by Michael Amon, Washington Post
For nearly 20 years, John Beal, a gruff-voiced tattoo parlor owner, was just a guy who liked big, loud motorcycles -- nothing out of the ordinary in North Beach, a Chesapeake Bay town where biker clubs are like the Rotary in other towns.
But a year and a half ago, Beal and a dozen or so friends startled law enforcement officers when they broke away from a Southern Maryland motorcycle club and began the process they hope will make them Maryland’s first chapter of the Hells Angels.
The Hells Angels’ national image, which in some places includes a reputation for criminal activities, has brought unaccustomed notoriety and police surveillance for the breakaway group, which some community leaders say is made up of upstanding citizens.
But police say the prospective Hells Angels chapter is a menace that has already sparked confrontations with the Pagans, a Maryland-based national biker gang with whom the Hells Angels have had bloody confrontations over turf across the country. On May 30, a man who Calvert County authorities said is a Hells Angels prospect and a friend were wounded in a drive-by shooting at a bar in Deale, and a one-time Pagan member has been charged with attempted murder.
Charles Ravenell, Anne Arundel County police spokesman, said friction between the two clubs is a possible motive for the shooting.
“We haven’t had people shot at in a bar for 10 years,” Calvert County Sheriff John A. “Rodney” Bartlett said. “It’s not what it used to be. This isn’t just some small group coming out of the beach. This is an outlaw, criminal organization.”
Ken Neu, assistant chief of the FBI’s national violent crimes division, said Hells Angels moving into Pagans turf has “the potential for conflict and the potential for innocent people to get caught up in something. That’s a concern for law enforcement, especially in light of recent events,” including violence surrounding Pagans, Hells Angels and other biker gangs in Philadelphia and Nevada and on Long Island.
The Washington region has seen biker gang violence before. In the early 1990s, a Northern Virginia club called Fates Assembly clashed with the Pagans, resulting in several shootings and two deaths.
Bartlett makes no apologies for monitoring Hells Angels prospects. He said his department routinely shares information on biker groups with federal, state and local law enforcement officials.
To Beal, 36, tattooed and loquacious, the attention is unwarranted. He and his friends are not stoking violence or planning organized crime, he said, and his fellow prospects are average, working-class stiffs. Some own businesseses, and many are friendly with local politicians and once had good relations with police.
“We’re the same people who have been riding around here for 20 years,” Beal said. “All of a sudden, because we’re putting on a different patch, we’re different people.”
Biker clubs have been a part of Southern Maryland’s cultural landscape since the end of World War II, when so-called outlaw motorcycle gangs -- including the Pagans, who formed in 1959 in Mitchellville -- began cropping up across the country. The Pagans’ membership is estimated at 400 to 500 across the country, with about 50 local members, mostly in southern Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties.
Large groups of bikers are a common sight on Southern Maryland roads, and the local motorcycle clubs spend their summers planning and attending rallies every weekend. Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties account for about 5 percent of the state’s population but more than 8 percent of registered motorcycles -- 5,173 motorcycles of the 63,471 in the state.
When the prospective Hells Angels were part of a local club called the Tribes, North Beach Mayor Mark R. Frazer said, they helped the town raise money for the North Beach Children’s Fund by volunteering to staff the “beer wagon” during town festivals.
“These are the same individuals who have lived in the area for years,” Frazer said. “Simply because they are starting a new club does not mean that now everyone has become concerned.”
Adding to the controversy is the changing nature of northern Calvert, where some of the prospective Hells Angels members live. That is the center of the county’s population growth, a place quickly making a transition from a rural enclave of watermen, farmers and local business owners to a bedroom community filled with residents fleeing the District, Baltimore and Prince George’s County.
Near the homes of the Hells Angels prospects -- with Harley Davidsons in the driveways -- the streets are lined with minivans, Mercedes and station wagons, hallmarks of families and growing affluence. Bartlett said he has received complaints about the club from residents and business owners.
The prospects won’t talk about how and why they want to become Hells Angels, but members of their old club, the Tribes, said they had been hanging out with a Hells Angels club from Connecticut for years. In January 2001, the national organization gave the Calvert County group a chance at full membership after the Connecticut club said it would sponsor them, sources said.
Law enforcement officials have a different account. Calvert sheriff’s Sgt. Ricky Thomas said Hells Angels members came to Maryland a few years ago to recruit, and in response, Pagan leadership told local clubs to pledge their allegiance only to the Pagans in any confrontations.
Several calls to the president of the local Pagans went unanswered. A reporter who visited the group’s clubhouse was stopped at a locked gate that warned no trespassing.
The Tribes said they would remain neutral, and Thomas said Pagans began intimidating Beal and other Tribes members until about nine of them decided to break away. Police never charged anyone for associated crimes, and the Tribes says there was no intimidation by the Pagans.
“They couldn’t stand on their own against the Pagans, so they reached out to the Hells Angels,” Thomas said.
The question of allegiance is at the center of the turf wars.
Lt. Terry Katz, a biker gang expert with the Maryland State Police, said members of gangs like the Hells Angels and the Pagans pledge their allegiance to the club for life. “It comes before your family, your job, before the laws of this nation.”
For now, the prospects are on a sort of Hells Angels probation. Police have no evidence that the prospects are conducting any criminal enterprises, which experts on outlaw motorcycle clubs say help fund the national gang.
But authorities say the group has not acted like the group of typical guys they say they are. At what police called the prospects’ “coming out party” in March, authorities said they observed snipers fanned out in the woods surrounding the outdoor shindig. Hells Angels prospects denied that the security personnel for the party were armed.
“They may be typical people, but they don’t act in a typical manner,” Thomas said.
By far, the most serious incident was the shooting at Happy Harbor Inn in Deale in May. According to charging documents filed in District Court in Annapolis, Lewis Hall, 33, of Owings, a man Bartlett says is a Hells Angels prospect, and Joseph Harrison, 36, of Lothian -- were shot at the bar by someone driving by in a white Chevrolet Lumina. An uninvolved bystander was grazed in the face by a bullet, police said.
A few hours later, a Maryland state trooper arrested Christopher J. Brennan, 40, once an active member in the Pagans, said his attorney, T. Joseph Touhey. Brennan, an official with the D.C. carpenters union, has been indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment. He is free on $25,000 bond.
Touhey said Brennan denies the charges and has not been in the Pagans for several years.
“Police will tell you there are motorcycle gangs crawling up trees and into your yard, etcetera,” said Touhey, who has dealt with bikers as a criminal defense lawyer. “If there was some biker war going on, I would have heard about it.”