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Bike Week Laconia., N.H. Hell's Angels.
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Gregory Carr
Jun 16, 2021, 5:57:46 AM6/16/21
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Remembering Bad Ol' Bike Week
By John Koziol Union Leader Correspondent Jun 13, 2021 Updated Jun 14, 2021
If Laconia Motorcycle Week were a movie, it would be rated “R,” says Tony Felch.
“A soft ‘R,’” said the 61-year-old Felch, who is a city councilor, a member of the Bike Week board of directors and a long-time devotee of “The World’s Oldest Motorcycle Rally.”
Bike Week is still loud, with adult — sometimes risqué — elements, but as it closes in on its 100th anniversary in 2023, the event is many sequels and remakes removed from the X-rated version of yore.
The event, the 98th edition of which opened Saturday and runs through June 20, has a long, colorful — and occasionally regrettable — history.
The rally traces its lineage to a 1916 Gypsy Tour to The Weirs section of Laconia on Lake Winnipesaukee and to racing at what is now the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Racing was enormously popular for many years, and people used to camp along New Hampshire Route 106 from the speedway in Loudon north into Belmont.
Inevitably, campers, racegoers and many others would end up in Laconia, on Lakeside Avenue in particular, where there would be much revelry, with attendant libations and not infrequent incidents of what former Laconia police chief Bill Baker once called “alcohol-induced stupidity.”
Every year, the city of Laconia would take a financial bath providing police, fire and public works services for the event.
So starting more than 20 years ago, the city began regulating the rally by charging owners and vendors fees for Bike Week activities. The city also banned public nudity and behavior encouraging it.
The crackdown, which included enforcement of open-container laws, took the fun out of Bike Week, some say.
‘Out of control’
Tim Ryan, a Laconia native who has attended Bike Week for many of his 61 years, said changes in the rally were inevitable, as society’s attitudes about public intoxication and mistreatment of women improved.
He remembers it as a “raucous time of party party.”
But even as a participant, Ryan recognized that “It was mayhem up there, it really was. I remember going up there in my 30s and it was parties all along the road.”
The situation was “out of control in most aspects,” he said.
“I think, ultimately, (city officials) had to make the changes,” he said.
The passage of time also has played a role in the event’s repositioning.
Like others, getting older and becoming a father moved Ryan to ride more and party less. While he plans to “ride through” this year, he said he won’t be in The Weirs much during Bike Week 2021.
Still, Bike Week will always hold a special place in his heart, said Ryan, whose parents operated the former Belknap Hotel in Lakeport Square. During Bike Week, it would be filled with riders, many from Canada, he said.
It’s different these days, he said — “more family-oriented and more commercial.”
‘An ugly event’
Mike Moyer’s parents would take him down to see what the campers were doing on Route 106 during Bike Weeks many years ago.
“My dad used to pile us into the station wagon and drive us to 106... and I remember, as a kid, looking out and being a little frightened of what I was seeing,” he said.
“We were calling them hippies, they all had long hair,” Moyer said last week, “and they were a little intimidating, but at the same time it was cool. I was probably about 10 or 11. It was a different sight for someone who’s a little sheltered.”
Later, Moyer saw the event from another perspective, as a longtime Laconia police officer, chief and two-term sheriff of Belknap County.
A veteran of 33 Bike Weeks over his law enforcement career, Moyer, who does not ride a motorcycle,
supports Bike Week and appreciates the economic driver that it is.
He wants it to go on and be successful for years to come, in spite of one bad memory he has of it.
During Bike Week in 1998, Moyer said, he was walking in front of the Texaco station on Weirs Boulevard, a short distance from Lakeside Avenue, when a fight broke out between a Hells Angel and “a civilian” and he tried to break it up.
“I was knocked to the ground so hard that I thought I was struck by a car or a motorcycle. I was dazed, on all fours, and I saw legs, boots, all around me and then the kicks started coming, kicks to the head… and I took an elbow to the back of the head and I saw stars.”
