Rock Machine MC, Rock Machine MC

[Much]

It's been eight years since the red and gold eagle has soared on the back of a biker straddling a Harley-Davidson, but the Rock Machine is back on Canada's motorcycle club scene.

The club, which gained huge notoriety in the '90s thanks to a bloody war with the Hells Angels, has resurfaced hoping to distance itself from its troubled past and its ties to the Bandidos in the United States.

"We're going back to our roots," a member of the re-formed Rock Machine said yesterday, speaking for the club. "It's the most logical choice."

The club apparently already has about 72 members. Some of the bikers were with the club when it patched over to the Bandidos in 2000, some absorbed from another Ontario-based club, and many who are "completely new to the bike scene."

The source said the Rock Machine hopes to spread across the country in time. But for now it will open two chapters in the east -- Toronto and Kingston -- and two chapters in the west, in Edmonton and Winnipeg.



Ron Burling, 37, who is serving eight years in a maximum security prison, will head the chapters out west upon his release, the source said. And while the club has supporters in Quebec, it has no plans to return to its birthplace, where the long and deadly battle between the previous incarnation of the Rock Machine and rival Hells Angels gang was centred.

"The days of old-style wars and fighting among bikers are long gone," the source said, explaining the bike scene has changed greatly since then.

"We realize that if we keep fighting the way we were, we will ultimately be outlawed out of existence, " he added.

The source said the new Rock Machine aims to be more like clubs of 50 years ago, when it was about "bikes and brotherhood."

"We want to live a little wild but not be criminals," he said.

The Rock Machine was born in 1986 from an alliance of Quebec drug dealers fending off the Hells, which was vying for a monopoly of the province's drug trade.

In the mid-1990s, a violent turf war erupted that left hundreds dead and wounded

[antimafia]

Link to article about this topic, along with part of the article itself, appears below:

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/410493

Please note that "GTA" stands for Greater Toronto Area.

Some background information about this topic can be found in the 2 posts dated July 16, 2007, in the following thread:

http://z14.invisionfree.com/GangstersInc/i...topic=492&st=0&

Hells' rival recruiting in GTA
Rock Machine, in revival after Quebec biker war, seeks old-school `drunken toughs' for area chapter

April 05, 2008
Peter Edwards
staff reporter

The Rock Machine motorcycle club is actively recruiting members in the Greater Toronto Area, but organizers say they're not worried about a repeat of the gang's bloody war with the Hells Angels in Quebec, which killed some 160 people.

"I can't see the violence that happened in Quebec ever happening again," a Rock Machine organizer told the Star in an interview. "Laws have changed. Times have changed and it's a different biker world."

The Rock Machine has signed up two dozen members so far in Greater Toronto, said the organizer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

OPP Insp. Dan Redmond of the provincial Biker Enforcement Unit declined to comment, as did biker Rick Ciarniello of Vancouver, who has often acted as a spokesperson for the Hells Angels.

The attempt to revive the Rock Machine is potentially explosive, according to a retired enforcer who was involved in the Quebec biker war of the 1990s and early 2000s.

"I would be very surprised if (Rock Machine recruiters) don't get a visit" from Hell Angels, Normand Brisebois said in an interview....

This post has been edited by antimafia on Apr 15 2008, 10:00 PM

[antimafia]

Link to article about this topic, along with part of the article itself, appears below:

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive...8/08/c3331.html

Ex-Bandido calls new Rock Machine a "phoenix from the ashes"

April 8, 2008

TORONTO, April 8 /CNW/ - Edward Winterhalder, once a high-ranking leader
of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, says that he is supportive of the Rock
Machine's efforts to start over in Canada. Winterhalder personally coordinated
the transition (or "patchover") of the Rock Machine to the Bandidos in 2000
and states that, "The rebirth of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club, like the
mythological phoenix rising from its own ashes, is a testament to the legacy
of men who are today held in high regard as men of respect by bikers
worldwide."

