Terry the Wall leaning on a Harley-Davidson Knucklehead chopper being built in an apartment living room. Still smiling, he is now six feet, six inches and weighs over 300 pounds, a monster.

THE VAGOS BUILT A MENACING REPUTATION throughout the southland as wild bastards who had no concern for the law, their community, or even other bikers; they only cared about protecting club members.

Terry and Parts recognized their responsibility for the growing harassment from authorities. In this the Vagos weren’t alone; other clubs earned equally nefarious reputations as unruly menaces on the streets and likewise had to deal with vast numbers of their memberships being jailed. Law enforcement rapidly turned against all bikers, resulting in an atmosphere not unlike the belligerent feuds that destroyed entire communities in the hinterlands of Appalachia—not surprising, given that many of the men who started the motorcycle clubs of Southern California were Okies, descendants of a long line of people who emigrated westward across the continent until they finally ran into the Pacific Ocean and were forced to stop.

Not all members were pleased with the public’s perception of club members as out-of-control Berserkers hell-bent on destroying everything in their paths.

Not all members were pleased with the public’s perception of club members as out-of-control Berserkers hell-bent on destroying everything in their paths. Some bikers and clubs, such as Terry and the Vagos, sought to alter or even soften the negative attitude toward bikers by organizing toy runs, charity efforts, and blood drives.

In May of 1983, 30 Vagos led by a highly-educated member named Rat rolled into the Orange County Red Cross station in an effort to give blood, as a token gesture to the community and specifically to law enforcement. They intended to prove the Vagos were more than a purely criminal organization.

Rat came to the Vagos after he studied outlaw motorcycle clubs at Florida State University during a class on social anthropology. He became fascinated with club life.

“I was drawn to this group,” Rat said. “I realized almost right away that I didn’t want to study this way of life; I wanted to live it. It was the only example that I can think of in which this society allows us to choose our own family, and that’s what a club is: a family.”

“Rat was a brilliant nut,” Terry said. “He was able to speak twenty different languages.”

Rat was a six-foot-tall, balding, scroungy bastard. He had a poodle that he jacked off in front of brothers.

“You never drank out of a bottle after he did,” Terry said.

One time he staggered into a campfire, drunk and swinging a sword. One of the other members, Willy, shouted, “It’s Rat, the sword swallower.”

Rat spun, lifted his shaggy head, and swallowed the sword. He was a member of the Vagos for fifteen years.

Rat and Wolfman, the chapter president, led the pack of Vagos into the Red Cross facility, where they gave blood and luckily drew coverage in the LA Times for their good deed. After the blood drive they rode into Trabuco Canyon, in the Orange County foothills, for a keg party, offsetting their good behavior with 120 gallons of beer.

After the blood drive they rode into Trabuco Canyon, in the Orange County foothills, for a keg party, offsetting their good behavior with 120 gallons of beer.

Vagos lived at the junction of the tracks between good and evil. Even within the ranks, brothers fought brothers over the notion of brotherhood, like any family organization, a mixture of structure and benevolence. It was a life that pitted the outlaw’s warrior spirit against the evil ranks of criminal minds. Sometimes the noble outlaw spirit and the evil criminal mind occupied the same flesh-and-blood vessel. This inner contradiction manifested itself in outward actions. There boiled a growing competition between clubs to determine which was the baddest, most evil criminal organization. It was a seriously destructive competition that could only lead to boastful chest-pounding while behind bars.

The authorities, and even some within the Vagos ranks, saw charity work as a bullshit sign of weakness. You’re either an outlaw or you’re not, they argued, but the community, religious groups, sensible members, and family members hoped and prayed for a higher aspiration, a compassionate, organized group of brothers with a positive purpose.

Suddenly, in September of 1983, the Vagos club’s mettle was tested at a much higher level, and again they tasted wrongdoing by the law. In July of the same year, a young Vago named Ray Malloy was jumped in the Country Girl Bar in Hawthorne, California. Three locals with knives rat-packed Malloy and stabbed him several times. Malloy managed to roll free of his attackers on the dirty country-western barroom floor, pull his own blade, and jump back into the fray. He escaped after inflicting several wounds on his assailants.

Three locals with knives rat-packed Malloy and stabbed him several times.

The Hawthorne cops were summoned and reports taken. At first the cops were keen on hunting the three knife-wielding attackers, until they discovered that the victim was a member of the Vagos. A hunt was launched for Malloy and charges filed against the biker. The Hawthorne police, with combined agencies and a local judge, filed for twenty legitimate search warrants and twenty-three illegitimate warrants, raiding forty-three homes in six weeks. They stormed Vagos’s residences, relatives’ houses, and known and suspected associates’ living quarters, anyone who might be harboring Malloy.

