I woke up this morning to discover the Mercury News had a huge story about the San Jose Chapter of the Henchmen Motorcycle Club, complete with photos of members and of motorcycles. Well good morning to you too Mercury News!!
The Henchmen are an Outlaw Motorcycle Club (if you don't know what an outlaw motorcycle club is, or think you do but probably actually don't, check out my article on the Outlaw Biker) located throughout Northern California, but they are mostly located in the SF Bay Area and the Central Valley.
I have to tell you, after reading the article, the claims they are making about being harassed by the city of San Jose are really believable based on my own experience with both groups. Of course, no one other than the Henchmen MC, the "hang arounds" and guests that might be with them at the time, and the police officers involved in these contacts, can make any definitive determinations about whether or not these police contacts are lawful or not. Any one who does either doesn't know what they are talking about, or is a liar.
Through the course of running my business, I've had many contacts with police officers from the San Jose police department, and the Santa Clara County Sheriffs department. My overall impression is they are not professional police organizations. If there were a scale of professionalism among police organizations, the SJPD and the SCSO would rank a level or two above the Fresno Police Department.... Which isn't anything to brag about, trust me. Now I'm not indicting every officer in those organizations... That would be ignorant, and no one knows that better than I do, but dealing with the departments overall, they have not performed in a professional manner I would expect of any police department.
My contacts with the Henchmen MC club, however, have been the exact opposite. According to popular biases, you'd expect contacts between the HMC and members of the general motorcycle riding population to be tense at best, violent at worst... That shows exactly how little people know about Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs. Although far less in frequency, overall my contacts with the Henchmen MC have been much more positive experiences than my contacts with South Bay Area or Central Valley law enforcement agencies.
Wouldn't you agree that it's a sad indictment of our law enforcement officers when a member of the public admits their contacts with an outlaw motorcycle club have been much more pleasant and they were treated in a manner that is more in compliance with the law than their contacts with law enforcement? Yeah it's crazy. And it says almost as much about the Henchmen MC as it does the South Bay Law Enforcement agencies.
Through my personal experience in Law Enforcement, and my personal experience in an Outlaw Motorcycle Club, I know through first hand personal experience how mis-informed law enforcement is about outlaw motorcycle clubs, and about the personal bias many individual officers have against the clubs, and club members, without actually knowing anything about them.
As I was reading the article this morning, I found myself wondering what measurable benefit the city of San Jose expects by harassing this club, especially during a year where San Jose is experiencing it's highest murder rate in 20 years. How many of those 28 killings (as of 7/30/11) were caused by an Outlaw Motorcycle Club? I found myself wondering why, during a year where police officers are being laid off because of budget problems, the City of San Jose is spending so much money and using so many resources to harass this club that has caused very little measurable crime in this city, when there are street gangs shooting guns in our neighborhoods and painting graffiti all over our city?? Does that make any sense to you?
And harassment is exactly what this amounts to. Do you know why the HMC clubhouse is located way out in an industrial area? Because industrial areas are typically located away from residential areas because they tend to be loud (from all the industry taking place, of course) and they tend to be ugly. That makes them the perfect location in a city for a motorcycle clubhouse. For the reason, most cities require motorcycle club houses to be located in an industrial area. San Jose attempting to push this club house out of an industrial area is an attempt to push this club out of the city. Of course, that's not how this is going to play out. All they're going to accomplish is to push the club out of their clubhouse and into their homes, where they can do nothing to prevent meetings, but will create noise and additional traffic during all hours of the day and night that will disturb neighbors. Now how smart is that, really?
The City of San Jose needs to pull their head out of their ass and start policing the people who are actually breaking the law and leave the Henchmen MC alone.
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