Moyer remembers grabbing for his gun, not to unholster it, “but to keep somebody from grabbing it.”
Other officers came to Moyer’s aid, but not before he was pepper-sprayed and had his hand fractured, among other injuries.
“It was an ugly event,” Moyer said. “It was one of the first times that Hells Angels targeted uniformed law enforcement, and it made international news.”
‘A massive throng’
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, police during Bike Week operated a very busy satellite station in The Weirs known as “Station W.”
“We used to have lines of people being arrested” who would be picked up by the “Mariah van” and taken to Station W for processing. Those charged with serious offenses and those who couldn’t make bail were transported to the Belknap County Jail, which had been cleared out in anticipation of the Bike Week influx.
Like the prohibition of four-wheel vehicles in the Weirs, it’s been a long time since Station W has been necessary.
Arrests have decreased, Moyer believes, partly because of the ordinances and partly because the rally has spread out throughout the state.
“It used to be just a massive throng of people, whereas now you just don’t see that anymore. It’d be one o’clock in the morning and Weirs Boulevard in front of the Texaco would still be lined with people six, seven deep,” he said.
He admitted he was “shocked” that the public-nudity ordinance worked as well as it did.
Before that, he said, “We had sexual assaults and I would see grown men —professionals — taunting 17-year old girls to expose themselves; it got to be ridiculous.”
Some people held up signs encouraging women to bare their breasts and some billboards contained indecent proposals.
Although some elements of Bike Week have changed, Moyer fears one of its grimmest aspects — fatal accidents — might never disappear.
“I knew before every Bike Week that it wasn’t a matter of if there was going to be fatal accident, it was when and how many,” he said. “That’s one of the realities of Bike Week — that someone’s going to die this year.”
As for critics of the city’s handling of Bike Week, Moyer said he’s “glad that they don’t come” to the rally.
“The ordinances did what they were intended to do and people can still come up and have a blast at the beer tents and you can party as much as you want at Bike Week,” he said, but you have to do it responsibly.
“I think there will always be a Bike Week,” Moyer said. “I don’t think it’ll ever die completely, and like I said, I hope it doesn’t. It’s a good event, it’s a lot of fun.”
‘The best time’
Standing on the Lakeside Avenue boardwalk last week, Tony Felch said he loves Bike Week, just like his dad, the late Harold Felch, who would load his wife Fae and kids in the family’s station wagon and take them “down 106 to watch the crazies go crazy.”
Other times, the Felches would sit in front of the former Henry’s Five and Dime in Lakeport as the bikers rode by on their way to The Weirs.
His dad, Felch said, “never drank a drop or owned a bike, but he loved watching people.”
Felch said he started riding and drinking at 18, the legal age then.
“It was the time of wheelies, smoke shows and lots of drinking,” he said.
Felch called his behavior “semi-normal” 48 years ago but said it wouldn’t be acceptable now.
In retrospect, the signs and taunting were
embarrassing, regrettable and wrong, he said.
Things have gotten better overall, he said.
Felch enjoys all aspects of Bike Week, and is working to make sure it continues.
The rally’s future, he said, is in the hands of younger riders — who to this point have not shown up.
“The younger generation doesn’t seem to ride as much and doesn’t seem as interested in Motorcycle Week” as previous generations, he said.
Meanwhile, “your older generation will keep (coming to Bike Week) until they’re gone,” Felch said.
He hopes more people make the same kind of connection to Bike Week that his family did when he was young.
“The best time at Bike Week,” he said, “was spending time with my mom and dad.”
Lake...@unionleader.com
Oetinger describes Hells Angels incident
Jun 24, 2006 0
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Police Chief Tom Oetinger on Thursday informed the three-member Police Commission of a Bike Week confrontation between members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and law enforcement officers that illustrates his concern that "outlaw motorcycle clubs" pose a potential threat to the "potential long-term economic viability" of Laconia's signature event.
In a written report, Oetinger said that on Saturday, June 17 a group of about 15-18 Hells Angels members were drinking at the bar at the Weirs Beach Smokehouse and one of that group was determined to be only 20-years-old. The other members of the group, the chief said, initially refused to allow their compatriot to be detained by police and additional officers were called to the scene to help with the arrest.
Oetinger reported that he believes the "increasing attendance of members of outlaw motorcycle clubs. . .(posses) a unique law enforcement challenge that directly affects the safety of visitors. . .and needs to be addressed in a manner that is legal and reasonable."
advertisement
The Manchester chapter of the Hells Angels has maintained a significant presence in Laconia for a number of years. The club operates a clubhouse for members at the dead end of Fillmore Ave., off White Oaks Road and the World Run (convention) of the organization was held on that property in 2003.
Club member Ed Shaughnessy, a Laconia resident, currently holds a world-wide Hells Angels leadership position.
Several different Hells Angels chapters have been selling t-shirts and related items from vending booth's during recent Bike Weeks. The gear sold does not include the words "Hells Angels", but instead typically is imprinted with slogans such as "Support your local 81" — "H" being the eight letter of the alphabet and "A" the first.
https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news/local/oetinger-describes-hells-angels-incident/article_d52f7e75-1d5d-55b9-8b89-7c8acf51fab1.html
In several of the books about Hell's Angels it shows the photos the Laconia Police Dept. being attacked by the HAMC. Some officers fight back, some are paralyzed in place, some run away. No coordinated law enforcement response. Male citizens line the street watching the chaos some taking pictures. Apparently half the police officers were fired subsequently.
Search
ADVERTISEMENT
https://apnews.com/article/aa01673db7fbf36ee840afc5d6b73bf8
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RELATED TOPICS
Archive
Bikers Arrested in Brawl
June 22, 1998
LACONIA, N.H. (AP) _ Police trying to break up a fight during Motorcycle Week were allegedly clubbed and sprayed with pepper spray by bikers. Three officers were injured and seven alleged members of the Hells Angels were arrested.
An eighth biker was being sought in Saturday’s brawl.
``This situation is one of the more serious I’ve seen in quite a few years,″ said Police Chief Robert Babineau.
Four or five fights were going on at the same time between 15 and 20 Hells Angels and 10 officers, he said, and it took about 40 officers to quell the fighting.
ADVERTISEMENT
Motorcycle Week typically draws tens of thousands of bikers. Sunday, the final day of the festival, was the 75th annual running of the Loudon Classic motorcycle race at the New Hampshire International Speedway.
The fight began when police Sgt. Michael Moyer tried to break up a fight between a Hells Angel and another person, he said. One man sprayed him with what was believed to be pepper spray while another wrested a nightstick away from another officer and started hitting him.
``I was hit from behind and knocked to the ground,″ Moyer said.
None of the three injured officers was hospitalized.
One of the seven men arrested, Mark Guardano, 36, of San Francisco, was charged with second-degree assault and was being held on $500,000 bail. A second man was charged with simple assault on an officer and held on $55,000 bail, while the five others were charged with misdemeanors and released without having to post bail.
The name of the eighth biker was not released.
Babineau, who is about to retire from the police chief post in this town of 16,000, said Motorcycle Week has gotten out of control. He suggested shortening it and encouraging bars and other businesses to cut down on lewd events such as fake orgasm contests.
Given the tone set by businesses, it’s no surprise that drunken men on the streets yell to women to show their breasts, he said.
``I’m not sure what the big mystery is here,″ he said. ``We allow it to take place in some establishment and then we’re shocked when we have that activity take place on the street.″
Similar steps are working at the nation’s largest annual motorcycle rally, in Sturgis, S.D., he said.
https://apnews.com/article/aa01673db7fbf36ee840afc5d6b73bf8
New Hampshire
Eleven members of the Hells Angels' Lowell, Massachusetts chapter were arrested on narcotics-related charges during a raid by twenty-six federal, state and local law enforcement officers on a dwelling in Nashua on September 9, 1969. A cache of heroin was also seized.[574] Chapter president Donald James "Skeets" Picard was convicted on two counts of heroin trafficking and sentenced to two concurrent twenty-year prison sentences.[575]
On June 12, 1972, Hells Angels members Robert Gardner and Kevin Gilroy were shot while riding their motorcycles on Interstate 93 in Londonderry by Dean Dayutis, a member of the Devil's Disciples Motorcycle Club who fired at the pair from a moving vehicle. Gardner was wounded and Gilroy was killed. Dayutis was arrested in Key West, Florida on November 2, 1982 and was repatriated to New Hampshire to face trial for Gilroy's killing in May 1983 after a five-month extradition process.[576] He was convicted of second-degree murder later that year and sentenced to eighteen-to-forty years of imprisonment.[577]
The Hells Angels formed their first chapter in New Hampshire when members from Massachusetts and Maine established a branch in Manchester in March 2000.[578]
Two prospective Hells Angels members were shot and wounded in Concord on June 24, 2002 in what police believed to be a gang-related incident.[579]
An innocent bystander was wounded with a shotgun during a fight involving the Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Milford and Company Motorcycle Club outside a restaurant in Manchester on April 16, 2010.[580]
Hells Angels member James Cunningham was among four men arrested in June 2017 on federal drug trafficking charges following an investigation that spanned several years. Cunningham sold methamphetamine to an individual who was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on four separate occasions in Manchester and Merrimack between May 23 and November 20, 2013.[581] He pleaded guilty to methamphetamine trafficking, and was sentenced to three years and three months in prison on May 10, 2018.[582]
Laconia Shuts Down Bike Week Music Festival
by Ethan Glover | Jun 19, 2016 | Copblock, News | 36 comments
Laconia, New Hampshire’s Bike Week is a motorcycle rally that has successfully pulled in large crowds since 1923. Attendance has ranged from 188,000 to 375,000 people. Despite the track record of fatal motorcycle accidents in the area during the event, it has always been relatively peaceful. Until the summer of ’65.
Riots involving around 10,000 people between motorcycle gangs and local police caused the City of LaconNational Guard at Weir's Beach Riotsia to crack down on the event. Laconia officials no longer saw bike week as a source of tax income, but an inconvenience.
Laconia restricted the event to three days rather than the full week and attendance started to drop. When the city started feeling the loss of money in their pockets in the 90’s, they invited the organization to bring back the week-long festivities.
Here we are today. Bike week at Weir’s Beach in Laconia ran from 1923 to 1965 on its own in peace. A riot, which the state alleges the Hell’s Angels started, brought bureaucratic control to the event.
I was able to attend one day for CopBlock’s week long event at Laconia. Every police department in the area shows up in force. Five departments including state troopers, county sheriffs and even the department at the University of New Hampshire show up for patrol. Small towns who only have a few officers to spare send one or two on a few days out of the week. And the national guard sent around fifteen soldiers in a “non-law enforcement capacity.” According to the UNH officer in the video below.
Bike Cops and Laconia Bike Week 2016
Credit: Matthew Perreault
Aside from a few crashes on the highways (one fatal), the event was peaceful. Happy, even. Everyone was in a good, talkative mood. Even the groups of officers found on every corner were having fun. But this police presence came at a price.
LaconiaFest, the music festival headlining Ted Nugent, shut down on Saturday early after Nugent’s performance. The festival manager said the city overestimated how many people would show and charged more than expected for first responders.
The police who were in groups on every corner, having a fun time, were costing the festival too much. It raises the question, were they necessary, and how willing was the city to send officers home to keep costs down?
The state lacks the ability to respond to the market in a timely manner. If the City of Laconia had a disagreement with festival managers on this issue, I think the city should have listened. The festival I saw did not require four cops on every corner and it did not deserve to have it’s funding drained by a forced monopoly.
https://freekeene.com/2016/06/19/laconia-shuts-down-bike-week-music-festival/
By John Koziol Union Leader Correspondent Jun 13, 2021 Updated Jun 14, 2021
If Laconia Motorcycle Week were a movie, it would be rated “R,” says Tony Felch.
“A soft ‘R,’” said the 61-year-old Felch, who is a city councilor, a member of the Bike Week board of directors and a long-time devotee of “The World’s Oldest Motorcycle Rally.”
Bike Week is still loud, with adult — sometimes risqué — elements, but as it closes in on its 100th anniversary in 2023, the event is many sequels and remakes removed from the X-rated version of yore.
The event, the 98th edition of which opened Saturday and runs through June 20, has a long, colorful — and occasionally regrettable — history.
The rally traces its lineage to a 1916 Gypsy Tour to The Weirs section of Laconia on Lake Winnipesaukee and to racing at what is now the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Racing was enormously popular for many years, and people used to camp along New Hampshire Route 106 from the speedway in Loudon north into Belmont.
Inevitably, campers, racegoers and many others would end up in Laconia, on Lakeside Avenue in particular, where there would be much revelry, with attendant libations and not infrequent incidents of what former Laconia police chief Bill Baker once called “alcohol-induced stupidity.”
Every year, the city of Laconia would take a financial bath providing police, fire and public works services for the event.
So starting more than 20 years ago, the city began regulating the rally by charging owners and vendors fees for Bike Week activities. The city also banned public nudity and behavior encouraging it.
The crackdown, which included enforcement of open-container laws, took the fun out of Bike Week, some say.
‘Out of control’
Tim Ryan, a Laconia native who has attended Bike Week for many of his 61 years, said changes in the rally were inevitable, as society’s attitudes about public intoxication and mistreatment of women improved.
He remembers it as a “raucous time of party party.”
But even as a participant, Ryan recognized that “It was mayhem up there, it really was. I remember going up there in my 30s and it was parties all along the road.”
The situation was “out of control in most aspects,” he said.
“I think, ultimately, (city officials) had to make the changes,” he said.
The passage of time also has played a role in the event’s repositioning.
Like others, getting older and becoming a father moved Ryan to ride more and party less. While he plans to “ride through” this year, he said he won’t be in The Weirs much during Bike Week 2021.
Still, Bike Week will always hold a special place in his heart, said Ryan, whose parents operated the former Belknap Hotel in Lakeport Square. During Bike Week, it would be filled with riders, many from Canada, he said.
It’s different these days, he said — “more family-oriented and more commercial.”
‘An ugly event’
Mike Moyer’s parents would take him down to see what the campers were doing on Route 106 during Bike Weeks many years ago.
“My dad used to pile us into the station wagon and drive us to 106... and I remember, as a kid, looking out and being a little frightened of what I was seeing,” he said.
“We were calling them hippies, they all had long hair,” Moyer said last week, “and they were a little intimidating, but at the same time it was cool. I was probably about 10 or 11. It was a different sight for someone who’s a little sheltered.”
Later, Moyer saw the event from another perspective, as a longtime Laconia police officer, chief and two-term sheriff of Belknap County.
A veteran of 33 Bike Weeks over his law enforcement career, Moyer, who does not ride a motorcycle,
supports Bike Week and appreciates the economic driver that it is.
He wants it to go on and be successful for years to come, in spite of one bad memory he has of it.
During Bike Week in 1998, Moyer said, he was walking in front of the Texaco station on Weirs Boulevard, a short distance from Lakeside Avenue, when a fight broke out between a Hells Angel and “a civilian” and he tried to break it up.
“I was knocked to the ground so hard that I thought I was struck by a car or a motorcycle. I was dazed, on all fours, and I saw legs, boots, all around me and then the kicks started coming, kicks to the head… and I took an elbow to the back of the head and I saw stars.”
Moyer remembers grabbing for his gun, not to unholster it, “but to keep somebody from grabbing it.”
Other officers came to Moyer’s aid, but not before he was pepper-sprayed and had his hand fractured, among other injuries.
“It was an ugly event,” Moyer said. “It was one of the first times that Hells Angels targeted uniformed law enforcement, and it made international news.”
‘A massive throng’
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, police during Bike Week operated a very busy satellite station in The Weirs known as “Station W.”
“We used to have lines of people being arrested” who would be picked up by the “Mariah van” and taken to Station W for processing. Those charged with serious offenses and those who couldn’t make bail were transported to the Belknap County Jail, which had been cleared out in anticipation of the Bike Week influx.
Like the prohibition of four-wheel vehicles in the Weirs, it’s been a long time since Station W has been necessary.
Arrests have decreased, Moyer believes, partly because of the ordinances and partly because the rally has spread out throughout the state.
“It used to be just a massive throng of people, whereas now you just don’t see that anymore. It’d be one o’clock in the morning and Weirs Boulevard in front of the Texaco would still be lined with people six, seven deep,” he said.
He admitted he was “shocked” that the public-nudity ordinance worked as well as it did.
Before that, he said, “We had sexual assaults and I would see grown men —professionals — taunting 17-year old girls to expose themselves; it got to be ridiculous.”
Some people held up signs encouraging women to bare their breasts and some billboards contained indecent proposals.
Although some elements of Bike Week have changed, Moyer fears one of its grimmest aspects — fatal accidents — might never disappear.
“I knew before every Bike Week that it wasn’t a matter of if there was going to be fatal accident, it was when and how many,” he said. “That’s one of the realities of Bike Week — that someone’s going to die this year.”
As for critics of the city’s handling of Bike Week, Moyer said he’s “glad that they don’t come” to the rally.
“The ordinances did what they were intended to do and people can still come up and have a blast at the beer tents and you can party as much as you want at Bike Week,” he said, but you have to do it responsibly.
“I think there will always be a Bike Week,” Moyer said. “I don’t think it’ll ever die completely, and like I said, I hope it doesn’t. It’s a good event, it’s a lot of fun.”
‘The best time’
Standing on the Lakeside Avenue boardwalk last week, Tony Felch said he loves Bike Week, just like his dad, the late Harold Felch, who would load his wife Fae and kids in the family’s station wagon and take them “down 106 to watch the crazies go crazy.”
Other times, the Felches would sit in front of the former Henry’s Five and Dime in Lakeport as the bikers rode by on their way to The Weirs.
His dad, Felch said, “never drank a drop or owned a bike, but he loved watching people.”
Felch said he started riding and drinking at 18, the legal age then.
“It was the time of wheelies, smoke shows and lots of drinking,” he said.
Felch called his behavior “semi-normal” 48 years ago but said it wouldn’t be acceptable now.
In retrospect, the signs and taunting were
embarrassing, regrettable and wrong, he said.
Things have gotten better overall, he said.
Felch enjoys all aspects of Bike Week, and is working to make sure it continues.
The rally’s future, he said, is in the hands of younger riders — who to this point have not shown up.
“The younger generation doesn’t seem to ride as much and doesn’t seem as interested in Motorcycle Week” as previous generations, he said.
Meanwhile, “your older generation will keep (coming to Bike Week) until they’re gone,” Felch said.
He hopes more people make the same kind of connection to Bike Week that his family did when he was young.
“The best time at Bike Week,” he said, “was spending time with my mom and dad.”
Lake...@unionleader.com
Oetinger describes Hells Angels incident
Jun 24, 2006 0
Save
Police Chief Tom Oetinger on Thursday informed the three-member Police Commission of a Bike Week confrontation between members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and law enforcement officers that illustrates his concern that "outlaw motorcycle clubs" pose a potential threat to the "potential long-term economic viability" of Laconia's signature event.
