After having searched a Hells Angels premises on a scale never seen in 15 years two weeks ago in Montérégie, Sûreté du Québec investigators continued their momentum and searched, as part of the same investigation, the residences of suspected drug traffickers.
Since Wednesday morning, investigators from the South Shore Regional Mixed Squad (ERM) have searched 11 houses and four vehicles in Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Beloeil, Saint-Mathieu-de -Beloeil and Montreal.
No arrests are planned. This is a fourth phase of searches during the investigation.
This, called Réalign, targets a drug trafficking network which would operate in the Beloeil region and which would be headed by a member of the South section of the Hells Angels.
More than a hundred police officers took part in the operation on Wednesday morning.
The latter follows three other operations which took place on May 1, 22 and 30 in different municipalities in Montérégie.
On May 30, at supper time, approximately 150 police officers, including members of the SQ Tactical Intervention Group (GTI), arriving aboard armored vehicles, spectacularly invaded the Hells Angels premises in the South section , in Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu.
According to our information, between 25 and 30 members of the Hells Angels of the South section and their support clubs were gathered when the police burst onto the property.
Each motorcyclist was arrested, identified, handcuffed and then released pending further investigation.
We have to go back to Operation SharQc, in April 2009, to find an operation of this magnitude carried out in a Hells Angels den in Quebec.