberal politicians and some police chiefs, and people watching too many movies or TV shows like “Sons of Anarchy,” I strongly believe our efforts are misguided and have served to backfire – shutting down trust and support from the very most patriotic and law enforcement-supportive groups out there.

In this day and age where everyone group seems to align itself with bashing and hating on cops, it appears that several police agencies, and even the State of Texas, in an orchestrated effort, have taken aim at motorcycle clubs – casual fraternal groups – lumping them in with “gangs” like The Bloods and Crips who roam the streets of Compton and Los Angeles, or MS-13 in Long Island, New York.

Please allow me to paint you a scenario involving a man I know very well.  Please put yourself in his shoes and imagine the overwhelming bewilderment as he’s experienced the events of the past several months.

I met this man inside the USO at Los Angeles International Airport in November of 1990.  <excerpted>
More: https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/police-profiling-motorcycle-clubs/
« Last Edit: April 15, 2019, 01:48:21 am by Mod5 »

Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: Police Are Profiling Bikers When They Should Be Destroying Gangs
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2019, 08:17:58 am »
You KNOW why. The average street thug doesn't have anything more valuable than a little bling and a (likely stolen or POS) handgun, maybe some drugs...at best a few hundred market value. Besides, those sh*ts will sneak up on you and bust a cap in your arse while you're downing coffee and a donut.

But that motorcycle the po-po just jacked...stole....impounded...as part of their CAF program will net a minimum of 5-10K at the sale, and that's only if the owner is a real badass breathing down someone's back who is bidding against him. It might bring more.

Ka-Ching!
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline sneakypete

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Re: Police Are Profiling Bikers When They Should Be Destroying Gangs
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2019, 10:50:57 am »
You KNOW why. The average street thug doesn't have anything more valuable than a little bling and a (likely stolen or POS) handgun, maybe some drugs...at best a few hundred market value. Besides, those sh*ts will sneak up on you and bust a cap in your arse while you're downing coffee and a donut.

But that motorcycle the po-po just jacked...stole....impounded...as part of their CAF program will net a minimum of 5-10K at the sale, and that's only if the owner is a real badass breathing down someone's back who is bidding against him. It might bring more.

Ka-Ching!

@Smokin Joe

They also do it as a power trip. I have been riding since 1965,and been riding custom Harley's/choppers since I built my first one in 1970,a 1940 knucklehead with a 3/4 inch rake,rigid frame,and 15 over springer I extended myself. The knuckle engine had panhead flywheels,rods,pistons,and cylinders,and an original knuckle "lightening" valve train. It would FLY!

The very first day I got it back on the road I was stopped and given a bogus ticket by a highway patrolman who testified in court that "I was going down highway xxx and spotted this long-haired,hippy-looking individual passing traffic at a high rate of speed (notice I wasn't clocked on his radar)" as justification for stopping me and writing me a ticket.

I once had some motorcycle cops with the Denver PD admit to me that "We are going to keep stopping and harrassing you until you sell your Harley and buy a respectable motorcycle like we ride (Kawasaki). They didn't seem amused when I told them just because their mamas wouldn't let THEM ride Harley's,that didn't mean that actual men couldn't ride them..

I once stopped a Denver PD patrol car after midnight and reported seeing a couple of guys breaking into an apartment by crawling through the back window. Their response was to search me for drugs and weapons,and to threaten to arrest me for filing false charges. It was a "bad neighborhood" where the cops NEVER showed up without a SWAT truck as backup,and they were just passing through it when I stopped them to report the B&E. Their excuse for not checking it out was to ask me "How do you know it wasn't just someone who had lost their keys?"

The worse offense was I once stopped an attempted armed robbery at the liquor store on the corner by knocking the robber out. The lone female running the store that night called the cops and asked me to wait until they showed up,so I handed her my 44 and told her to hide it under the counter as a store gun because I KNEW the DPD was going to pat me down and would arrest me if they found the gun.

When the DPD,complete with the detective car,two squad cars,and the SWAT van showed up about 30 minutes later,the first thing they did was lean ME over the counter and pat me down for weapons,and then give me a ration of crap for "interfering with police business" and threatening to lock me up if I did it again. Little did these asshats know that I had traffic warrants out for my arrest in another name,and had hidden that ID with the 44. That was what you had to do if you rode a custom Harley in Denver back then,and wanted to stay out of jail. Before I got the false ID,I had the DPD coming around my apartment while I was at work and interviewing my landlord and my neighbors and asking about my "criminal activity" Which while it pissed me off,worked in my favor because nobody in that neighborhood was a fan of the DPD,and the old woman living upstairs even told me she had told them I had moved out and gone "somewhere" back east.

