The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC), an international outlaw biker gang, has been involved in multiple crimes, alleged crimes, and violent incidents in British Columbia since its establishment in the province in 1983.

Origins In the 1960s and 1970s, the major biker gang in British Columbia were the Satan's Angels gang based in the Lower Mainland. In 1981, Yves Buteau, the national president of the Hells Angels, approached Satan's Angels with an offer to "patch over", made conditional on the Satan's Angels eliminating the other biker gangs as Buteau insisted that there be no competition with any Hells Angels chapters in British Columbia. By 1983, only the Satan's Angels of the Lower Mainland, the Tribesmen of Nanaimo and the Highwayman of Cranbrook were left. On 23 July 1983, the Satan's Angels joined the Hells Angels as "full patch" members while the Tribesmen became a prospective Hells Angels chapter and the Highwaymen became a puppet club. On 22 December 1983, the East End Vancouver chapter of the Hells Angels was opened and another chapter in Haney was opened on 13 June 1987. The journalist Jerry Langton wrote: "The Hells Angels soon emerged as the top dogs in the organized crime world in Vancouver". The Hells Angels formed "support crews" of young men wishing to join the Angels who committed the majority of the crimes attributed to the group.

Law enforcement culpability The journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden noted that in no province has the Crown consistently lost cases against the Hells Angels as much in British Columbia. Sher and Marsden wrote: "Plagued by rivalries, incompetence, and a general underestimation of the threat posed by the bikers, the police in B.C.-especially the RCMP-did little to take on the Hells Angels until their power made them virtually impregnable." The Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit that was supposed to pursue the Hells Angels by uniting detectives from the RCMP and various local police forces was described as a total failure. One Mountie stated that CLEU "became a dumping ground for the various police departments...of injured people, alcoholics, people in the twilight of their careers being put out to pasture". Officers at the RCMP national headquarters in Ottawa were critical of the RCMP's B.C. division with one Mountie saying: "They were afraid of their own tails". In 1996 and again in 1998, two Hells Angels in the Lower Mainland offered to become paid informers for the RCMP, but in both cases the RCMP declined to take up their offer, saying they were unwilling to pay for information about the Hells Angels.

Killing of David Swartz On 6 April 1988, David Ernest "Screwy" Swartz, a "full patch" member of the Hells Angels' East End Vancouver chapter, was shot and killed with a rifle by his friend Lynn Neil Eddington, who then killed himself with the same gun. The men had been drinking heavily at a party in a house at 15771 96th Avenue in Surrey when they began fighting. Eddington then left and returned with the rifle before he committed the murder-suicide.Dead Surrey men named Vancouver Sun (8 April 1988) According the Lynn Neil's mother Jeanne Eddington, her son had been despondent after separating from his wife Cindy "and he was looking for a party" on the night of his death. In an interview with Carol Volkart of the Vancouver Sun, Jeanne stated her belief that her son had killed himself after shooting Swartz because he feared the Hells Angels would avenge his death and he did not want his family to become targets of retaliation. She said: "It was an argument between two young men who had been drinking. It was not a Hells Angel killing; it was not a gang-related killing". Shortly before the beginning of Eddington's funeral on 10 April 1988, three Hells Angels entered the Valley View Funeral Home chapel and began spitting on his coffin. Members of Eddington's family were warned: "We haven't finished with you yet". The following day, a message was left on the answering machine of Jeanne Eddington threatening: "That bastard Neil killed one of us and you guys are next". Jeanne Eddington reported the threat to the Surrey RCMP but did not request police protection.Angry mom defies bike-gang threat Carol Volkart, Vancouver Sun (12 April 1988) The East End chapter has since organised the annual "Screwy ride" in Swartz's memory. His son also became a member of the club.

