Born To Be Riled

This past Sunday in Waco Texas, several outlaw motorcycle clubs fought in the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant. It was fists, chains, knives and very quickly- guns. Nine bikers were killed and about 30 wounded, last I heard. It was "Bike Night" at the TP which is some other geniuses interpretation of the mindless concept of Hooters- boobs and bottoms. Adding bikes is not a bad idea but this franchisee's version was catering to outlaw crowd rather than the pretend and spend crowd of lawyers, doctors and coke-dealing painters who want to live a sort of part-time bike fantasy, like other bars do. A lot of bars post signs prohibiting the wearing of club colors. Frankly, aside from the potential for violence between rival clubs it's also because of those colors, those colors can also scare away regular customers. It's not part of most business models.

So, rival factions...something about a parking space...fisticuffs....and then about a hundred rounds fired in close quarters....Pretty brutal. Is this the way white people riot? Where are the fathers?

I've seen a lot of complaining that the Waco PD was too easy on the perpetrators. A photo on just about every website seems to support this as it shows a bunch of the white bikers, sitting about, many of them studying their phones, while a cop appears to be standing guard for them. It does look pretty congenial.

Not so congenial though is murder and RICO charges accompanied by one million dollar bail for 170 of these guys. I'd say that's pretty serious treatment. I get that some are complaining that- if the bikers were black they'd be getting their heads split open, just for being there.

Some of the dead might have been killed by cops. This is unknown now and will certainly take time to sort out. Cops confiscated over 100 guns and scores of shell casings. All of those 170 suspects are witnesses and victims and perpetrators. At least one of the dead may not have been an active gang member at all. Remember, it was "Bike Night" (though lunch time) and some people were also there as regular customers. The dead man in question was a 65 year old, Marine veteran of Vietnam who, according to his family, was not affiliated with any club though he had been in the past.

The bikers themselves make a huge distinction between their "clubs" and gangs. There are motorcycle social clubs I suppose, but if you're dealing dope, guns, prostitution and violence, you can call yourself a club if you like but, the law and the public will call you a "gang". When you're a Jet you're a Jet, from your first cigarette to your last dying breath. We went through this with the mob and their "legitimate businessmen" defense and the "Hell's Angels" and their participation with the "Toys For Tots" at Christmas. Mussolini made the trains run on time but that did not define him like the fascism did.

I don't know if any of those arrested have made bail yet. If I remember my Math School ciphering, 10% of 1 million is $100,000 in bail cash. That's a lot of cheese to come up with, plus property. That's why we have bail bondsmen, of course, but, maybe these guys aren't considered good risks- at that price. Not very elite clubs, I guess.