Under and Alone Read Online Free PDF Page A

Springs chapter, finally bringing in a case that resulted in fifty-one arrests, the seizure of more than seventy-five firearms, and a haul of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of more than $250,000.
    John Ciccone, in his years targeting the growing OMG problem in Southern California, had developed a “gang” of his own; ATF Special Agents John Carr, Eric Harden, and Darrin Kozlowski, fondly referred to as Koz, were the core. They’d all started with the bureau together and, after a decade, remained the hard chargers they’d been at the beginning of their careers. Having worked together closely, they knew one another’s individual styles and had developed a comfort zone—as much as any cop can—with one another. They knew that they could depend on one another if the bullets started flying.
    For months Ciccone, Koz, Carr, and Harden strategized about the Mongol problem in Southern California. They threw around the possibility, a long shot, of inserting a federal agent inside the gang.
    As they scanned the ranks of potential ATF undercovers, they all agreed on one basic thing: They were going to need an agent who could handle the rigors of going “UC” in the outlaw motorcycle underworld, one who could hold it together under circumstances of extreme deprivation, isolation, and paranoia, and who already had an extensive undercover background—since there really wasn’t time to build one from scratch. No one in ATF had as extensive a background in place as I did. Harden is black, and blacks are rarely accepted in the 1 percenter world. Carr had no motorcycle experience. Koz had just come out of a role with the Vagos Motorcycle Gang and could not chance another try. In short, as Ciccone put it, they were going to need an agent with more balls than good sense.
    Over many cups of coffee, John and I assessed the Mongols’ current strength: roughly some 350 full-patch members, both in and out of prison. Approximately 300 patches on the street. More than twenty chapters throughout California, Nevada, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Georgia, with a growing presence in Mexico. They were expanding their national presence rapidly, moving up through Northern California into the Pacific Northwest, and had formed alliances with the Outlaws (founded in Chicago and now headquartered in Detroit) and with the Texas-based Bandidos.
    While 350 individuals may not sound like a huge criminal organization, such numbers can be misleading; at the present time, according to FBI experts, the Gambino and Genovese crime families, the nation’s most powerful Mafia groups, number an estimated 200 to 250 “made members” each. As in the Mafia, each chapter of an outlaw motorcycle gang has its own circle of criminal followers, called “prospects” and “hang-arounds”—roughly equivalent to the term “Mob associate”—to do the gang’s dirty work.
    Ciccone and I both knew that prosecutions against outlaw motorcycle gangs are labor-intensive and rarely successful because of the tremendous threat they pose. Outlaw bikers are not run-of-the-mill street criminals. When cases do make it into the criminal-justice system, witnesses, victims—even prosecutors and federal agents—are in extreme danger. In late 1987 members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club in Pennsylvania put out a murder contract on a federal prosecutor and the FBI agent in charge of the Pittsburgh Organized Crime Squad; the plot was uncovered before the murders could be committed, but the intention was clearly to disrupt and terrorize anyone involved in investigating the club. In another chilling incident, two assistant United States attorneys involved in prosecuting the Sons of Silence Motorcycle Club received death threats and had to have remote starters installed in their cars.
    It isn’t uncommon for prosecutors to be unable to locate key witnesses—or for police to find them murdered. In 1997 I’d worked on a case involving a Southern California outlaw motorcycle gang