Posted on 07/12/2015 5:24:02 AM PDT by don-o
It's not a gang, it's a club.
When it comes to the Houston-born Bandidos Motorcycle Club, this debate has taken on some urgency and a few twists.
Following a May 17 melee in Waco that left nine dead and 18 wounded, police arrested 177 bikers. Each was charged with engaging in organized criminal activity by being part of a conspiracy to commit murder and assault as part of a turf war between the Bandidos and a lesser-known rival, the Cossacks.
The distinction carries a hefty penalty, as those charged faced 15 years to life in prison if convicted - even if they never threw a punch or fire a shot.
While police have built hefty records of prosecuting some gangs and cartels, there hasn't been much courtroom action in recent years when it comes to the Bandidos.
Federal prosecutors can't remember the last time a group of Bandidos was charged in federal court in Houston. Attorney Kent Schaffer notes that more police officers are indicted each year in Houston than members of the Bandidos. Then he also says that while DPS labels Bandidos as a dangerous criminal gang - and tracks its members - it is the very same agency that has issued at least 80 concealed handgun licenses to Bandidos in this area.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
They should be arrested, put on trial and, if found guilty for committing crimes like that they should be punished.
The complaint is formal accusation of criminal guilt being leveled on the basis of stereotype/association. If the only ramification of incorrect bias based on stereotype was the public keeping away, you'd probably not hear any complaint.
-- If I walked around with a sign saying, "I'm a violent and dangerous person," people would be likely to stereotype me as a violent and dangerous person. --
Maybe you don't know the definition of the word "stereotype."
“In social psychology, a stereotype is a thought that can be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality.”
So you can quote from a dictionary. Your example, walking around with a sign, doesn’t reflect a “type of people.” Plus, if I saw a person advertising, with a sign, that they were violent and dangeorus, I’d probably think they weren’t. The stereotype is that people who are violent and dangerous don’t advertise that fact with a sign, not that they DO advertise that fact with a sign.
Of course criminal charges should be based on individual actions.
Though I understand there are potential issues involving conspiracy and membership in a criminal organization. These charges must of course be proven by due process.
I guess my point wasn’t clear. There appear to be obvious civil rights violations or at least improprieties in the way these guys have been treated by the legal system.
And nobody seems to care. Why is that?
To my mind, it’s largely because they’ve spent decades building an image as dangerous and violent criminals. So their image turns around and bites them.
Also they’re pretty much all white and so don’t benefit from black/brown privilege. Imagine the uproar that would have ensued had a gang fight between the Crips and Bloods been handled the same way!
The biker uniform indicates, at least in the eyes of most everybody else, that the wearer is violent and dangerous.
Since the wearers know this, if they did not wish to be viewed as violent and dangerous, they’d change their attire to something that did not project this image.
Since they cling to that image, it’s perfectly obvious that’s how they want to be seen.
Fine, that’s their privilege. But the flip side of being able to get a charge out of intimidating others is that those others just don’t get very upset when your civil rights are violated.
Not saying they’re right to feel that way, just that they do.
And nobody seems to care. Why is that? --
I certainly have to grant that point, that the level and tenor of press interest is driven by stereotype. But the first complaint of those under unsupported accusation is the wrongful deprivation of liberty under color of law. To the extent they want the press to cover the story, it's to get out from under the cloud cast by the government, not the cloud cast by their association with an OMG.
RUB's in their "pirate costumes" comes to mind. d;^)
I'm still taking the Romulan Ambassador's stance on this one. At this point in time I don't know what to think.
True enough. See Niemoeller. Your turn in the barrel may come, someday.
In the Twin Peaks case, the stigma is more difficult to attach to those members who were in plain clothes.
I’m with you on that one.
Somebody killed 9 people. If it turns out that was the cops, they’ll have some ‘splaining to do.
But there simply is almost no evidence at this point, and speculating without evidence puts us into the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown groups. We have no evidence, but we know exactly what happened. How’s that?
It appears, for instance, there’s a whole bunch of video available. Let’s see what it shows.
What gets me is seeing one of those on a Harley decked out in full leathers and engineer's boots with a soup bowl on his head, and right next to him a squid on a crotch rocket wearing gym shorts, tennis shoes, and a $500 full face helmet.
All one has to do is remember the simple N I C S, NICS acronym and wander over to https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/general-information/fact-sheet to find out everything you didn’t want to know about you and gun purchases using the same background check system that allows legal purchase of firearms by good folks like the SC church shooter and unfortunately endorsed by none other than YOUR NRA.
This system is only to make really law abiding citizens prohibited persons and their can be no evidence at it’s ability to prohibit so called gun violence. It is just one more attempt at circumventing the second amendment and “shall not be infringed”. Once more with feeling, the NRA has endorsed this program and the idea of national reciprosity both fools errands imho.
Wow! That was a truly BRILLIANT job of misinterpreting my post! I’m seriously impressed!
Had you actually read it in context, you might have achieved the understanding that at least SOME of the Bandidos actually had no criminal records, paid their taxes and were, within that context, upstanding citizens.
Of course, that’s opposed to the plot line that they’re all desperately violent criminals ripping a swath of rapine and pillage through Texas that makes ISIS look like a bunch of pansies on tranquilizers.
I find it somewhat analogous to the Mafia. It is true that not every person with some sort of dealings or any associations with the Mafia (or with the OMC’s like the Banditos) are themselves violent and dangerous criminals, nor are they all directly involved with criminal activity. But they have to be blind or naïve or sometimes desperate, not to know that if you lay down with dogs; that you’re going to end up waking up with fleas.
