Many a government careerist has attempted to make a name for himself by taking on the Hells Angels. The attorney general of BC is giving it another go after a similar attempt to seize biker property a few years ago has been bouncing around the courts ever since.
This time around the government is trying to seize some valuable Vancouver real estate that happens to belong to the club. The modus operandi is the same as last time. The Hells Angels are a criminal group, therefore anything they own must be, by definition, the fruit of their criminal activity. Ergo, we can seize their property under proceeds-of-crime legislation.
The big problem with this approach is that the Hells Angels are so much else besides being a "criminal group". Check out their website. They're a social club, a motorcycle club, a service club, and yes, once in a while somebody gets clubbed to death, but the point is that there is so much more to the HAMC than a "criminal group."
I think it would be more productive to view the organization as a philosophical society. Some of the lads are criminals, others are not. All of them share a political philosophy that might be characterized as "radical libertarianism."
As radical libertarians, they tend to have a rather loose interpretation of what the rest of us might refer to as "the rule of law." Some of them may even take advantage of the business opportunities that the more idiotic rules of law present, and find themselves in the drugs trade.
This is of course not unique to the Hells Angels. Lots of folks take advantage of stupid drug laws to make money in the drugs business. Most of them don't even own Harleys!
So if those government types are so worried about the Hells Angels as a "criminal group" maybe they should focus their attention on doing something about the stupid drug laws.
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