The arrests serve to remind people that street gangs, which are plaguing several Canadian cities, are established players in the criminal world, said author Julian Sher.
"Street gangs are not about a couple of rough-and-tough kids having a bad night out on the town," said Sher, who has co-authored a book on the Hells Angels."This (police operation) shows how tightly connected some of the most powerful street gangs are to organized crime."
The Crown said Wooley, one of 54 people nabbed on Thursday and Friday, is believed to be the first person in Canada to be charged with gangsterism a second time.
If he is convicted on the same charge again, Wooley's sentence would run consecutively to his current one. He has been in prison since 2000.Others arraigned Friday include Jean Lavertue, 34, a former Canadian Olympic weightlifter who operated a Montreal gym. He was charged with drug trafficking and gangsterism.
Police also arrested Fernand Lauzon, 67, a man identified as the father of a Montreal police officer. He was charged with drug trafficking.The Crown handed over an imposing amount of evidence on five compact discs that include hundreds of thousands of wiretapped conversations, said prosecutor Francis Cloutier.The Hells Angels, which led a bloody turf war over drugs in the 1990s, are still very much a player despite the aftermath of Operation Springtime, another mass police sweep in 2001, Sher said.While more than 100 people were put behind bars after 2001, Sher said there are roughly the same number of Hells members on the streets in Quebec and that national membership is stable at about 450.
Eighteen of the accused were granted bail on Friday under very strict conditions including a large cash deposit, strict curfews, and restricted use of pagers and cell phones except for work.But the majority were detained pending future bail hearings, including three men identified as high-ranking members of the Syndicate.Cloutier said at least 17 people face gangsterism charges."Principally, the charges are trafficking for the profit of a criminal organization – trafficking of drugs," Cloutier said.Two people are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but only one of them has been arrested.Montreal police said Friday that more people had been nabbed, bringing the total to 54, including six women. But not everyone had been arraigned.About 700 officers from a number of police forces took part in Operation Axe, which Montreal police said was one of the biggest ever carried out by the city forceThe raids netted $675,000 in cash as well as 25 guns and a number of bullet-proof vests. Significant quantities of cocaine, crack, ecstasy, marijuana and hashish were seized along with other drugs including speed, Viagra and steroids.
"But the Hells Angels are a lot less cocky than they were, they're not strutting, they're not as confident, they don't know where the next infiltration is coming from," said Sher.