Cops bludgeoned front doors from Hawthorne to Apple Valley, and even dragged a pregnant woman awaiting a Caesarean section into the street. They yanked a handicapped girl out of bed. A licensed child-care operator tending to five babies was tossed into her front yard. The police were heavily armed as they kicked down doors, suspecting retaliation from armed Vagos. No retaliation came as they dragged naked senior citizens from their homes into their front yards.

By September they still had not found their man. Residents of fifteen of the invaded homes had absolutely no affiliation to the Vagos. Petrified by the attack, only one family filed a formal complaint. Some homes belonged to ex-members of the Vagos who had left the club years ago. Homeowners who testified to no connection with the club still had property confiscated. Court records documented seizure of guns, mail, cash, bills, motorcycles, photo albums, and a Porsche.

“I have never heard of the Vagos,” said a Lawndale woman. She was the licensed child-care operator who was baby-sitting five small children when her home was invaded by six armed plainclothes police officers. “I never heard of this man, Ruby Red, who they said they were looking for. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t feel safe here anymore.”

Hawthorne Officer Frazier developed the attack list from a roster he seized from a Vagos member’s home. The member, Richard (Blue) Beaulieu, was later shown the document by a reporter.

“Hey, that’s my writing,” Blue said. “I wrote that more than two years ago when the South Bay chapter was just starting.”

How could a sophisticated law enforcement agency stoop so low? Roger Ely, a plumbing contractor, heard thumping outside his home, like men marching. Then he heard rounds being jacked into the chambers of shotguns, so he opened his front door. He was handcuffed, searched, and questioned. It wasn’t until one of the officers recognized him as the brother of a Torrance police officer that they quit searching and destroying his premises. Cops had become the outlaws they were searching for, and they thought their mismanagement was, in a word, “funny.”

Cops had become the outlaws they were searching for, and they thought their mismanagement was, in a word, “funny.”

In a sense, they were far worse than the stand-up Vagos they were chasing. Most Vagos were noted outlaws but they proudly admitted it. They wore a patch proclaiming their affiliation. They didn’t hide behind a badge, an undercover police car, or use a judge and the legal system to clean up the messes left by their misdeeds.

Terry had moved to Cherry Lee and managed seven lath-and-plaster bungalows. The Hawthorne police stormed all seven units. One cottage was the home of the pregnant woman mentioned above.

Another woman, Sandy Johnston, who was frisked in her front yard, said, “I had nothing to do with them (Vagos), and should have known that before they came barging in. If they have a reason for it, I’m all for it, but they didn’t. I don’t take drugs. I don’t like drugs. I don’t even like beer. I don’t even smoke cigarettes!”

The cops also raided the cottage occupied by her mother and mentally handicapped sister; neither had any connection to the Vagos.

A number listed as belonging to Bruce (Panhead) Cooper, actually belonged to a Torrance housewife.

“I was stark naked getting into the shower,” she said, when a half-dozen armed police started to kick in her door. While she fumbled for a bathrobe, a Hawthorne police officer shot her. She was dragged from her residence and thrown in her front yard. They searched her drawers and closets, finally taking bank statements and a photograph of her husband.

“It’s your word against ours,” a Hawthorne cop told her, “unless your dog decides to talk.”

“We couldn’t understand why,” the unidentified woman said. “We’re average Joe Blow citizens. No record. No drugs. No reason anything like this should happen.”

What was her connection to Panhead Cooper? She was a part-time baby sitter and he was a customer from time to time. He moved away eighteen months prior and she never heard from him again. She tried to file a complaint with the Hawthorne police, but she wasn’t hopeful.

“It’s your word against ours,” a Hawthorne cop told her, “unless your dog decides to talk.”

The cop behind the illicit raids said his intelligence-gathering procedure to establish probable cause for the warrants was, “really good, but not perfect.” He stated that he depended on tips from officers in other agencies who were gang specialists, and he admitted that he was not an expert.

When the shit hit the fan publicly in the Los Angeles Times, various agencies tried to separate themselves from the Hawthorne unit. Claire Spiegel reported that officers for the LA Sheriff’s Department were not pleased with the manner in which Frazier handled supplied information. It was a mess.

