'Full-patch' member of Hells Angels support club among 3 arrested in B.C. organized crime probe

The simultaneous searches got underway across the B.C. capital region around 8 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2024, when an RCMP emergency response team vehicle punched through a security gate at the clubhouse of the Savages Motorcycle Club in Langford, B.C. (CTV News)

Police investigating drug trafficking and organized crime arrested three people, including one member of the Savages Motorcycle Club, when they raided the group's clubhouse and eight other properties around the B.C. capital last week.

The simultaneous searches on the morning of Jan. 31 led to the arrest of a 27-year-old woman from Colwood and two men from Langford, ages 45 and 41.

Police said Thursday that one of the men arrested is a member of the Savages Motorcycle Club, a known support club for the Hells Angels. The group's Langford clubhouse was the most high-profile property caught up in the months-long investigation.

An RCMP emergency response team vehicle punched through a security gate at the Spencer Road property in a largely residential neighbourhood at around 8 a.m.

Forty police officers from multiple agencies took part in the coordinated searches on three other residential properties in Langford, two residences in Victoria, one in Colwood and two commercial properties in View Royal and North Saanich.

Three vehicles were also searched as part of the investigation, police said.

Investigators seized approximately 450 grams of fentanyl, 150 grams of methamphetamine, 200 grams of psilocybin, a kilogram of an unknown substance, small amounts of cocaine and hundreds of various pills, according to a statement Thursday from the West Shore RCMP.

Police also took into evidence more than $46,000 in cash, one SKS rifle, a prohibited handgun and an imitation handgun, they said.

"Four-hundred and fifty grams of fentanyl at minimum would make up 4,500 individual doses," West Shore RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Nancy Saggar said in the statement. "However, this number could be drastically higher and in the tens of thousands based upon the purity level of the fentanyl. Investigators won’t know the purity level until lab testing is complete."

'Full-patch' Savages member arrested

B.C.'s anti-gang task force, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, was directly involved in the investigation. On Thursday, CFSEU spokesperson Sgt. Brenda Winpenny said the arrests, "including that of a full-patch member of the Savages," constitute a significant development for the unit's efforts to tackle organized crime "due to the level of violence and harm they inflict on our communities."

The Savages clubhouse property is within a few hundred metres of an elementary school and a middle school. Following the raid, neighbourhood resident Becky Paquette described the clubhouse as a typically quiet and unassuming neighbour.

"You never really hear loud music," she said. "On the weekends, in the summertime, in the fall, they had their kids there and barbecues – it was kind of like a family event."

She said she was initially "shocked" when she saw police swarming the property.

"They look like normal everyday people," she said of the people who hang around the clubhouse. "This is suburbia."

The same property was the subject of a public warning from the RCMP nearly a decade ago.

In April 2015, the Mounties issued an advisory warning that the Devil's Army, an affiliate gang of the Hells Angels, was establishing its clubhouse inside the flat-roofed, single-storey building at 2775 Spencer Rd.