WACO, Texas—Two motorcycle gangs had been involved in a power struggle over perceived dominance of Texas before a ****** bar fight that escalated into a gunfight among gangs and police that left nine dead, a *************** expert said.
The Bandidos motorcycle gang had been the dominant ***** among biker gangs in Texas, but another club, the Cossacks, had recently begun challenging that position, said Steve Cook, a police detective in Independence, Mo., who heads the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association—a nongovernmental group of *************** experts that closely tracks biker gang activity and shares intelligence among members.
The tensions reached a boil recently when some Cossacks members began wearing a patch with the word “Texas” at the bottom of their biker jackets and vests. Those “bottom rocker” patches, as they are called in biker parlance, were a direct affront to the Bandidos, a larger gang with a long history of criminal activity in multiple states, Mr. Cook said. The Bandidos had claimed the sole right to display the patch as a sign of their turf, added Mr. Cook, who also said he has been in contact with Waco *************** about the incident.