FWIW, my dad who was a carpenter was out of work and could not find steady work in PA and he and my mother along with my older brother were at the brink financially and so they moved in with my mother’s great uncle Joe who lived in Northern NJ and he took them in because he was so fond of my mother. This was in the mid 1950’s.
My mother’s uncle Joe was retired by then but was pretty “well heeled” for a working class “Joe”. Back in the 1920’s through the 1930’s - the prohibition era (and I have the photographs to prove it) Uncle Joe lived in the Florida Keys and owned and operated several “charter fishing boats”. But we are pretty sure he was doing a bit more than just “fishing”.
My father applied for many jobs but couldn’t get any work as he wasn’t a member of the carpenters union. And when he tried to join the union, he was turned down – turned away. He came home very dejected and told Uncle Joe how he was turned down at the carpenters union.
So Uncle Joe picked up the phone and made a call to someone. From what my father related, Uncle Joe called a man who he called by his first name – “Vito”. The conversation when something like: “Hello Vito, this is Joe “X”. Yes it has been a very long time. How are you? You and your family are all well I hope.” They exchanged some other small talk and talked about the “good old days”. And then Uncle Joe told his friend Vito about my father’s difficulty getting work and how he was turned down at the union. He gave him my father’s name and Uncle Joe wrote down some information and thanked Vito for returning the favor and for his friendship. Uncle Joe told my father to go back to the union office the next morning and give the union boss his name, saying, “All is good now, you’ll get to work tomorrow”.
When my father got there, not only did the union official fall all over himself and apologized, saying something like “why didn’t you tell me about your family and knowing “him”, and my father was put to work right away, but not just on any construction job, but as the union official told him, “We’ve got some nice warm inside finish carpentry work at a local school project – we don’t want you to work outside in the cold. And we are even going to waive your union dues for now.”
My father took the job without asking questions but that night asked Uncle Joe who “Vito” was. Uncle Joe didn’t want to say exactly but said, “Many years ago, during Prohibition while living in the Keys, I did some favors for some people - ran some rum from Cuba and some other “stuff”. I got to know some interesting folks who owe me a few favors.” My father wasn’t stupid but understood and later learned that Uncle Joe’s “friend Vito” was the mafia Don - Vito Genovese.
My dad was making really good money, good enough that he and my mother were soon able to move into their own house. My dad was legitimately working and not himself doing anything illegal, not in terms of his work, not performing shoddy work and didn’t witness any shoddy materials being installed, etc. He did say that every payday Friday at lunch time a truck would pull up to the job site and several “Good Fellows” would get out and open the back of the truck.
The truck was full of cartons of cigarettes and bottles of booze, all without tax stamps and sometimes other “merchandise” like jewelry and clothing and small appliances, all being sold at a deep discount. My father along with all the other construction workers knew that these items had been heisted. The “Good Fellows” also sold numbers, i.e. lottery tickets and took bets on baseball and football games.
My dad said it wasn’t “required” to purchase anything but it was, well sort of “expected” that you should buy something, so my dad started out only buying a carton of cigarettes each week, telling himself it was only the government getting cheated out of the taxes. But after a time and since everyone else was, he started buying other stuff and would sometimes buy a lottery ticket, convincing himself it was just a “fringe benefit” of the job and being in the union.
Then one night he had to go to a mandatory union meeting. At that meeting a union official handed out leaflets indicating which politicians; local and state and for Congress that everyone was “expected” (i.e. required) to vote for that upcoming Election Day.
My dad drew the line at this and stood up in the meeting and said that no one was going to tell him who to vote for, that this was un-American and that he and many others here didn’t recently come back from fighting WWII to have some thug tell him who to vote for. A few other guys stood up and agreed. But then a guy in the back of the room stood up and said, “We are your “friends” and you will vote for our friends and just like we tell you. And then pointed to my dad and said, “You better keep your mouth shut and do like you’re told if you know what’s good for you”.
The next day my dad got a phone call telling him not to come to the job site as there wasn’t any work for him that day or the next. Then my mother found a note stuffed in their mail box – the note said: “We know where your son Michael goes to school. It’s a long walk. It would be a shame if anything happened to him.” And then each day and for several weeks, a big black Cadillac was parked across the street from their house right around the time my brother would be coming home from school.
Now out of work again, my dad moved the family back to PA and vowed never to join a union again or ever again accept favors from people associated in any way with the Mafia, even if their intentions for him were initially “good”. “Eventually”, he said, “those dues and favors will be called in and often the price is way too high if you want to keep your dignity and your freedom”.
There is however circumstantial evidence that points to law enforcement as bad actors in this case.
This counters the intimidating image of bikers.
Added to that, the almost daily grind of police corruption videos which ubiquitous cell phone cameras have enabled have lifted law enforcement to a similar reputation in the public eye.
The time when law abiding church goers assumed that the police were automatically in the right is long gone and video cameras brought about the change.
“There is however circumstantial evidence that points to law enforcement as bad actors in this case.”
All the witnesses that have voiced an opinion have stated that the bikers started the shooting. From this waitress’s comment, it appears that the bikers expected trouble:
“Me and my sister were on the patio when it happened, all the bikers were running out with gun!”
“There is however circumstantial evidence that points to law enforcement as bad actors in this case.”
How about the testimonies of the bikers?
Jimmy Graves, Bandidos officer and TCOC president at the Waco shooting, says they respect the police for doing their job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_sCRg69TQE
(Big John Snyder, Vice president of the Boozefighters at the Waco shooting) “The police were professional, considering the situation they were in. They were professional and doing their job,” he said.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-waco-biker-20150519-story.html
We have also heard from a biker family member that the police probably saved lives at Waco.
“This counters the intimidating image of bikers.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bttX_8pNMg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qWrVvCKNlQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HMmdLciNPo
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