It was 6:30 in the morning when a cluster of armed, plainclothes cops in flak jackets surrounded Terry’s bungalow. Terry stepped suspiciously onto the porch to investigate his barking dogs, only to be charged by the dark, unmarked officers. He stepped quickly back inside, but they stormed his flat, smacked him in the face with a shotgun butt, and they stuck a shotgun in the face of his fourteen-year-old son, then dragged him outside. They ransacked his home. What they didn’t take, they smashed. Terry had a collection of crystal bells neatly positioned on polished wooden shelves in his living room. One officer smacked them one at a time with his billy club.

“Are you going to talk?” the officer asked as he destroyed Terry’s collection. The Hawthorne unit dragged Terry into his front yard and beat him with billy clubs and batons.

“They would have beat me to death if the El Monte cops didn’t show up,” Terry said.

The authorities’ actions went against the code of the West, or in keeping with the nature of the outlaw versus the Man. If a club member was busted or raided, he was generally left to his own devices to survive and retrieve any confiscated materials. If a cop grabbed an outlaw’s shit, usually he could keep whatever he wanted as long as he dropped whatever trumped-up charges he dreamed up. For the brothers to stand up to the cops, they had to risk losing everything, plus the threat of increased prosecution and harassment. The Man could make life mighty rough on unsophisticated outlaws.

As soon as he was released, Terry and Parts scrambled across town to meet with Parts’s former attorney, Joanne Bockian.

It was 6:30 in the morning when a cluster of armed, plainclothes cops in flak jackets surrounded Terry’s bungalow.

“We needed to get our bikes back pronto,” Terry said. But they also proposed a civil suit.

But the case rapidly grew from recovering several confiscated motorcycles to dealing with forty-seven illegal break-ins, which involved more than 300 cops from a dozen Los Angeles municipalities. At one point they dragged the seventy-one-year-old father of an ex-Vago out of his bathroom and held him naked on his couch. A frightened toddler was smacked with the butt of a shotgun. Few of the victims had any connection to the Vagos. According to the warrants, sheriff’s deputies were searching for Malloy, his knife, and his bloody T-shirt. But they helped themselves to anything.

“What the cops didn’t haul away, they destroyed,” Terry said.

The massive conflict was on between the stand-up “evil” bikers and the utterly corrupt Hawthorne city police operation. Harassment escalated. The entire Vago organization was under fire. Finally, two months later, in November, 1983, under extreme pressure Ray Charles Malloy, forty-three, a member of the South Bay Chapter of the Vagos, surrendered himself and entered the Los Angeles County Jail. After attacking the southland, searching forty-seven residences, destroying or confiscating personal property, documents, and vehicles, and questioning hundreds of supposed Vago affiliates, the authorities from a dozen agencies could not find Malloy.

The LA Times reported Malloy wanted three Hispanics to speak English at the Hawthorne bar, so they jumped him and stabbed him, but he fought back. Malloy continued to ride to work every day, but the pressure on the club rubbed off on him and he decided enough was enough, plus he was uncomfortable being on the run, although he never left town. Still the all-powerful Man couldn’t find him. The irony was overwhelming.

Terry, the president of the San Gabriel Chapter and national vice president by that time, along with Parts, added up the claims, the attacks on innocent folks, the missing property, and decided to jam their Vago transmission into overdrive and sue the Man. This would mean additional harassment and loss of any confiscated property. The chances of winning, for any outlaw organization, were one hundred to one. Terry reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In most cases, especially for motorcycle clubs, help would not be forthcoming, but Paul Hoffman, a middle-aged ACLU attorney with a beer belly, offered organizational assistance. Joanne Bockian, Parts’s cute little attorney, also jumped into the fray and in April of 1984 she accused the Hawthorne cops of assault and battery, infliction of emotional distress, unconstitutional invasion of privacy, unlawful search and seizure, false arrest, and use of excessive force during the raids in Hawthorne and fourteen other communities.

The chances of winning, for any outlaw organization, were one hundred to one.

The only crime claimed by the authorities was association with the Vagos Motorcycle Club. Bockian and the ACLU filed a $9-million suit against the police for the tactics they used during the manhunt. The officers exceeded the limits of their court-ordered documents in forty-seven warrants, some illegally procured, when they roughed up residents and seized property not mentioned in the court orders. Bockian called it, “using force and tactics designed to instill fear . . . which was unnecessary, unreasonable, and unwarranted.”

The lawsuit claimed police broke down doors without trying to gain peaceful entry, displayed guns and batons “in a rude and threatening manner,” failed to identify themselves properly, herded naked or partially clad residents before other police or neighbors, and handcuffed residents and forced them to lie face-down in their front yards for hours while they searched and destroyed their homes.