Winterhalder left the Bandidos in 2003; in June he will release his
memoir "The Assimilation: Rock Machine Become Bandidos - Bikers Unite Against
the Hells Angels" with Toronto-based ECW Press....

[antimafia]

Link to article about this topic, along with part of the article itself, appears below:

http://torontosun.com/News/Canada/2008/04/...233171-sun.html

New gang's about fun: Biker
Former Rock Machine is reborn for the love of motorcycles
By ROB LAMBERTI, SUN MEDIA

April 9, 2008

The man who first helped patch over the original Rock Machine to the Bandidos in 2000 says he likes that the vanished biker gang is being reborn.

Former Bandido Ed Winterhalder, a former high-ranking member who quit the Rock Machine five years ago, believes the new biker group won't have any affiliation with the Bandidos.

And as long as the Rock is manned by those who want to ride and have fun, it won't raise the ire of their historical rivals, the Hells Angels, he said.

The Bandidos recently turned their backs on their former Canadian members after they had briefly patched over to the California-based Mongols last year....

[antimafia]

Link to article about this topic, along with part of the article itself, appears below:

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2...10/5251726.html

Please note that E-town refers to the City of Edmonton.

Biker gang coming to E-town
Rock Machine setting up chapter: Sun source
By GLENN KAUTH, SUN MEDIA

April 10, 2008

The Rock may soon roll in Edmonton as a long-vanished biker gang announces plans to set up a local chapter.

According to a Sun Media source, Edmonton is one of four Canadian cities where the Rock Machine, famous for its role in Montreal’s biker wars of the 1990s, hopes to re-establish itself.

[snip]

For former Bandido Ed Winterhalder, the planned reincarnation of the Rock Machine is a result of the Ontario slaughter. After those events led to the planned closure of the Bandidos club in October, the group said it was reviving itself under the same name in February. But by then, the Canadian gang’s international counterparts had grown tired of its fickleness.

“So, they start thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to revive the Rock Machine again?’” said Winterhalder.

A local Rock Machine group would be the first Edmonton chapter for the club, whose members joined the Bandidos under Winterhalder’s leadership in 2000. But while the gang has a violent history dating back to its battles with its rival the Hells Angels, Winterhalder believes the revived chapters will have no choice but to live up to their promises to shun criminal ties....

[antimafia]

Am providing a link to an article, as well as part of the article itself, that could have been posted in a number of topics in the Bikers Forum: Bandidos in Canada, Shedden massacre, or Hells Angels vs. Bandidos. Part of the article is about the writing and TV projects that former Bandido Edward Winterhalder has in the works, but it has good background information about the Rock Machine, the Canadian Bandidos, and the American Bandidos.

Link:

http://torontosun.com/News/Canada/2008/08/...346746-sun.html

August 4, 2008

The biker and the tattler
The inner workings of the 1% world of outlaw bikers are exposed in print and on TV

By ROB LAMBERTI, SUN MEDIA

Ed Winterhalder caused quite a stir when he stepped over the Canadian border in 2001 to bring the Rock Machine bike gang into the Bandido fold.

Winterhalder was sought across Ontario by police and immigration officers who had been watching the transformation but were helpless to stop it. The senior member of the Bandidos -- sent to ensure the transition went smoothly -- was caught, imprisoned and eventually deported.

The arrest may have been a harbinger of what was to come. In the past seven years, that gang morphed so many times into many things that the Bandidos have vanished from the country. And they'll never return, said Winterhalder.

They were picked at by their rival, the Hells Angels, decimated from within and then abandoned by the American Bandidos.

The remnants of the Bandidos have now resurrected the Rock Machine name and logo, but not the red and gold colours sacred to the Bandidos. Canada was an experiment that failed terribly for the Texas-based gang with chapters around the globe.

The reborn Rock Machine is also in the U.S. and Australia.

And the 53-year-old Win terhalder, who says he left the Bandidos because he was turned off by the growth of meth use within the bike gang, is still causing a stir.

