Yes, there are many bothersome things about this. I fully understand that to maintain our liberties often the only way is to defend those less than desirable elements.
I am certain that many non- gang bikers were caught up in this. Poor choice on their part. I learned this a long time ago when guys would go on liberty and come back robbed, beaten, stabbed, shot, with some weird disease, etc and I slowly noted that these things tended not to happen at the art museum or the Eiffel Tower or the Smithsonian or the library. There was a girl at the stable where I show recently complaining she can’t meet decent guys. She told me she goes to clubs and bars to meet them. No wonder.
My point is if you want to dress like a hoodlum and hang around them, whether you are one or not, or you try to meet guys in seedy places instead of school or church, some not very favorable things can happen.
No, the problem is that good people like you, and too many others, are confusing costumes with reality. Bad bikers do bad things like meth cooking, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, human slavery -- they're BAD.
Only a third of the 177 people arrested even had a criminal record, let alone something serious like extortion. It was a case of the hoodlums hanging around with the regular joes!
Hoods, even dumb-ass biker hoods, are not so stupid as to start this gang fracas in the clear presence of SIX marked police cars. Yes, those vehicles were there, "visible to people entering the Twin Peaks parking lot." You can look it up. It's in the police press release.
Do you really and truly buy into the "bad boy biker" stereotype via costuming so completely? These were mostly regular folks who love Harleys. Real criminals have records.
Making unwise choices should not be probable cause for arrest and confinement under a $1,000,000 bond.
This “Yeah, but....” strain of the discussion is most troublesome. When the rules start getting bent, they will eventually break. And when they break down they break for everyone.
And a h/t to Texas Fossil for bringing the 9th Amendment into the discussion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3300068/posts?page=51#51