Angels as good customers?
Merchants tell different tales
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian

Opinion of club members is mixed

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - If the Hells Angels ever return to Steamboat Springs, there'll be one less real estate salesman to terrorize.

"If the Hells Angels ever come back, I'm leaving town, because it's just not safe," says real estate agent Wayne Long. "Tell the people in Missoula to leave town."

But what about the police? Can't they preserve law and order and public safety?

"I'd leave town if I was them, too," Long says.

Actually, Long remains angry that, in his view, his local police effectively did just that four years ago when the Hells Angels gathered in his Rocky Mountain resort town. The infamous motorcycle club rolled in on a Friday and left on a Monday, and in between there were beatings, stabbings, shootings and a feeling that no one was really in control. It was as if the Angels dictated terms to police, instead of the other way around, he says.

At the end of July, the Hells Angels will roar into Missoula, blazing on an iron herd of fiery Harley-Davidson motorcycles. When they do, Long says, he hopes police here will be better prepared than law enforcers in his town.

"Our local police were totally unprepared for the Hells Angels," he says. "Only after things got really bad did they call for help."

After the Angels left town, Long distributed a survey around Steamboat, publishing his results in the local newspaper. Approximately two-thirds of those responding thought the police were ineffectual in the face of the outlaw bikers.

"Even after the reinforcements got here, they were so intimidated they just gave the town to the Hells Angels," Long says. "They handed over control."

That's an apt description, according to Kent Morrison, who found himself on the receiving end of a Hells Angels' stomping.

"The cops were pitiful bastards," he says.

But he also says that once the reinforcements arrived, police became "as scary as the bikers." It's a sentiment shared by many in Steamboat. In fact, the perspective from Main Street contrasts sharply with Long's. While most folks who stop to talk about that weekend in 1996 agree the police botched the job, they also think the Hells Angels were pretty darn good guests.

Police, depending upon whom you ask, either did not do enough to maintain order, or they did too much at a time when that order was never really threatened. Either way, the consensus is that police blew it.

The bikers, on the other hand, were perceived as relatively well-behaved, and Long is in a lonely minority with his belief that "it's just not safe."

"I think they (the bikers) were better than any other group I've had stay here."

That's what Chris Zajac told the Steamboat Pilot newspaper just hours after the last Harley roared out of town, just a day after two Hells Angels had been shot in the motel Zajac managed. The room had been dismantled by Hells Angels as police were kept at bay, and all evidence was gone by the time police gained access.

They cut out the carpet, chopped out pieces of the walls, destroyed the bedding - but Zajac still considers them one of his best customers.

"Somewhere, they got a bad mark on them," Zajac told the paper, "and that isn't fair."

Routt County Commissioner Ben Beall agrees, to a point, saying the annual summer arrival of the Triple Crown Softball Tournament players - "those high-testosterone guys who come in and drink beer and rip things up" - is a greater menace than the Hells Angels.

Police Chief J.D. Hays admits the softball players have been responsible for their fair share of drunken destruction, but he cringes at the comparison.

"The softball players don't come out in numbers and intimidate the police," Hays says. "The softball players don't beat the bejeebers out of the public. And we have yet to have the softball players shooting each other."

The Hells Angels, he says, simply do not have the same respect and fear of law enforcement that most people take for granted. To Angels, a cop is certainly no better than anyone else, and is likely considerably worse.

"The Hells Angels are not out looking for trouble," says Chuck Vale, Steamboat's emergency services director. "But if trouble comes their way, they'll respond, and it won't be by picking up the phone and saying, 'Please, Mr. Policeman, come help me.' "

(In fact, when trouble did come their way in Steamboat, the Angels picked up the phone, pulled it from the wall, and beat someone over the head with it.)

Nevertheless, locals up and down Steamboat's Main Street are unanimous in their preference of Angels over softball players - or cops, for that matter.

Sandy Evans, director of community development with the local Chamber of Commerce, says shop owners reported the Hells Angels "were very nice, very polite, very well behaved. It's unfortunate that a few incidents put the entire visit in a bad light."

Jimmy Billys, longtime owner of a downtown restaurant, agrees. "They were nice," Billys says. "They had lots of money, paid in cash, you know."