[snip]

"I don't know if (the 2006 massacre in) Shedden, Ont., was the final nail in the coffin. There were a lot of problems with the American Bandidos from the very beginning, and they peaked around the time of Shedden," Winterhalder said. "From that point on, the American Bandido hier archy just didn't recognize the Bandidos in Canada, and they never really supported them anyway."

They struggled on until Bandido boss Frank "Cisco" Lenti shot Toronto West Chapter Hells Angels sergeant-at-arms David Buchanan dead and wounded two others in a Vaughan strip club showdown in 2006.

Lenti was convicted of manslaughter earlier this year.

Those who remained briefly joined the California-based Mongols biker gang, but they left after a few months, becoming Rock Machine.

[snip]

Winterhalder said meth appears to be the drug that ripped the Canadian Bandidos apart.

[snip]

"Every club, wherever you go, no matter what the club is, when it's a major outlaw club, has a few guys that are whacked out on meth and they start believing in their own madness," Winterhalder said.

"And they start thinking they're going to run the world."

[Much]

Police on the lookout for possible gang violence between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine

Updated: Mon Feb. 08 2010 19:43:33

ctvwinnipeg.ca

Rising tensions between two biker gangs have Winnipeg police closely monitoring their actions.

Police paid close attention to a bar at a St. Boniface hotel Saturday night following a tip that a fight could be imminent.

The news follows a serious attack against a Winnipeg member of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club inside a business on St. Mary's Road about three weeks ago.

Sources tell CTV News the victim was lured to the business where he was then beaten.

The victim had such serious injuries that he was unrecognizable.

Officers say they had received information that the people responsible for the attack were Hells Angels members and a few of their associates.

The group was allegedly unhappy with the victim because he is a former member of the Zig Zag crew, which is a puppet club to the Hells Angels.

He had apparently been seen around the city wearing his new gang's vest, which drew negative attention from the Hells Angels.

Since the attack, police have been preparing to deal with some sort of retaliation.

There were suspicions that members of the Rock Machine were going to attend a bar on Saturday night at the hotel because they knew associates of the Hells Angels frequented the place.

Nothing appeared to happen at that bar Saturday night.

Still, a number of Rock Machine members from outside the province have been seen in Winnipeg over the past week.

Saturday night's events follow the execution of several search warrants, including one last week on Mighton Avenue in Elmwood.

A 30-year-old man was arrested and a loaded nine millimetre handgun was seized at the home.

CTV News has learned the man who was arrested is a member of the Redlined Club, a group which is considered a friend club to the Hells Angels.

This arrest is also believed to be connected to the rising tensions between the gangs, say sources.

Police have confirmed they were at the bar on Saturday night, but will not provide any further information.

The public's safety was one of the main reasons police say they were there in such large numbers.

There has been trouble between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine in the past. Both groups were involved in a violent biker war in Quebec in the mid-nineties.

A truce was made but police say they are worried violence could erupt again.

- with a report from CTV's Kelly Dehn

[Much]

Rock Machine gangsters mourn loss of Edmonton 'brother'

By JEFF CUMMINGS, Edmonton Sun


Edmonton’s latest homicide victim was a 31-year-old father of two who was involved with a notorious motorcycle gang once in a bloody war with the Hells Angels, the Edmonton Sun has learned.

Andrew Block – who had strong ties to the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club – was fatally gunned down sometime before police found his body sitting in the front passenger seat of a truck parked in a residential area near 127 Street and 116 Avenue Tuesday afternoon.

The apparent gangland slaying was Edmonton’s 25th homicide of the year.

Block, who also went by the names Andy Rock and Blaklistid, was a hip-hop musician linked to the Rock Machine’s Nomads Canada chapter.

The Rock Machine is an outlaw biker gang that was involved in a deadly turf war with the Hells Angels in Montreal in the 1990s.

The gang created a memorial page on its website at RockMachine.ca, which identifies Block as a “brother.”

“It is with heavy hearts that all of the Nova Scotia Rock Machine Full Patches, prospects, hang arounds, and supporters send our thoughts, prayers and condolences for the loss of Brother Andy Rock,” wrote one member on the site’s guest book.

