Evidentia

Many people in Quebec are currently worried about organized crime, and rightly so. It seems that organized crime, including the notorious motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, has infiltrated the legitimate economy, not to mention municipal politics. Many of us thought the police had scored some big victories against motorcycle gangs, and had virtually shut them down. But the mafia-type gangs are returning.

Organized crime is everywhere, and not just in Quebec

Have you ever met thugs from a motorcycle gang? I have. I’ll tell you what it was like.

First, a poem.

Ever since I can remember, I have recited to myself a poem by William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble. It is possible that I don’t understand the poem the way Blake meant it, but then that is the beauty of poetry. You see, the poem contrasts heaven with hell. The clod (the positive, loving force in the poem) “builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair” while the pebble (the negative, spiteful force) “builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

I have always thought of this poem as symbolizing the way some courageous people in the midst of hellish conditions are able to transform those conditions (through their actions) into a heaven, while other malevolent people in the midst of heavenly conditions (the most favourable imaginable) manage to transform them into a living hell.

Enter the Hells Angels.

Believe me, I recalled Blake’s poem when I discovered that the new neighbour who had moved into the cottage next to mine, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, was none other than the head of a chapter of the Hells Angels. Talk about the contrast between heaven and hell. He had just got out of prison after being involved in the murders of members of a rival chapter, and he had dragged the bodies across the floor of his clubhouse, stuffed them into sleeping bags with blocks of concrete and weights, then dumped them into the St. Lawrence River. Like old lies that simply will not go away, one of the bodies popped back up to the surface. An informant provided the police with details, and this man (who would later become my new neighbour) was suddenly exposed.

Organized crime transforms paradise into hell

I was raising my four young children at the time. Our cottage was, literally, our paradise, a private utopia, a place for swimming, hiking, eating, playing, sharing, loving. It is not easy being a father. Sometimes your role is to avoid harm to your children, nothing more and nothing less. Having a violent drug trafficker fresh out of prison as my next-door neighbour was not part of my vision of family life. Besides, Quebec was in the throes of a gang war pitting the Hells Angels against a rival gang. Dozens of gang members were being killed. My neighbour was seriously paranoid himself – and he was right to be. He seemed to flinch at every sound in the forest, as if he knew that whoever lives by the sword will eventually die by the sword. His car was obviously not a normal car. It had tinted glass to conceal who was riding inside, and it had a super-powerful engine, enabling it to speed up a steep ice-covered  hill. A friend in the intelligence world told me there must be guns everywhere – under the seat of his car, and in the cottage itself, which had been rebuilt into a bunker. So what should I do?

The role of a father is often to avoid harm, period (Artwork by William Blake)

I have always believed in collecting evidence before taking a decision – hence the name of this website. Around the same time, a magazine sent me to do a story at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, a penitentiary near Montreal. This was an opportunity for me to write about justice, but also to see first-hand the kind of people who had moved in next door, since I was  still trying to figure out what to do. I visited maximum security and even super-max, where thick steel doors slid open automatically and then slammed shut, and nervous guards wielded shotguns. I sat in a closed room with one killer, who explained to me that he regretted having murdered three people. I was allowed to peak through the tiny window of one cell, where a Hells Angel was being held in isolation.

A recent seizure of weapons in Mexico

Then I had to step back, as the armed guards opened his door, and led him down the corridor to another part of the prison. He reminded me of a lion – all power, defiance and malevolence – ready to spring on people. He seemed to me the kind of person who would transform heaven into hell.

The magazine folded before I had a chance to write my article, but the visit to the penitentiary convinced me that I had to sell my cottage, or if I couldn’t sell it, to close it for a few years. Fortunately, I found a buyer after a year. I did a background check on him, and he was a perfectly decent person. We discussed the Hells next door when we signed the sale contract. He said they would all be dead by the time he retired and moved to the cottage full-time – eight years from then. He was right – five years after the sale, my next-door neighbour was caught stealing from the Hells Angels, and was given the option of killing himself or being snuffed. In any case, he is certainly dead.

Profits from cocaine sales are so huge, that some criminals end up stealing from their own criminal organizations

At a moral level, I suppose it is a private consolation to think of Blake’s poem at times like that. But as a citizen, I remain to this day unconsoled.

Organized crime is everywhere in our society, and I don’t just mean Quebec. It has spread through Western democracies. It is one of the forces I have in mind when I write here of the “hollowing-out of democracy”. Organized crime can take over whole industrial sectors; intimidate ordinary people into silence or complicity; hook healthy people on drugs that will eventually kill them; create public insecurity; ruin neighbourhoods; finance political candidates, then exert pressure on them once they are elected; bribe public officials as an underhanded way of getting government contracts; trap judges and policemen by offering them alluring prostitutes, then blackmail them; and use the unbelievable profits from drug trafficking to become the very investors and indispensable partners on whom our entire economy depends.

Organized crime has become an indispensable partner in our economy

If you think about it, drug trafficking has become simply too big to eliminate. The IMF says money laundering represents $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion a year, which is likely greater than Canada’s GDP – the amount of money laundered in Canada each year stands at $32 to $80 billion. Organized crime should have a place at the table during G7 meetings. With cash flow like that, no wonder so many banks have set up offshore operations. Our banks need a constant supply of nomad capital, and drug traffickers can supply it. It is simply naïve to imagine that banks are unaware of the source of funds, or that governments are unaware of the transactions themselves. Actually, governments incorporate the profits of organized crime into their economic forecasts.

We are in a state of denial.

The American government spends $60 billion a year fighting drug traffickers. Over half a million people in America are in prison at any given moment, for drug offenses. Yet this war on drugs does not seem to be working. What a dilemma!

The war on drugs is not working

Organized crime is also deeply involved in banditry, piracy, identity theft, fraud and prostitution. Human trafficking is a criminal activity with a turnover of between $7 and 12 billion a year. The US State Department reported in 2005 that 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children were trafficked across international borders each year – the UN said the figure was 1 million.

Some people believe the solution is to legalize (and tax) drugs, thus depriving organized crime of one of its main sources of income. The British weekly The Economist had an article about this in May 2009, and noted the number of failed policies and failed states, doomed by illegal drug trafficking. Could there ever be an across-the-board legalization of drugs? Some drugs are far more destructive than others, and I don’t believe we will see a coordinated legalization of all drugs, or even some drugs, around the world.

Organized crime is good at transforming heaven into hell. Even if drugs were legalized, then organized crime would intensify other criminal activities, such as taking over whole sectors of the economy, and increasing its commitment to prostitution or human trafficking.

Prostitution

On the individual level, each of us needs to be prudent, to avoid harm to our loved ones. As a society, it is naïve to assume we can eliminate organized crime. Actually, I would like to see a broader definition of organized crime, that includes white-collar crime and financial fraud, since these activities are just as well organized, or even better organized, than criminality associated with bikers and mafia-like gangs.

We can at least move to prevent the hijacking of political and judicial institutions. Corruption was a major theme in the recent Montreal municipal election. Many citizens of Montreal are saying loud and clear that we will not tolerate the corruption of political institutions that belong to the people.

These are not tools of democracy – organized crime is one of the forces hollowing out democracy