Bikes, Bros and Bodies: What we know from the violence

• In Event: Biker Violence

Abstract

Recent years have seen a time of somewhat uneasy harmony among the OMCGs in the United States and Canada. Historically, and for the most part, disputes have been dealt with behind closed doors, out of the public eye. However, there have been a number of occasions when this concord has been fractured and violence spread into the public domain, examples can be cited from Chicago, Illinois (1994), to Laughlin, Nevada (2002), Santa Cruz, California (2010), and finally (thus far) to Waco, Texas (2015). This paper will provide for a context to the turf war and violence within the groups, whilst exploring the ideology of organizations making good use of legitimate income based sources, which front the under-belly of criminal activity. Questions of failures of RICO actions continue to arise, and this paper will provide further discussion, in order to add to the limited knowledge which exists in this self-defined deviant group.

Author

• Andy Bain, University of Mount Union