“(He was) taken from us too soon. Ride on and rest in peace, brother.”

The war between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels lasted for eight years and resulted in 160 deaths in Quebec, including two prison guards and several innocent victims.

Biker gangs are suspected of controlling most of the drug trade in Canada, says Grant MacEwan criminologist Bill Pitt.

However, that’s not the case with the Rock Machine anymore, since the gang is no longer a big player in Canada’s gang world after losing ground to rivals, he said.

“They are peripheral players,” Pitt said. “They are attempting to play in the bigger leagues, perhaps trying to catch on with the more legitimate gangsters.

“Any gangs that get wiped out, they move on, but they hang on to the name.”

Police found Block sitting in a black, four-door truck that was parked on a garage parking pad. There was a small hole in the passenger seat below the headrest.

Detectives are still investigating the homicide that, so far, hasn’t resulted in arrests.

“(This homicide) was a settling of accounts,” said Pitt.

“This could have been an account from a bad business deal.”

Block was convicted of manslaughter back in 2001 after Victor Chalifoux, 25, was killed by a stray bullet during a house party in Sept. 25, 2000. Chalifoux was sleeping when he was hit by the bullet when two teenage girls and two men in the home at 10219A 155 St., started passing around a .30-calibre pistol at 4 a.m. [SIZE=7]

[Junior]

Winnipeg biker gangs in ‘active war’
BY TAMARA KING, Toronto Sun
Thursday, June 30, 2011

WINNIPEG - Shots fired into a Winnipeg home - the second straight day a southeast Winnipeg home was shot up - are the result of an "active war" between rival gangs, sources say, and it's feared the violence will escalate.

Neighbours noticed smoke pouring out of a St. Vital house around the time gunshots rang out about 4 a.m. Wednesday. Winnipeg police would not confirm the home was firebombed.

A man and a woman, reportedly the parents of a high-ranking member of the local Rock Machine chapter, made it out of the home unharmed and no injuries were reported. The man who was the suspected target wasn't home at the time.

A day earlier, no one was hurt when shots were fired into a home that is allegedly associated with the Rock Machine.

Sources suggested police are investigating whether the shootings are a retaliatory move after a string of recent attacks, including one that involved a flare gun being fired into the window of a home linked to a Redlined Support Crew associate, possibly in an effort to burn down the house, a source said.

"There is an active war between the Rock Machine and the Redlined," a source told QMI Agency.

Another source said the situation has "been building up to this."

"It's going to continue to escalate," the source said. "We don't know what point it's going to reach."

The Redlined are affiliated with the Manitoba chapter of the Hells Angels. The original Rock Machine - this latest incarnation launched about three years ago - and the Quebec Hells Angels were locked in a deadly, drug-fuelled feud in the 1990s that claimed about 160 lives.

Police have been warning about a possible eruption in violence between the rival gangs for more than a year after a Rock Machine member was lured to a south Winnipeg auto shop in January 2010 and badly beaten by Redlined members.

After that, all sides have armed themselves as retribution is expected, police wrote in a February 2010 affidavit. The document also suggested Redlined Support Crew members and other Hells Angels supporters have been ordered to seek out Rock Machine members or associates and "take care of them by any means necessary."

[Junior]

Police move to disrupt biker war
TAMARA KING, Toronto Sun
OMI Agency, July 8, 2011

WINNIPEG - Police have pledged a crackdown on criminals and a "zero tolerance" policy in an effort to quell Winnipeg's budding biker war.

A recent string of shootings is the result of a battle between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels-affiliated Redlined Support Crew, sources say.

These organizations are in a battle for control of the drug trade and other criminal behaviour, the city's top cop said Thursday.

"What you have is two groups that don't like each other and believe that they should have supremacy in these areas," Winnipeg Police Service Chief Keith McCaskill told the Winnipeg Sun.

The situation has obviously escalated, McCaskill said, and the WPS organized crime unit, street crimes unit and other officers are now keeping close watch on those involved.

