'Full-patch' member of Hells Angels support club among 3 arrested in B.C. organized crime probe
Police investigating drug trafficking and organized crime arrested three people, including one member of the Savages Motorcycle Club, when they raided the group's clubhouse and eight other properties around the B.C. capital last week.
The simultaneous searches on the morning of Jan. 31 led to the arrest of a 27-year-old woman from Colwood and two men from Langford, ages 45 and 41.
Police said Thursday that one of the men arrested is a member of the Savages Motorcycle Club, a known support club for the Hells Angels. The group's Langford clubhouse was the most high-profile property caught up in the months-long investigation.
An RCMP emergency response team vehicle punched through a security gate at the Spencer Road property in a largely residential neighbourhood at around 8 a.m.
Forty police officers from multiple agencies took part in the coordinated searches on three other residential properties in Langford, two residences in Victoria, one in Colwood and two commercial properties in View Royal and North Saanich.
Three vehicles were also searched as part of the investigation, police said.
Investigators seized approximately 450 grams of fentanyl, 150 grams of methamphetamine, 200 grams of psilocybin, a kilogram of an unknown substance, small amounts of cocaine and hundreds of various pills, according to a statement Thursday from the West Shore RCMP.
Police also took into evidence more than $46,000 in cash, one SKS rifle, a prohibited handgun and an imitation handgun, they said.
"Four-hundred and fifty grams of fentanyl at minimum would make up 4,500 individual doses," West Shore RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Nancy Saggar said in the statement. "However, this number could be drastically higher and in the tens of thousands based upon the purity level of the fentanyl. Investigators won’t know the purity level until lab testing is complete."
'Full-patch' Savages member arrested
B.C.'s anti-gang task force, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, was directly involved in the investigation. On Thursday, CFSEU spokesperson Sgt. Brenda Winpenny said the arrests, "including that of a full-patch member of the Savages," constitute a significant development for the unit's efforts to tackle organized crime "due to the level of violence and harm they inflict on our communities."
The Savages clubhouse property is within a few hundred metres of an elementary school and a middle school. Following the raid, neighbourhood resident Becky Paquette described the clubhouse as a typically quiet and unassuming neighbour.
"You never really hear loud music," she said. "On the weekends, in the summertime, in the fall, they had their kids there and barbecues – it was kind of like a family event."
She said she was initially "shocked" when she saw police swarming the property.
"They look like normal everyday people," she said of the people who hang around the clubhouse. "This is suburbia."
The same property was the subject of a public warning from the RCMP nearly a decade ago.
In April 2015, the Mounties issued an advisory warning that the Devil's Army, an affiliate gang of the Hells Angels, was establishing its clubhouse inside the flat-roofed, single-storey building at 2775 Spencer Rd.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Universities grapple with the complicated politics of campus encampments
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.
Police order B.C. woman who praised Hamas not to protest for 5 months, says her group
A pro-Palestinian activist group says its international co-ordinator, who was arrested in a Vancouver hate-crime investigation, was released with an order not to attend any protests for the next five months.
Conservative MP says Chinese hacking attack targeted his personal email
A Conservative MP is challenging claims by House of Commons administration that a China-backed hacking attempt did not impact any members of Parliament, because the attack was on his personal email.