In a written report, Oetinger said that on Saturday, June 17 a group of about 15-18 Hells Angels members were drinking at the bar at the Weirs Beach Smokehouse and one of that group was determined to be only 20-years-old. The other members of the group, the chief said, initially refused to allow their compatriot to be detained by police and additional officers were called to the scene to help with the arrest.
Oetinger reported that he believes the "increasing attendance of members of outlaw motorcycle clubs. . .(posses) a unique law enforcement challenge that directly affects the safety of visitors. . .and needs to be addressed in a manner that is legal and reasonable."
advertisement
The Manchester chapter of the Hells Angels has maintained a significant presence in Laconia for a number of years. The club operates a clubhouse for members at the dead end of Fillmore Ave., off White Oaks Road and the World Run (convention) of the organization was held on that property in 2003.
Club member Ed Shaughnessy, a Laconia resident, currently holds a world-wide Hells Angels leadership position.
Several different Hells Angels chapters have been selling t-shirts and related items from vending booth's during recent Bike Weeks. The gear sold does not include the words "Hells Angels", but instead typically is imprinted with slogans such as "Support your local 81" — "H" being the eight letter of the alphabet and "A" the first.
https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news/local/oetinger-describes-hells-angels-incident/article_d52f7e75-1d5d-55b9-8b89-7c8acf51fab1.html
In several of the books about Hell's Angels it shows the photos the Laconia Police Dept. being attacked by the HAMC. Some officers fight back, some are paralyzed in place, some run away. No coordinated law enforcement response. Male citizens line the street watching the chaos some taking pictures. Apparently half the police officers were fired subsequently.
Search
ADVERTISEMENT
https://apnews.com/article/aa01673db7fbf36ee840afc5d6b73bf8
Click to copy
RELATED TOPICS
Archive
Bikers Arrested in Brawl
June 22, 1998
LACONIA, N.H. (AP) _ Police trying to break up a fight during Motorcycle Week were allegedly clubbed and sprayed with pepper spray by bikers. Three officers were injured and seven alleged members of the Hells Angels were arrested.
An eighth biker was being sought in Saturday’s brawl.
``This situation is one of the more serious I’ve seen in quite a few years,″ said Police Chief Robert Babineau.
Four or five fights were going on at the same time between 15 and 20 Hells Angels and 10 officers, he said, and it took about 40 officers to quell the fighting.
ADVERTISEMENT
Motorcycle Week typically draws tens of thousands of bikers. Sunday, the final day of the festival, was the 75th annual running of the Loudon Classic motorcycle race at the New Hampshire International Speedway.
The fight began when police Sgt. Michael Moyer tried to break up a fight between a Hells Angel and another person, he said. One man sprayed him with what was believed to be pepper spray while another wrested a nightstick away from another officer and started hitting him.
``I was hit from behind and knocked to the ground,″ Moyer said.
None of the three injured officers was hospitalized.
One of the seven men arrested, Mark Guardano, 36, of San Francisco, was charged with second-degree assault and was being held on $500,000 bail. A second man was charged with simple assault on an officer and held on $55,000 bail, while the five others were charged with misdemeanors and released without having to post bail.
The name of the eighth biker was not released.
Babineau, who is about to retire from the police chief post in this town of 16,000, said Motorcycle Week has gotten out of control. He suggested shortening it and encouraging bars and other businesses to cut down on lewd events such as fake orgasm contests.
Given the tone set by businesses, it’s no surprise that drunken men on the streets yell to women to show their breasts, he said.