"We're trying to be in front of situations and we're trying to disrupt whatever they're doing," he said.

What that means on the streets is a "zero tolerance" policy when it comes to bikers and their associates breaking the law or breaching court orders, a source said, basically using any means possible to put them behind bars.

Mayor Sam Katz credits the past successes of police clamping down on bikers in contributing to the current conflict. A trio of long-term undercover projects -- Projects Defence, Drill and Divide -- resulted in charges against more than 60 people between 2006 and 2009. Many Hells Angels members and associates are serving lengthy prison sentences or are in custody awaiting the resolution of charges.

"Someone's come along to fill that void," Katz said.

The recent spate of violence attributed to the rising gang tensions includes the shooting of a 14-year-old boy described by police as an innocent bystander. Bullets were sprayed into a pair of homes in the Lord Roberts area early Monday. Small children were present in both homes that were riddled with more than a dozen bullets.

Last week a Stranmillis Avenue home with ties to a high-ranking member of the Rock Machine was shot up and firebombed. A second property with links to the Rock Machine was also shot up.

Days earlier, on June 27, a flare gun was shot into the home of a Redlined associate in a possible bid to burn the place down.

[Junior]

Biker war brewing in Montreal, By Giuseppe Valiante, QMI Agency, Sunday, July 24, 2011

MONTREAL – Organized crime experts say the resurfacing of the Rock Machine motorcycle gang in Montreal last week is another sign of a power vacuum in the city’s underworld that could lead to another biker war.

Ten individuals allegedly flaunting Rock Machine colours were spotted in a downtown Montreal strip club on Thursday. Montreal is considered territory of the notorious Hells Angels biker gang which fought battled the Rock Machine between 1994 and 2002, leaving 160 people dead.

The Rock Machine’s Quebec presence ended in the early 2000s after many of its members were killed and its assets seized by police.

Some Rock Machiners defected to the Hells, others retired, but their presence in Montreal last week lends credence to the fears that the gang is back.

James Dubro and Antonio Nicaso, two well-known organized crime experts, said the spotting of the Rock Machine in Montreal is a sign that the Hells are seen as weak.

In April 2009, 130 members of the Hells Angels and their supporters were arrested in a police operation called SharQc.

“If the Rock Machine resurfaced in Montreal, it’s because they feel safe,” Nicaso, an award-winning journalist and internationally recognized organized crime expert, said.

Dubro, also an award-winning crime author, said the Hells are probably the weakest they’ve been since the end of the biker war in 2002.

The choice to show off in Montreal’s Chez Paree strip club is symbolic.

One of the Rock Machine’s leaders was savagely beaten 10 years ago at the club by people tied to the Hells.

Montreal is the second city visited by the Rock Machine of late.

Recent arsons and gunfights in Winnipeg have been attributed to fighting between the Rock Machine and a Hells-affiliated group.

The Winnipeg violence, coupled with the Montreal appearance, is troubling, Nicaso said.

“These are two clear indications that (the Rock Machine is) trying to muscle in and regain control of the territory they lost after the war with the Hells,” he said.

Montreal’s power vacuum extends to mafia circles as well.

The Rizzuto family, a reputed powerful organized crime force in Montreal since the late 70s, has had much of its leadership assassinated in the past two years.

The bikers are just one of several groups vying for influence in this strategically important port city, Nicaso said.

However, Dubro said a new biker war between the Rock Machine and the Hells isn’t a certainty.

If the Rock Machine decides to sell softer drugs like marijuana or steroids, there likely won’t be much resistance from competing groups because the market is so large, he said. However, if the biker gang wants to enter the highly lucrative cocaine market, the Hells will take notice.

“If you see the Rock Machine on the selling side (of cocaine) then they become a threat to the Hells,” Dubro said. “And that means there will be a violent elimination of it.”

However, the Rock Machine has publicly renounced illegal activities and said it will focus on real estate, Dubro said incredulously.