With his stepbrother at his side, Terry would lead the Vagos into the ACLU-supported legal battle in the Man’s courtrooms and on the Man’s terms.

Hawthorne police refused to return seized property of the seventy-eight residents or even to provide them with claim forms. The suit sought $15,000 for each plaintiff, for emotional anguish, humiliation, and shock, plus $100,000 in punitive damages. The document called the attack, “flagrant harassment.”

In 1986, in the midst of the Hawthorne case, Terry was elected the club’s international president. With his stepbrother at his side, Terry would lead the Vagos into the ACLU-supported legal battle in the Man’s courtrooms and on the Man’s terms. This would be a legal first in the annals of outlaw motorcycle club history.

Suddenly the shoe was on the other foot after twenty years of police harassment. Terry and Parts, with the Vagos behind them, were prepared to dig in for the long haul. They knew the city of Hawthorne would attempt every legal maneuver known in order to grind the legal wheels to a halt and pile on the financial cost of the case to break the club down. Immediately Hawthorne PD attorneys initiated delay tactics.

The Gestapo tactics unleashed by the Hawthorne Police on the Vagos didn’t let up, nor were they limited to the Vagos.

The night after the lawsuit was filed, Joanne snatched the opportunity to become a plaintiff. Joanne, Terry, Parts, and a couple of other members visited the Hawthorne PD headquarters to retrieve their confiscated motorcycles and guns.

“I had never been to Hawthorne,” Terry said. “We arrived at 5:00 p.m. with all the appropriate documents, but the Hawthorne Police refused to turn over our property.” Joanne argued with the duty officer, called the chief of police, the mayor, and finally a judge. “It said ‘forthwith’ on the documents, which means ‘right now.’”

“They didn’t turn over our property until 1:00 in the morning,” Terry said, “then they gave us a police escort to the freeway.”

After that night the short, ambitious Joanne added herself to the case hoping to collect damages in addition to her fees. Her scandalous behavior didn’t end in the Hawthorne PD waiting room.

The Gestapo tactics unleashed by the Hawthorne Police on the Vagos didn’t let up, nor were they limited to the Vagos. In November the Los Angeles County grand jury indicted a female Hawthorne police officer for kicking an unconscious, handcuffed prisoner. Brutality complaints ran rampant in the South Bay department. Just a couple months earlier a Sherman Oaks attorney, George Denny III, served the Hawthorne agency with a civil complaint on behalf of seven people who claimed to be beaten and falsely arrested by Hawthorne cops in January of 1983.

Denny accused the department of an “ongoing conspiracy” to manhandle prisoners. It was a time of rampant excessive force in the crowded, seaside party community. The criminal edict originated from the top of the heap, in this case the chief, Kenneth Stonebraker, who smirked in the Los Angeles Times, “The complaints are from that faction who does wrong things. They don’t like an active department.”

Beginning in 1982, claims against the Hawthorne department for false arrest and misconduct escalated. In 1983, eighty-three complaints were filed, including the thirty-three from the Vagos’ bust. Stonebraker felt that the ends justified the means. “Since 1980, we’ve reduced crime and doubled our arrests,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Stonebraker felt that the ends justified the means. “Since 1980, we’ve reduced crime and doubled our arrests,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

In many ways the police were not unlike the motorcycle clubs they harassed. Like clubs pushing their weight around against other clubs or locals, police departments can behave in much the same way when they suffer from poor, egotistical police leadership. Under such circumstances the police are as likely to stray beyond legal boundaries as the members of outlaw clubs.

The police problem wasn’t just in Hawthorne. Within a fifteen-mile radius along the west coast of Los Angeles, twenty isolated communities shared the same freeways and main concrete arteries. Incorporated in 1922, the City of Hawthorne currently has a population of nearly 87,000 within a six square mile area. It’s located near the Los Angeles International Airport, connected by rail to the Port of Los Angeles and downtown Los Angeles, and surrounded by the San Diego (I-405), Harbor (I-110), and Glenn M. Anderson (I-105) Freeways. Because of its location, Hawthorne could call itself the “Hub of the South Bay,” although its real claim to fame was as the birthplace of the pop group The Beach Boys. It is virtually surrounded by eight Los Angeles suburbs: Lennox, Del Air, Lawndale, West Athens, Inglewood, Gardena, Westmont, and Alondra Park. They are all teeming asphalt and stucco jungles crammed next to one another. There is no open space, unless a Vago rides his motorcycle across the sandy beach into the Pacific. A rider would be forced to travel 100 miles inland to the Mojave Desert or the San Bernardino mountains to escape the urban squalor.

