The crew was complete with two more members, Tom Eliason and Carl Blair. It was 1969 when the Club was founded in Tyler, Texas by six riders they became the first members and took on administrative roles to ensure the longevity of their club: the first Cossacks President was Earl Swift, Charles Hanks served as Vice President, Butch Cheatham as Secretary, while Paul Henley became the Treasurer. Now we will focus on how this MC came to be. But let’s leave that for another article. Yet, this is not a label with which The Cossacks identify. Many deem it an outlaw motorcycle club, even from within the community, mainly due to the “Waco” or “Twin Peaks Incident” that took place on May 17, 2015. The Cossacks Motorcycle Club (MC) is certainly controversial, caught somewhere in-between family, friendly and the fringe of society. In your face and far from politically correct.
"Maybe it'll be time for law enforcement and the public to take the blinders off and recognize these groups for what they are: criminals.The #1 Internet Biker Show on the Internet. Steve Cook, executive director of the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association, hopes that the shootout will draw more attention to the problem of OMGs. "Women are not allowed to be members of the club," the report reads, "but they may wear 'property' belts or vests adorned with 'property' patches to indicate their affiliation with a specific club."
"There is a significant overlap between elements of the biker subculture and elements of white supremacist subcultures, including shared symbology, shared slang and language, and in some cases shared dress."Īccording to an article in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, OMGs are notoriously misogynistic. "All five of the major white supremacist movements in the United States - neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, Ku Klux Klan groups, racist prison gangs and Christian Identity groups - have developed noteworthy ties to the biker subculture," reports the Anti-Defamation League. "This is likely due to their solid organizational structure, criminal sophistication, and their tendency to employ violence to protect their interests."īiker gangs and white supremacist groups are increasingly intertwined. "The slight percentage increase indicates that OMGs are more problematic than their modest numbers suggest," the report reads. In the 2013 National Gang Report, the FBI found that 11 percent of respondents report that OMGs are the most violent gang type in their areas. gang population, with only 2.5 percent of gang members belonging to an OMG, however the FBI considers them a disproportionately large threat. Today, OMGs are actually a fairly small portion of the U.S. They adopted the term "one percenters" to describe themselves after a 1960s speech from the then president of the American Motorcycle Association argued that 99 percent of motorcyclists lived according to the law. In fact, bikers and law enforcement are still intertwined - one of the bikers busted in the Waco shooting is a retired detective. "Positive views of military experiences, and the intense camaraderie they bred, also made such a lifestyle attractive."
"Thrill-seeking attracted some returning veterans to choose a saloon society lifestyle centered around motorcycles," wrote James Quinn, a professor at the University of North Texas. OMGs first formed after World War II, as subcultures that promoted nonconformity and the outlaw life. According to the FBI, "OMGs are highly structured criminal organizations whose members engage in criminal activities such as violent crime, weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking." The most notable gangs include the Hells Angels, Mongols, Outlaws, Sons of Silence and the Bandidos. OMGs, or outlaw motorcycle gangs, are organizations that take advantage of their motorcycle clubs in order to conduct criminal activities. this Sunday, nine were killed, 18 injured and at least 170 arrested in a shootout between the Bandidos and the Cossacks - two rival biker gangs believed to be fighting for control of Texas. In the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Tx.