I was even stopped riding home from school at midnight in a blizzard,and given a ticket for "operating a unsafe vehicle. That ticket was the reason for one of my warrants. I would have had to have missed a day of work to get that BS ticket dismissed,and couldn't afford to do that,so I missed court and they issued a warrant for my arrest.

If I had lived in Denver another 2 years,I would have probably been shooting at them from rooftops.
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Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: Police Are Profiling Bikers When They Should Be Destroying Gangs
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2019, 05:56:26 am »
@Smokin Joe

They also do it as a power trip. I have been riding since 1965,and been riding custom Harley's/choppers since I built my first one in 1970,a 1940 knucklehead with a 3/4 inch rake,rigid frame,and 15 over springer I extended myself. The knuckle engine had panhead flywheels,rods,pistons,and cylinders,and an original knuckle "lightening" valve train. It would FLY!

The very first day I got it back on the road I was stopped and given a bogus ticket by a highway patrolman who testified in court that "I was going down highway xxx and spotted this long-haired,hippy-looking individual passing traffic at a high rate of speed (notice I wasn't clocked on his radar)" as justification for stopping me and writing me a ticket.

I once had some motorcycle cops with the Denver PD admit to me that "We are going to keep stopping and harrassing you until you sell your Harley and buy a respectable motorcycle like we ride (Kawasaki). They didn't seem amused when I told them just because their mamas wouldn't let THEM ride Harley's,that didn't mean that actual men couldn't ride them..

I once stopped a Denver PD patrol car after midnight and reported seeing a couple of guys breaking into an apartment by crawling through the back window. Their response was to search me for drugs and weapons,and to threaten to arrest me for filing false charges. It was a "bad neighborhood" where the cops NEVER showed up without a SWAT truck as backup,and they were just passing through it when I stopped them to report the B&E. Their excuse for not checking it out was to ask me "How do you know it wasn't just someone who had lost their keys?"

The worse offense was I once stopped an attempted armed robbery at the liquor store on the corner by knocking the robber out. The lone female running the store that night called the cops and asked me to wait until they showed up,so I handed her my 44 and told her to hide it under the counter as a store gun because I KNEW the DPD was going to pat me down and would arrest me if they found the gun.

When the DPD,complete with the detective car,two squad cars,and the SWAT van showed up about 30 minutes later,the first thing they did was lean ME over the counter and pat me down for weapons,and then give me a ration of crap for "interfering with police business" and threatening to lock me up if I did it again. Little did these asshats know that I had traffic warrants out for my arrest in another name,and had hidden that ID with the 44. That was what you had to do if you rode a custom Harley in Denver back then,and wanted to stay out of jail. Before I got the false ID,I had the DPD coming around my apartment while I was at work and interviewing my landlord and my neighbors and asking about my "criminal activity" Which while it pissed me off,worked in my favor because nobody in that neighborhood was a fan of the DPD,and the old woman living upstairs even told me she had told them I had moved out and gone "somewhere" back east.

I was even stopped riding home from school at midnight in a blizzard,and given a ticket for "operating a unsafe vehicle. That ticket was the reason for one of my warrants. I would have had to have missed a day of work to get that BS ticket dismissed,and couldn't afford to do that,so I missed court and they issued a warrant for my arrest.

If I had lived in Denver another 2 years,I would have probably been shooting at them from rooftops.
I feel ya!
I used to go to Sturgis, back in the 80s, but after the 50th, it changed. Suddenly there were as many moonlighting police as legitimate vendors, four or five to the block, Miraculous Mutha left the pages of Easyriders, replaced by some "Bro's club" you had to pay to join (but nothing else), and last year's t-shirt was double instead of half price.
Only went a couple of times since, but never rode my Shovelhead, (6 over tubes, lowered, in an old Drag Specialties rigid, with the open 3" rubber band primary with no guard). Even though I had a ND hand typed title with both the engine number and frame number and religiously carried a copy of the statement of origin for the frame, it was just too much hassle to be pulled over and gone over with a fine tooth comb any time someone noticed what you were riding wasn't bone stock. That ain't no way to have fun...

Around the 'neighborhood', here, no problem, I was on good terms with the LEOs through charity gigs we put on and one of their UCs (whom I knew was a UC) caught me upbraiding some local celebrity for smoking a joint inside the main enclosure of a charity party (past the sign that says no weapons or drugs past this point). I read her ass the riot act and when she said "Don't you know who I am?", informed her I didn't give a sh*t, this was for some poor kids, not her, and to take it past the gate, where it wouldn't involve the organization or the charity. She huffed up, but she did it. Not that I cared what she did, just where she did it.

After that, I had no hassles, locally.

I couldn't live in a big town, just too much nonsense.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2019, 05:58:31 am by Smokin Joe »
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis