The cops in Waco busted 177 bikers after a deadly brawl and each was held on $1 million bond
Unless you live under a rock, you know that on May 17 there was a deadly brawl between biker gangs at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas during which nine bikers were killed by gunfire or stabbings and 18 injured. The cops rounded up everyone at Twin peaks, arresting 177 suspects who were charged with engaging in organized crime with bond set at $1 million each.
In order to bail out, each defendant would have to come up with $100,000. Only 34 suspects were able to bail out by June 4, leaving 143 roosting in the McLennan County pokey. Judge Ralph Strother said they would have to wait until next month for a bond-reduction hearing.
The lawsuits have started. Matthew Clendennen, 30, a Baylor University graduate and the owner of a landscaping business, managed to come up with $100,000 and bailed out of jail June 2. He insists he did nothing criminally wrong, claiming he was just sitting with some friends on the Twin Peaks patio. The only thing he did was to duck for cover into the inside of the restaurant when gunfire erupted in the parking lot. When the cops came they put flex-handcuffs on him. Later he was placed on a bus with other bikers and transported to the Waco convention center for processing. Clendennen thought he was being detained as a witness. Instead he ended up in jail with that $1 million bond.
Clendennen is suing city of Waco, McLennan County, Waco Police Officer Manuel Chavez and other officers involved and District Attorney Abelino Reyna. The lawsuit accuses Chavez “of signing a ‘fill in the name’ warrant he knew lacked individual probable cause and deceiving the Justice of the Peace who signed the criminal complaint.” The City of Waco and McLennan county are accused of "caus[ing] the arrest and detention of numerous individuals...regardless of whether or not there was individualized probable cause to arrest and detain a particular individual." Reyna is accused of creating the ‘fill in the name’ warrants and of violating Clendennen’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
The lawsuit also claims the two-week confinement caused Clendennen the loss of business and that because of his arrest, his ex-wife has filed suit to deprive him of joint custody of their two children.
The brawl at Twin Peaks was between the Bandidos and the Cossacks. Clendennen is a member of the Scimitar Motorcycle Club which has had some association with the Cossacks. However, the Scimitars are not on the Justice Department’s watch list for outlaw biker gangs.
Two other bikers are also preparing lawsuits. And you can bet they will be followed by a slew of suits before this is all over.
I could see the lawsuits coming. Anytime cops resort to making mass arrests they are likely to sweep up some innocent persons in the process. The police cannot arrest people just for belonging to biker clubs, and that includes the outlaw bikers. If they could, all the Hells Angels, Bandidos and other outlaw bikers would have already been locked up.
On this occasion, Twin Peaks had foolishly invited bikers for a social get-together. There was a large police presence at the establishment in anticipation of possible trouble. The cops should have arrested only the bikers they observed fighting or who were pointed out by witnesses, any of those present who were in possession of prohibited weapons, and anyone with an outstanding warrant. They should have released the others after obtaining their names, addresses and other identifiers.
When this is finally all over, the city of Waco and McLennan County will be many millions of dollars poorer.
1 comment:
I agree. I'll bet the video will show a lot a people getting arrested for wearing their colors and ducking! You can bet Twin Peaks has the majority of the premises on CCTV.
Of course, hundreds of weapons were found. A lot of them were buried under a layer of lawn where the cops sat the bikers awaiting transport. The weapons were found with metal detectors!
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