Charlottetown Hells Angels club gets full-patch status, can recruit new members

Their club may be a little smaller than when it started, but the Charlottetown Hells Angels became full-patch members Saturday.

RCMP Cpl. Andy Cook said the change means no more going around doing jobs for other full-patch members.
“They have full rights as a Hells Angel,” he said.

Cook said the RCMP had indications last week that the Charlottetown prospects would be attending a party in Woodbridge, Ont., on the weekend.

Cook said he then confirmed at the Charlottetown Airport Sunday that one of the local members was a full-patch Hells Angel.

The organization had a presence in P.E.I. for several years with the Woodbridge club sponsoring the local chapter, which became a prospect club in 2017.

Initially, there were 10 members, but Cook said that number has dropped to six, including one new member the police have yet to identify.

One member died earlier this month.
By Hells Angels rules, a chapter must have six members, Cook said. It’s not unheard of for Hells Angels chapters to collapse, as happened in Nova Scotia in 2003 when four of its members were in jail and the Crown had seized the clubhouse.

The Hells Angels website lists Newfoundland and Labrador as the only province in Canada without a prospect or full-patch Club.

The organization doesn’t list any chapters in the three territories.
In Charlottetown, the chapter has its clubhouse in a residential neighbourhood on Fitzroy Street.
Full-patch members wear vests with a top rocker that says Hells Angels, the death’s head symbol in the middle and a bottom rocker, which in the case of the local chapter, says Prince Edward Island.

A patch on the left front breast also has the chapter name.
Cook said the Charlottetown club will have to elect an executive and now that it has full-patch status it can recruit new members.
“They could start having their own hang-arounds, and I expect that’s what’s going to happen because they are down to the bare minimums, from my understanding,” he said.

Since the police learned in 2016 the Hells Angels were forming a hang-around chapter in P.E.I., law enforcement agencies in the province have been watching them.

Cook said that’s not going to change.
“If they step out of line and do something illegal, we’re going to deal with them,” he said.
P.E.I. hasn’t seen the same levels of violence, such as murders, related to the Hells Angels that other provinces have, but there have been issues in the province, Cook said.

Cook said that included three incidents of violence one night earlier in April when Hells Angels members from off-Island were in P.E.I. for a member’s funeral.
“Public safety is a big thing,” he said.


Canada - BNN.