The gang war with the vor v zakone John "Ray" Ginnetti was a financial adviser who worked for Canarim Investments of Vancouver while maintaining ties with the Hells Angels. In 1986, Ginnetti was arrested for running a boiler room operation, but was able to make bail. On 9 May 1990, Ginnettii was murdered inside his home in West Vancouver. His funeral was attended by a number of Hells Angels. A gangster with the vor v zakone ("Thieves in law", i.e. Russian organised crime), Sergey Filonov, was heard to boast that he had killed Ginnetti as a way to strike at the Angels, whom he had stolen $250,000 worth of cocaine from. On 15 May 1990, Filonov along with his brother Taras were attacked outside of a Vancouver bar. Sergey was shot dead while Taras was badly beaten with a hammer. Eugenivy Alkseev, another vor ("thief", the Russian term for gangsters), was wounded by a bomb planted in his car. On 1 August 1992, the body of Taras Filonov was found on the grounds of the University of British Columbia. He had been handcuffed and killed by a shotgun blast to the face. Roger Daggitt, the former Hells Angel who served as Ginnetti's bodyguard, was shot dead at a strip club on 6 October 1992. Aleksandr Alekseev, the brother to Eugenivy, disappeared in 1994 and is believed to have been murdered. Eugenivy was killed in 1995.

The Mickle murder On 30 April 1993, Michael "Zeke" Mickle, the president of the Hells Angels Nanaimo chapter, vanished and has never been seen again. Mickle is believed by the police to have been murdered by his fellow Angels for stealing cocaine from the club. Mickle became the first Hells Angel in British Columbia to be murdered.

Mainstream status

The Hells Angels of British Columbia are the third largest contingent of the Canadian Angels after the chapters in Quebec and Ontario. The journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden wrote that Hells Angels of British Columbia "are Number One when it comes to wealth and statue" as the Angel chapters in British Columbia are the richest in Canada while the Angels have entered the mainstream economy, most notably the Vancouver Stock Exchange on Howe Street. The Hells Angels national president Walter Stadnick made a few visits to British Columbia, but the Angel chapters on the West Coast grew without much involvement from the Quebec chapters, which was unusual as the Quebec chapters tended to dominate the other chapters in Canada. By the year 2000, the Angels had 7 chapters in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver island with about 70 members. The Hells Angels took control of the port of Vancouver, which allowed them to dominate the drug trade in British Columbia.

Pat Convey, an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) based in Victoria told Sher and Marsden: "They're baby boomers, they've come up in the criminal game. These guys have learned as they've gone on. They've become wealthier because they've become smarter and became smarter because they've got enough money to seek appropriate advisers". The majority of the British Columbia Hells Angels live upper-middle lifestyles and associate with lawyers, accountants and businessmen who launder their drug profits. When a Hells Angel, Mervyn "Mad Dog" Mayes was killed in a motorcycle accident, Gordon Hogg, a provincial cabinet minister attended his funeral, saying that Mayes was a close friend of his. Sasha Angus, the anti-fraud officer of the B.C. Securities Commission in charge of regulating the Vancouver Stock Exchange complained that many wealthy businessmen are quite willing to do business with the Angels and that "We understand the biker gangs are behind a lot of stuff [fraud] we've seen. But they don't always leave their calling card". The richest of all the Hells Angels chapters in British Columbia is the East End Vancouver chapter.

The journalist Jerry Langton wrote that British Columbia, especially the Lower Mainland, was one of the richest drug markets in North America because of a disconnect between state vs. society. Langton wrote that Canadians are far from the law-abiding people that they liked to pretend to be and are quite willing to break the law when it is in their own interests, using as an example the occasion in 1994 when the government of Jean Chretien increased cigarette taxes. Rather pay the increased cigarette taxes, ordinary Canadians much preferred to buy smuggled black market American cigarettes, which became a $1 billion industry almost overnight with 70% of the cigarettes smoked in Quebec in 1994 being smuggled cigarettes. Canadians only stopped buying smuggled cigarettes' when the federal government lowed the taxes on cigarettes. Langton wrote that British Columbia has since the 1960s tended to attract hedonist people who routinely used illegal drugs for recreational purposes despite what the law said, and this created a situation where organized crime groups could make millions as the values of society in British Columbia differed from those of the Canadian state. Langton wrote that the Hells Angels came to dominate organized crime in British Columbia because of their complicated structure with the hierarchy of associates, "hang-arounds", "prospects" and "full patch" members and the lure of membership, which allowed the Angels to have others commit crimes on their behalf. Finally, the Hells Angels had national and international connections that other organized crime groups lacked. The Hells Angels chapters in Quebec, most notably the Sherbrooke chapter, exported French-Canadian strippers to work for strippers agencies run by the Hells Angels in the Lower Mainland. Despite their avowed white supremacist ideology and use of Nazi symbols, the Hells Angels in British Columbia were because of their control of the port of Vancouver able to make deals with the Triads to import heroin from the "Golden Triangle" in southeast Asia into British Columbia.