“They will (get into drugs) and there will be problems,” he said. “The fact that (the Rock Machine) publicly flaunted their colours is a big deal. The police shouldn’t tolerate it and the Hells won’t tolerate it.”

[Much]

I read this over the weekend and can't wait to see what the next move is by all parties involved.

[Junior]

Rock Machine gang rearing ugly head in Quebec
By QMI Agency, March 26, 2012

MONTREAL — About 20 men wearing Rock Machine colours were spotted at a Montreal strip club Sunday morning in the latest indication the biker gang might be regrouping in the province.

Gang members were spotted at the Amazones club in the city's west end. Police spokesman Raphael Bergeron said detectives met the individuals, and there was no violence.

The Rock Machine is the sworn enemy of the Hells Angels, and the two gangs battled it out in Eastern Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s.

A 2001 police raid ended the war, but not before 160 people were killed, including adult bystanders and an 11-year-old boy who was hit shrapnel in a 1995 truck bombing.

The war and the raids drove the Rock Machine out of Quebec, but its website says it has since reopened a chapter in Quebec.

The gang is at its strongest in Manitoba, where it has waged war against a group linked to the Hells Angels.

The weekend Rock Machine meeting in Montreal is one of several such gatherings in the past 12 months.

In January, police saw two Rock Machine members in a bar in east-end Montreal.

Ten members from Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia were arrested last July at Chez Pare, a famous downtown strip club.

In April 2011, several Rock Machine members with jackets from Germany, Nevada and Australia were seen in a Montreal hotel.

[Junior]

Cops don't expect biker war silence to continue
By Tamara King, Winnipeg Sun
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

All has been quiet in the war between Rock Machine and Redlined in recent months, but seasoned gang cops warn that Winnipeg hasn’t seen the last of the violence, according to recently released court documents.

Police are expecting further clashes between the two gangs according to court documents filed in the recent crackdown on members of the Hells Angels and the Redlined Support Crew, a “friend” club to the Manitoba chapter that first came to the attention of police in May, 2009.

It was a significant year. The Manitoba Angels’ original puppet club, the Zig Zag Crew, was decimated in a major police project that saw the arrests of many of its members in December, 2009. The Redlined started taking over responsibilities, cops say. But the Rock Machine — first sited in Winnipeg in 2008 at a Notre Dame Avenue hotel with four people wearing “Rock Machine Nomads” vests — had other plans.

By January 2010, the violent feud between the Rock Machine and its rivals had erupted, police say, and the tensions boiled over in the summer of 2011 with more than a dozen shootings and fire bombings in a battle over drug turf.

But court documents suggest there was far more gunfire, arsons and assaults that were kept private.

“Since January 2010 there have been in excess of 20 reported and almost as many unreported incidents of violence between the Redlined/Hells Angels and Rock Machine,” the documents said.

In November, 2011, a makeshift bomb was tossed at the home of a Hells Angel in the middle of the night. The device, which looked like it was made out of shotgun shells and ballbearings, extinguished without detonating and without injuring anyone. No one called the cops.

Later that same day, a man was beaten, court documents state. He declined medical treatment.

The documents, prepared by police as part of the application to stick roughly 10 members of Hells Angels and Redlined under crime prevention-related peace bonds, suggest members gather intelligence on enemies and “have assembled in convoys to go on the hunt for rival Rock Machine members,” court documents state.

Sometimes, these “hunting missions” culminate at an enemy’s property in a home invasion, dubbed “knock knock ginger man,” the court documents state.

Last month, Winnipeg police busted nine alleged Hells Angels and Redlined members in Project Flatlined — a clear dig at the name of the friend club.

In spite of the arrests, police believe the conflict is anything but over.

“The war has been quiet in the past few months, but the rivalry is still existent and it appears the Rock Machine outlaw motorcycle gang are still intent on expanding their presence here and across Canada,” police wrote.

“More violence is predicted between these groups.”

[Much]

I love how the last line in the article was "more violence is predicted between these groups.". Typical of the media to swallow the bullshit that the police feed them in order to both benefit from the illegal drug trade.