Law enforcement strikes back against Warren motorcycle club involved in double homicide

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindycom

WARREN

A large group of law-enforcement officers armed with a battering ram and body armor busted open a reinforced back door to the Forever Two Wheels motorcycle “gang” clubhouse Friday morning to remove anyone inside and board up the building.

Nobody was inside the Chestnut Avenue Northeast building, probably because the club’s members are lying low to avoid becoming the target of retaliation from the rival Brothers Regime motorcycle club, said Warren Law Director Greg Hicks.

The president of FTW, David Bailes Jr., 45, is charged with two counts of murder, accused of killing two members of the Brothers Regime last Saturday at Shorty’s Place, a bar on Highland Avenue in Warren Township. Bailes and two Brothers Regime members were wounded by some of the 30 rounds of gunfire.

Avoiding retaliation is a key objective of law enforcement, which is why Hicks and the Warren Police Department requested a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction Thursday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, Hicks said.

Judge Andrew Logan approved the temporary restraining order late Thursday, Hicks and other officials announced Friday morning at the Warren Police Department.

The reason for closing the club, as reported exclusively Friday in The Vindicator, is that the double homicide and two other crimes carried out by FTW members in recent years qualifies the group as a criminal gang that can be closed down as a nuisance under Ohio law, Hicks said.

“Hopefully, this will prevent more criminal activity,” Hicks said.

Warren Township Police Chief Don Bishop spoke with members of the Brothers Regime after the shooting to try to reassure them that police are being “proactive” in trying to shut down the FTW’s activities, Hicks said.

“There’s a lot of rumor and innuendo floating around,” Hicks said of threats of retaliation for what happened at Shorty’s. “We’re not letting our guard down.” Officials are calling their efforts to curb the violence Operation Clean Sweep.

Bishop said Shorty’s had not been a trouble spot until last Saturday’s shootings. He said the Warren Police Department has taken the lead on the investigation, in part because he has a small department and relatively inexperienced officers.

“We’re next-door neighbors,” Warren Mayor Doug Franklin added of the city and the township working together. Franklin said the boarding up of the FTW clubhouse is similar to the nuisance control the city has carried out in the past at bars, a convenience store and massage parlors.

Hicks said law enforcement has kept an eye on the various motorcycle clubs over the years, but the clubs generally “keep a low profile” to avoid police attention.

One exception was when Charles V. Moorhead, a FTW member, shot three members of the Brothers Regime in the Powerhouse bar Aug. 30, 2012. Moorhead received a three-year prison term, but his affiliation with FTW was not revealed publicly at the time.

Neighbors near the FTW clubhouse had mixed feelings about the club’s presence on Chestnut Street, with one man saying it was tiresome to hear loud motorcycles traveling up and down the street at odd hours.

But neighbor Sue Gilbert said she is a “cousin” of Bailes and grew up with him, and she thinks he and the FTW are being “picked on” by police. She said FTW was “helping the neighbors.” She also thinks Bailes “did nothing wrong” at Shorty’s because he was “defending himself.”

Hicks said closing the clubhouse for now and possibly for a year at a July 1 hearing “prevents [FTW] from having a place to congregate, at least in our city.”