``I’m not sure what the big mystery is here,″ he said. ``We allow it to take place in some establishment and then we’re shocked when we have that activity take place on the street.″
Similar steps are working at the nation’s largest annual motorcycle rally, in Sturgis, S.D., he said.
https://apnews.com/article/aa01673db7fbf36ee840afc5d6b73bf8
New Hampshire
Eleven members of the Hells Angels' Lowell, Massachusetts chapter were arrested on narcotics-related charges during a raid by twenty-six federal, state and local law enforcement officers on a dwelling in Nashua on September 9, 1969. A cache of heroin was also seized.[574] Chapter president Donald James "Skeets" Picard was convicted on two counts of heroin trafficking and sentenced to two concurrent twenty-year prison sentences.[575]
On June 12, 1972, Hells Angels members Robert Gardner and Kevin Gilroy were shot while riding their motorcycles on Interstate 93 in Londonderry by Dean Dayutis, a member of the Devil's Disciples Motorcycle Club who fired at the pair from a moving vehicle. Gardner was wounded and Gilroy was killed. Dayutis was arrested in Key West, Florida on November 2, 1982 and was repatriated to New Hampshire to face trial for Gilroy's killing in May 1983 after a five-month extradition process.[576] He was convicted of second-degree murder later that year and sentenced to eighteen-to-forty years of imprisonment.[577]
The Hells Angels formed their first chapter in New Hampshire when members from Massachusetts and Maine established a branch in Manchester in March 2000.[578]
Two prospective Hells Angels members were shot and wounded in Concord on June 24, 2002 in what police believed to be a gang-related incident.[579]
An innocent bystander was wounded with a shotgun during a fight involving the Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Milford and Company Motorcycle Club outside a restaurant in Manchester on April 16, 2010.[580]
Hells Angels member James Cunningham was among four men arrested in June 2017 on federal drug trafficking charges following an investigation that spanned several years. Cunningham sold methamphetamine to an individual who was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on four separate occasions in Manchester and Merrimack between May 23 and November 20, 2013.[581] He pleaded guilty to methamphetamine trafficking, and was sentenced to three years and three months in prison on May 10, 2018.[582]
Laconia Shuts Down Bike Week Music Festival
by Ethan Glover | Jun 19, 2016 | Copblock, News | 36 comments
Laconia, New Hampshire’s Bike Week is a motorcycle rally that has successfully pulled in large crowds since 1923. Attendance has ranged from 188,000 to 375,000 people. Despite the track record of fatal motorcycle accidents in the area during the event, it has always been relatively peaceful. Until the summer of ’65.
Riots involving around 10,000 people between motorcycle gangs and local police caused the City of LaconNational Guard at Weir's Beach Riotsia to crack down on the event. Laconia officials no longer saw bike week as a source of tax income, but an inconvenience.
Laconia restricted the event to three days rather than the full week and attendance started to drop. When the city started feeling the loss of money in their pockets in the 90’s, they invited the organization to bring back the week-long festivities.
Here we are today. Bike week at Weir’s Beach in Laconia ran from 1923 to 1965 on its own in peace. A riot, which the state alleges the Hell’s Angels started, brought bureaucratic control to the event.
I was able to attend one day for CopBlock’s week long event at Laconia. Every police department in the area shows up in force. Five departments including state troopers, county sheriffs and even the department at the University of New Hampshire show up for patrol. Small towns who only have a few officers to spare send one or two on a few days out of the week. And the national guard sent around fifteen soldiers in a “non-law enforcement capacity.” According to the UNH officer in the video below.
Bike Cops and Laconia Bike Week 2016
Credit: Matthew Perreault
Aside from a few crashes on the highways (one fatal), the event was peaceful. Happy, even. Everyone was in a good, talkative mood. Even the groups of officers found on every corner were having fun. But this police presence came at a price.
LaconiaFest, the music festival headlining Ted Nugent, shut down on Saturday early after Nugent’s performance. The festival manager said the city overestimated how many people would show and charged more than expected for first responders.
The police who were in groups on every corner, having a fun time, were costing the festival too much. It raises the question, were they necessary, and how willing was the city to send officers home to keep costs down?
The state lacks the ability to respond to the market in a timely manner. If the City of Laconia had a disagreement with festival managers on this issue, I think the city should have listened. The festival I saw did not require four cops on every corner and it did not deserve to have it’s funding drained by a forced monopoly.
https://freekeene.com/2016/06/19/laconia-shuts-down-bike-week-music-festival/
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