Maurice Boucher is dead, but the Hells Angels are more alive than ever.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Maurice Boucher is gone, but the trademark is still protected, the group is legally constituted, and “wearing the colors” is not prohibited.
The man who forced the state to launch the most important police investigations and pass anti-gang legislation is dead. But the fight against organized crime in Quebec, Canada, remains largely unfinished business.
That day I can’t forget.
November 27, 1998 forever marked the world of justice in Quebec. A dark day, a day of defeat.
A jury acquits Maurice Boucher, the warlord of the Hells Angels, in the afternoon. He leaves the Montreal courthouse with a bang, with his close guard. In the evening, he celebrates loudly in a boxing gala, surrounded by his gang.
Whoever wanted to “destabilize the system” by killing randomly chosen prison guards (before targeting prosecutors and judges) had managed to get away with it. Despite the solid testimony of the killer himself, Stéphane Gagné. Boucher was free, justice apparently impotent.
The assassin, the man responsible for the bloodiest criminal gang war in Canadian annals (more than 160 dead, including 20 innocents), laughs out loud. He triumphs.
We have not forgotten either the atmosphere of this trial, where bikers came to sit in full view in the courtroom, facing the 12 jurors.
Was the state really incapable of fighting against its (very) public enemy number 1?
Among the collateral victims of this war, an 11-year-old child, Daniel Desrochers. But many other citizens who took stray bullets or served as a shield. Pierre Rondeau, Diane Lavigne, chosen at random because they worked in Correctional Services. Michel Auger, judicial journalist at Montreal Journalwho wrote unpleasant things about bikers, and miraculously survived.
An atmosphere of terror settled in at the end of the century. Prosecutors were receiving threats, and the police seemed helpless.
The killer-informant Gagné explained that the assassination of prison guards served two purposes. First destabilize “the system” by scaring its actors, a bit like Pablo Escobar did in Colombia – or the mafia in Sicily, etc. Prosecutors and judges were to follow as targets in this escalation of violence.
Boucher’s other, more pragmatic objective was to put an end to the denunciation. He thought he would ensure the loyalty of the organization’s hired killers: the state would never offer an agreement to a criminal who killed a peace officer.
That November day, we were tempted to think that his plan was working…
The sequel ultimately proved Boucher wrong. Unprecedented funds have been allocated to the fight against bikers. Specialized squads have been created. Giant raids took place. At one point, only two Hells members weren’t in jail. It hasn’t been very good for their “business”…for a while.
Under popular pressure, the federal government amended the Criminal Code to criminalize activities for the benefit of a criminal gang.
Boucher, meanwhile, was committed for trial by the Court of Appeal. And sentenced to die in prison at the end of this second trial.
By plunging back into the disturbing and vaguely unreal atmosphere of this not so distant time, we can rejoice at least for that: the State responded in a muscular way, with great success. Even to dismantle the head of such a tightly knit organization. Anti-Mafia operations were also carried out during the same period.
We still remain with an impression of incompleteness. Several of these trials ended halfheartedly, a little softly, even in a fishtail.
We have not really been able to integrate in a modern way the management of huge criminal files involving such vast organizations, the dismantling of which requires years of investigation. This need for judicial upgrading is still there, because criminal organizations — from importation to distribution to laundering of profits — are no less complex.
Our “anti-gang law”, on the other hand, is a pale copy of the American versions (“RICO”) or European laws against organized gangs, which give far more police powers.
In short, the Boucher affair and what ensued from it taught us that, when we put our minds to it, our police can take down the worst criminal organizations — including those who traffic weapons and shoot in our streets in broad daylight. .
But it’s always a job to do. And the time for judicial and legislative upgrading has long since come — with or without war.