Officers who weren’t on board with Hawthorne’s storm trooper methods were transferred, given involuntary retirement, or threatened with being kicked out.

This was the fiefdom over which Chief Stonebraker presided. Stonebraker was as much an outlaw as any member of the Vagos. He grew up in Hawthorne and spent most of his life and his entire career working as a cop there. He took over the department in 1981, and all hell broke lose. Stonebraker felt it was time to make a name for himself. He either initiated the bad-boy attitude among the local officers or he couldn’t control the bullies on his force. Either way, his ascension meant that Hawthorne became a lawless town.

Officers who weren’t on board with Hawthorne’s storm trooper methods were transferred, given involuntary retirement, or threatened with being kicked out. “Several officers and officials would talk about the department only if they were not identified,” wrote Times staff writer Gerald Faris in his article on Stonebraker.

“There was no training, no procedures, no manual,” Faris quoted the city clerk Patrick Keller, saying as he recalled a reserve officer briefing. “They just told us, ‘Okay boys, go out and get ’em.’”

“You learned from the best officers, or the worst,” said another city employee.

Terry and the Vagos had their hands full.

For seven long years, the battle raged on between the ACLU and the Vagos motorcycle club and the Hawthorne cops. Terry and Parts put up the initial legal funding and received some help from the ACLU, which was then under the leadership of Paul Hoffman. Hoffman litigated more than twenty civil rights/civil liberties cases between 1976 and 1984, specializing in cases involving First Amendment rights, criminal law and procedure, freedom of information and privacy, and police misconduct, which meant the Vagos’s case was right up his alley. Hoffman researched every element in the Vagos’s case; he questioned each witness, studied each damaged home, documented every missing piece of property, and collected depositions from every plaintiff, including Terry’s son, Boomer, who was fourteen at the time of the break-in.

“Three cops stormed my bedroom, like special forces attacking an enemy enclave,” Terry Jr. said. “They all had weapons drawn and were screaming, ‘Get up! Don’t move! Get up! Don’t move!’ I sat up and asked ’em, ‘What’s it going to be, get up or don’t move?’” Rather than answering Boomer’s sensible question, they pointed a shotgun at the fourteen-year-old’s face.

“I never understood the attack on all the residents around us,” Boomer said. “They were all just citizens. They had nothing to do with bikers or clubs.”

The cops even tried threatening phone calls in the middle of the night to scare off plaintiffs. “We’re going to kill you, asshole,” an untraceable voice would say over the phone.

Boomer, who was starting to go by the name “Terry the Wall,” grew from fourteen to twenty-one years of age during this conflict with the Hawthorne PD. At twenty-one, he was six-feet, six-inches tall and weighed more than 300 pounds—hence the name “Terry the Wall.” When he got old enough he started to work as a security guard for rock tours and at the Whiskey A Go-Go, Roxy, and Rainbow night clubs in Hollywood.

Ten causes for action were filed in a thirty-page legal brief, listing plaintiffs from sixteen municipalities. While the Hawthorne legal team ground the case to a halt in court, the Vagos faced escalated harassment and more unjustified arrests. Their bikes were impounded, and their kids were harassed while walking to and from school. The cops even tried threatening phone calls in the middle of the night to scare off plaintiffs. “We’re going to kill you, asshole,” an untraceable voice would say over the phone. Even in the face of outright criminal threats from law enforcement, the Vagos didn’t give in. The brothers sold motorcycles and organized garage sales and fund-raisers to keep the legal fight alive.

The seventy-one-year-old gentleman who was pulled from his home naked died before the case was aired in court. Several of the original plaintiffs were harassed so severely that they backed out of the suit. Hawthorne faced financial woes, but their best tactic was dragging their feet in an attempt to bankrupt the Vagos and bring their legal battle to an untimely close. The Hawthorne authorities gambled, prolonging the motions and pouring more funds into building their case.

Finally in February of 1990, six years after the original complaint, the case made it to the Los Angeles Superior Court docket. The ACLU and the Vagos were reasonably confident. They had proof of falsified warrants that supported their allegations that every police action was illegal and unjustifiable. There were lengthy complaints and evidence of gross violations of civil rights, excessive force, and damage to personal property. Unfortunately, positioning the Vagos members’ statements against the testimony of experienced and knowledgeable professionals put the outlaws in a weak position. Would the jury believe the scruffy outlaws over polished police officers?

