Each picture is layered with Post-it Notes and details about the subjects: ages, road names (Cheech, Chain, Drama, Sidetrack, Saint, Mad Dog, Pee Paw, Bubba, Bubba Earl, Bashful, Yogi, Reno, Creeper, Grumpy Dan), club affiliations, ranks, descriptions of injuries (Bullet entered neck, partially exited; Paralyzed from the waist down; DEAD) and any other pertinent information (I met him March 2018; 9mm Glock; U.S. Fifty-one of the defendants, they noted, were not even accused of being gang members by the state; only one-third of those arrested were charged with a violent or firearm-related offense; of the 117 people ultimately convicted of a crime, 35 were convicted based on nothing more serious than selling marijuana. Five days later, Reyna filed re-election papers. That question has been asked a lot after a deadly shootout last spring at Hooters-type restaurant in Waco, Texas. They were arrested in January 2016 and found guilty, after a three-month trial in 2018, of conspiring to conduct the affairs of a criminal organization through racketeering acts including directing, sanctioning, approving and permitting members of the Bandidos to commit murder, attempted murder, robbery, assault, intimidation, extortion and drug trafficking, per the Justice Department. A duffel bag is filled with patches of the Confederation Of Clubs & Coalition of Independent Riders. In the first, a former county prosecutor, Brittany Scaramucci, claimed that a client she represented as a defense attorney had told F.B.I. An attorney for a Waco biker who was wounded in the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout asked a judge to dismiss the indictment against his client Mond. Earlier, he sent a text: Bring your tools, guys. That morning, he slipped a Derringer two-shot into his back pocket holster, hidden by a vest with patches reading Expect No Mercy and Malandro (Spanish slang for bad guy), along with a pair of SS lightning bolts. You reindict me, Ill take my roll in court. A few weeks before the primary, The Waco Tribune-Herald published an editorial that began, With McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna desperately dumping Twin Peaks biker cases right and left in recent days, the astonished taxpayer must demand honesty of himself if not of Reyna: Does anyone really believe Reyna has suddenly been struck by an epiphany that has stubbornly eluded him in the nearly three years since the May 17, 2015, biker shootout that left nine dead and 20 wounded?. According to law enforcement officials, they are one of the biggest outlaw biker clubs in Texas. W. Patrick Swanton told CNN at the time. How 177 arrests led to no convictions a tangled, seven-year tale of prosecutorial hubris and tenacious defense. According to witness statements given to police, a Twin Peaks employee said that prior to the fight that led to the shooting, the Cossacks were attempting to keep their conversation private. On May 17, 2015, a fight broke out between two rival biker clubs in Waco, Texas. CNN has obtained video and images of the chaos during and after the brawl. dropped the last cases, Pierson recalled: I talked to Roxanne and said, So thats it. And shes all excited because they fought for our rights. Published Two men briefly pummeled him before running. His only previous arrest was for driving under the influence; Morgan had no criminal record. According to one of the first Waco police officers on the scene, it appeared that nearly everybody in the crowd had a gun. Police say they responded within 30 to 45 seconds and were fired at by bikers. Rock music continued to blare, eerily, from the restaurants sound system. Or, if I did make that decision, it would be not to arrest.. Mass arrests of supposed gang members are not unique to bikers. 2023 Cable News Network. But this statistic would eventually be turned back on itself, as the biker historian William L. Dulaney has written, by a loose association of truly outlaw motorcycle clubs known as One Percenters.. For months, Broden had been hearing rumors that a former assistant D.A. His first order of business was a reduction of their million-dollar bonds. It defied credibility. While the D.A.s office issued news releases and mug shots of the bikers were splashed across newspapers throughout the state, Looney said he saw nobody stepping forward to counter the narrative, one that was completely damning the accused. (Jerry Larson / Waco Tribune Herald) As police officers secured the scene, the bikers raised their hands in surrender or sprawled prone with their hands on their heads. Even though he worked as a defense lawyer, Reyna found himself disgusted by the number of cases the D.A., a five-term Democratic incumbent named John Segrest, was declining to prosecute. The weapons being used quickly escalated from hands and feet to guns. Weapons were found all over the scene, including this gun in the bathroom. A Waco police officer snapped this photo after he discovered blood spilling out onto the sink and floor in the Twin Peaks bathroom. There was a line, often attributed to the American Motorcycle Association, reassuring the nation that 99 percent of riders were law-abiding. These meetings were typically low-key affairs; the Waco event was planned for 1 p.m. on a Sunday, at a Hooters-style chain restaurant called Twin Peaks, where the waitresses wear lumberjack-plaid halter tops. More punches follow. Like the average news consumer, Looney first reacted to all this with astonishment: Sunday afternoon, gunfire everywhere, nine dead? Six bikers implicated in the deadly May 17 Twin Peaks shootout have filed civil rights lawsuits against Waco and McLennan County officials. And when the Cossacks refused to remove it, Fuchs says, war was declared.. But as he followed the narrative over the next week, he became suspicious. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. So hes got a gunshot wound that you see is in his face and his eye, she noted, pausing at a particularly grisly image. Theres no class-action prosecution. Back in Houston, he made it his mission to replace court-appointed defense attorneys before they could push their clients into accepting plea deals an outcome he was convinced had been part of the D.A.s strategy all along. In 1981, an Austin police lieutenant told Newsweek that the Bandidos were the single greatest organized-crime problem in Texas. By this point, some members carried business cards reading, We are the people our parents warned us about. Dick Reavis, another Texas Monthly writer, did an article on the Bandidos in 1979, growing so close to members of the Fort Worth chapter that they invited him to prospect with the group. And Clint was going to be able to ask him, Is it true that you bought cocaine? Tittle says. With Averys help, Looney would eventually persuade nearly 30 lawyers to take pro bono Twin Peaks cases. He was on the patio drinking a glass of water when the shots rang out, after which his actions, Broden later wrote in a case filing, were consistent with what 99 percent of the population would do he immediately took cover to avoid being struck.. A Waco, Texas, police officer removes crime-scene tape from the parking lot where a biker brawl left nine dead, 18 others wounded and more than 177 in jail. He wasnt taken to Highway 6, the county jail, for booking until 10 the next morning, and wasnt placed in a cell at Jack Harwell, an ICE detention facility, until 2 the following morning. bulletin concluded, confirm that tensions between the Bandidos and the Cossacks remain high in the area and can escalate at any time., One Cossack (he requested anonymity; call him W., his first initial) received his own warning about the meeting. Avery began to work for him in 2013, writing news releases and sitting second chair at trial as his discovery expert. He finally agreed that it was out of line, so they changed all the discovery documents to reflect it is an acknowledgment and tacked on language of the discovery statute and the rules of professional responsibility as it governs statements to the media. The footage is consistent with early police descriptions of weapons hidden between sacks of flour and bags of tortilla chips. Were not bouncing heads, he said. Due to the known growing tension between the Bandidos and the Cossacks, the Waco Police Department coordinated a surveillance and intelligence-gathering operation for this meeting, according to documents from the Waco Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety. According to the Waco Police Department, 44 shell casings recovered from the Twin Peaks scene were fired by law enforcement weapons. His first monograph, The Community, was published by Mrel Books. By the time the melee was over, nine people were dead and 177 people were arrested. Its still not, to this day. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much We had nine people killed in our community. After speaking to the press, Broden and Clendennen were hit with a gag order issued by the district judge Matt Johnson, Reynas former law partner. The best known of the 1 percent clubs, the Hells Angels, was started in Fontana, Calif., in 1948. Moments after the Bandidos arrived at Twin Peaks, a fistfight broke out, followed by gunfire, then utter havoc. A Waco police detective was named the foreman of a grand jury that could hear Twin Peaks cases. He called Stroman, the chief, in Boston and told him, as Stroman would later recall, something to the effect that he Reyna was wanting everyone arrested. Stroman said it was Lannings call. He was a graduate student in Austin who worked as a volunteer clown with Hunter Adams, the real-life Patch Adams. But, District Attorney Abel Reyna and First Assistant District Attorney Michael Jarrett did not return phone messages left Thursday. (He has also been diagnosed with PTSD after witnessing the death of his stepfather, Danny Boyett, at Twin Peaks.) WebGraphic surveillance video released in Waco biker shootout Surveillance video and crime scene photos have been released in one of the bloodiest shootings in the history of You have permission to edit this article. Theyre legitimate fraternal organizations that arent running a criminal enterprise., Jay Dobyns, a former undercover agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who infiltrated the Hells Angels in the early aughts, said he understood the attractiveness of the outlaw clubs for a certain type of 9-to-5, blue-collar guy suddenly hes respected, admired, feared, people want to shake his hand, buy him drinks, give him drugs, girls who in any other situation wouldnt look twice at this guy are cozying up to him. But he also said the fight between the Cossacks and the Bandidos was ultimately not any different than Crips and Bloods trying to own a particular street corner to sell drugs on, and that insisting otherwise was nave., Reavis whose Texas Monthly editor let him expense a shotgun he carried while reporting his Bandidos article nonetheless believes the Mafia comparisons are overblown. 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