Rock Machine fills Angels’ void

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This article was published 16/07/2011 (5399 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By Mike McIntyre

WINNIPEG — They vowed to come in peace, claiming they would bring a law-abiding alternative to the Hells Angels.

Yet the arrival of the Rock Machine motorcycle gang in 2008 has only led to increasing turmoil on Winnipeg streets.

Police sources said this week that the Rock Machine expanded to 17 full-patch members following a chapter meeting held earlier this summer. There has also been recruitment of new members from outside the province, including a high-profile gangster who recently arrived from Vancouver.

They have clearly taken aim at becoming the top criminal dogs in the province — a fact they made crystal-clear to police after most members and associates of the Hells Angels were arrested in December 2008 as part of “Project Divide,” which used an undercover agent to record dozens of drug deals on audio and video surveillance.

It was the third major bust of its kind in five years and left the Hells reeling.

“Thanks for handing us the province,” a Rock Machine member told several gang unit officers following the bust, a source said this week.

Now the Rock Machine is locked in an ugly street battle with members of the Redlined Support Crew, the new gang on the block recently formed by the Hells Angels to try to maintain their status at the top of the drug-dealing food chain.

Yet it wasn’t supposed to be this way, if initial claims by the Rock Machine were to be believed.

Their 2008 resurgence in Canada — eight years after they vanished following a long and bloody war with the Hells Angels in Quebec — was no reason for police or the public to be alarmed, the group’s spokesman said at the time.

That’s because they claimed to be more interested in selling you a house than pushing drugs in your neighbourhood.

“There’s lots of money to be made legally. The real estate market is looking really good right now,” longtime biker “J.D.,” who didn’t want his full name published for security concerns, said from his Saskatchewan home. “We’re just trying to be a law-abiding alternative to the Hells Angels. We’re not going to be competing with anybody. If you get caught selling drugs, you’re kicked out. Losers sell drugs.”

The Rock Machine had been off the national criminal radar until two members of its Australian chapter showed up at Richardson International Airport in September 2008, claiming they were headed to the Interlake for a week-long fishing trip.

In fact, the Sydney residents had flown halfway around the world at the invitation of several western Canadian bikers with visions of setting up a new Canadian Rock Machine chapter in Manitoba.

They were planning to meet in Gimli to begin mapping out the process, but plans were scuttled when suspicious customs agents began asking questions and eventually searched luggage. Inside they found several biker vests, flags and other paraphernalia.

Michael Xanthoudakis and Eneliko Sabine were detained in custody after it was also learned both men had criminal records in Australia. They were quickly deported.

A government lawyer told court at the time how Canadian police had circulated a national bulletin warning of the impending resurrection of the Rock Machine and the rumoured meeting in Gimli.

The Rock Machine was absorbed into the Bandidos in 2000. Several members joined the Hells Angels when the Bandidos refused to grant full-patch status to them immediately.

The Rock Machine was reborn because of the fall of the Bandidos.

» Winnipeg Free Press