“The ACLU team coached us before the trial,” Terry the Wall said.

It was a cold, dark, eerie morning outside the massive concrete and marble Los Angeles Superior Court building when the case finally came to trial. The slick, highly paid attorneys for Hawthorne described the Vagos as society’s animals, with lengthy criminal records. They documented their arrests and numerous investigations. They were nothing more than drug-using rapists who deserved torture more than simple prosecution. Their violent history earned them nothing more than contempt and banishment.

The case dragged on for almost two months, after almost seven years of abject harassment, rocking back and forth, tipping toward the establishment, then back in favor of the rough-looking bikers. Then one clear, sparkling southern California day, the sun shinned on the Vagos’ evil green patch.

Two ex-Hawthorne Police Department members, Dave Griffith and Don Jackson, took the stand on behalf of the defense. They were two honest cops who were swept into a department rampant with corruption as young recruits. They testified to overzealous department policies, illegal practices, excessive force, and falsified records. They even admitted to stealing personal property during raids.

“They kept asking the same question over and over,” Terry Jr. said. “The judge stood for the first time during the case and hollered back at the district attorney: ‘That’s enough. He answered honestly the first time.’”

The courtroom testimony suddenly shined a cleansing light on the green club patch and the abused families swept into a case involving outlaw motorcyclists they didn’t even know. Attorneys for the city scrambled for a quick cleansing of the open, legal wound. Terry’s son was called as the last witness, and the attorneys grilled the fourteen-year-old kid.

“They kept asking the same question over and over,” Terry Jr. said. “The judge stood for the first time during the case and hollered back at the district attorney: ‘That’s enough. He answered honestly the first time.’”

The case rapidly unraveled right in front of the slick Hawthorne suits. They offered a quick, out-of-court, $1.95 million settlement. Publicity quickly turned against the city, their officials, the police chief, and the legal team. They wanted out, quick. They wanted to patch the hole in the dike and run for higher ground.

“The Hawthorne police were depending on the fact that juries usually believed policemen,” Patty Erickson, one of the ACLU attorneys said, “but the Vagos’s case proved that juries will believe bikers. Other clubs should not be reluctant to file a civil rights suit. They needn’t believe they have to tolerate abuse, or that the decision will always go against them just because they are bikers.”

“The raids weren’t the worst of it,” Parts said. “The raids were just the thing they got caught with.”

“If we hadn’t stuck it out,” Terry said, “they would have gotten away with trampling the law again.”

The club was tired of the citywide feud and how it rubbed off on all the cop shops in the surrounding eighty-eight cities, including the infamous Los Angeles City Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. That was a lot of cops roaming over 4,000 square miles of Los Angeles County, with some 10,000 Los Angeles police officers and almost 20,000 Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies against a couple of hundred loosely knit Vagos. The odds were stacked against the green crew.

The Vagos decided to accept the settlement offer, although half of the bounty, if they were able to collect it, would go directly to the legal team. That left less than one million to be split between the remaining seventy defendants, for a take-home amount of $21,000 apiece. The city was in financial trouble and their insurance department was bankrupt.

On the other hand, for the first time in history, a motorcycle club stood up to the Man and was victorious. “I never rode to Hawthorne again,” Terry said. “The hottest women in that town couldn’t lure me into that shithole.”

“I don’t think anybody expected a motorcycle club to achieve this kind of victory,” said the ACLU’s Paul Hoffman, the lead attorney in the case. “But we demonstrated that when anyone’s rights are violated, you can get full vindication in our system.”

Representatives of the city of Hawthorne had nothing to say outside the courtroom.

“The city was broke,” Terry said.

“I never rode to Hawthorne again,” Terry said. “The hottest women in that town couldn’t lure me into that shithole.”

Terry was the last witness to be called, and ultimately did not have to testify on the witness stand.

“Everything I told them was corroborated by the other witnesses, many of whom were my tenants. It’s too bad that the case took so long.”

Hoffman hoped the healthy settlement would send a sharp message to the Hawthorne PD to change their abusive tactics.

“The money doesn’t matter,” said plaintiff Ron Bethal, forty-two. He was yanked from one of Terry’s bungalows with his wife, naked, and forced to lie face-down in the grass for more than two hours. “All we wanted was for (police) to get the message that we’re people, too, and the law applies to everybody.” But would the Vagos ultimately collect the small payment the court afforded them, after seven years and nearly 50 percent swept away to pay legal fees?