And Billys' waitress, Lisa Kanov, had no trouble making good money among the outlaws. Angels are notorious for being, among other things, excellent tippers.

"Just give them their burritos and let them be happy," she says.

Ben Gero, a local businessman who also was Chamber of Commerce president in 1996, says, "They were some strange-looking characters, but I didn't have any problems with them. They were very polite."

Up and down Main Street: same song, different verse. And alongside the angelic lyrics is another refrain, not quite as cheerful, sung about police.

"There were a lot of cops around, and that was strange," Gero says. "The presence of the cops made everything seem tense. Maybe it was needed, but it seemed a bit much. It seemed like it might have increased the antagonism."

Police, he says, were amped up for an all-out war, believing the Angels had come to burn down the town. "But I don't think they came here to rip the town apart," he says.

The show of force by police proved more startling for many than the roar of the Harleys.

"The SWAT teams and stuff that came into town was the scariest part," says Tracy Barnett, co-owner of a popular restaurant. "The outside cops made it a bigger deal than it had to be."

"Why make it worse and make a war out of it?" she wonders still. "The Hells Angels aren't looking for trouble."

Maybe. But trouble seems to find them, says Police Chief Hays.

"I absolutely guarantee there will be criticism of the local cops for overreacting," Hays predicts of the Angels' upcoming visit to Missoula. "But don't worry about that. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security."

Steamboat City Council President Kevin Bennett defends the police.

Of the Angels, he says, "individually, in shops and restaurants, they were very polite and engaging and could quickly build a bridge of trust. At night, in groups, when acting in unison, they were ready to get it on."

The police, he says, "did it exactly right."

"Why go in and antagonize the Hells Angels, knowing that they're armed, that they have a propensity for violence?" he says. "To go in and create an incident would have been disastrous."

But Bennett agrees with critics on one point: "This was an occupied city."

Hays says Bennett is one of the few who understood what it meant to prepare for a potential disaster, especially when you aren't sure what that disaster might look like.

By the time the Hells Angels converged on Ventura, Calif., in 1998, local police had a pretty good idea of what the disaster might look like: It might look like Steamboat Springs.

Ventura put a couple hundred officers in town from the start, hoping to quash any trouble before it began. But that approach sparked even more criticism than Steamboat's handling of the Angels in 1996.

"There were more cops than Hells Angels," complains Joe Beltran, owner of a Ventura leather shop, which does work for both the Angels and the police.

And the police parade still has many merchants seeing red - or blue as the case may be.

"It was ridiculous," says Rod Reed, bartender at Ventura's Star Lounge. "They (police) cost everyone money. The merchants here have lost at least $100,000 thanks to the cops."

His preference: Have an army of police on hand, just in case, but keep them in the background, keep them housed out of sight where they don't stifle the event.

"What happened was our city fathers panicked," says merchant Ron Smith. "They decided the Hells Angels were coming to rape and pillage."

At considerable expense, the city erected hundreds of "no motorcycle parking" signs, forcing the Angels to avoid downtown or trade their Harleys for shoe leather.

"It looked like a police convention," Smith says. "They would harass the motorcycle club at every turn, arresting them for the most minor offenses."

"Shopkeepers were looking forward to the business," Smith says. "They had no idea the cop invasion was coming."

"The Hells Angels aren't the mellow guys they've been made to be," says Doug Halter, president of the Downtown Ventura Community Council. But a police strategy of taking "extreme precautions will put the average residents on the side of the Hells Angels."

And that, many agree, could be a mistake.

To confuse the Hells Angels with other tourist groups is simply naive, says Steamboat Police Chief Hays. To side with them over the police is dangerous, he adds.

"They're for real," agrees Bennett, the Steamboat council president. "And the idea that they're not is inaccurate."

"It was a bizarre experience," he says of the Hells Angels' visit to Steamboat. "It's no day at the beach, and it's not something to take lightly."

Steamboat restaurateur Barnett sees it differently and offers this advice:

"Be nice to them," she advises. "Strike up conversations. Just don't piss them off. If you're asking for it, you'll get it."

She offers the same advice for dealing with the Hells Angels.