David Atwell

David Atwell (born 1965) is a Canadian outlaw biker, gangster and police informer who played a key role in the Ontario Provincial Police's Project Develop operation against the Hells Angels between 2005 and 2007.

Early life Atwell was born into a middle-class family in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario and started to work as a bouncer in Toronto-area bars as a teenager. On 18 October 1983, Atwell started working as a security guard at the age of 18. His mentor was "Jim", a British immigrant and a former Royal Marine who flagged him as a "natural" for the security business, taking him under his wing to train him to be a bodyguard and a security guard. As a result of the mass "patch-over" in Sorel, with 168 outlaw bikers becoming Hells Angels, the greater Toronto area went from having no Hells Angels chapters to having the highest concentration of Hells Angels' chapters in the world.

On 4 April 2002, he was arrested by the Toronto police after selling drugs to a woman who turned out to a police informer, leading him to be charged with drug dealing, forcing him to live on bail for the next twenty months, during which he incurred large legal debts and was forced to live with his father to save money.

During this time, Atwell started to become disenchanted with the general amorality and selfishness within the Hells Angels, writing in 2017: "I was free, but I wasn’t really. After the arrest, I began to see the club in an entirely different perspective. The guys weren’t Hells Angels because they wanted to ride bikes and have a good time together; they were all in it for themselves. TC’s insatiable greed had gotten us all in big trouble, and when it did, every guy just seemed to want to take the easiest way out, no matter who got hurt...And as soon as the charges against me were stayed, I was expected to go back to work for the club — after all, they had essentially ruined my ability to work for anyone else — and pay a huge bill even before I got back to my job. I was trapped, not by bars, but by the limitations the club had put on me and my life...I wanted out. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I couldn’t just quit. Then I would just be an ex-Hells Angel whose name had been in every newspaper. In the media, I was convicted. It didn’t matter that the charges were stayed. That might make looking for a job tough. I had no skills other than security, and nobody would hire me for that because of my affiliation with the club." For his work as an agent informer, Atwell was paid about $450,000 by the OPP. Adding to his tension of his undercover work was that Petersen, together with Douglas Myles, the vice president of the downtown Toronto chapter, were two of his closest friends, giving him a strong sense of guilt as he recorded their conversations with them. Myles had a meeting with Atwell in his garage, saying he was suspicious of him because he was buying far too many drugs from far too many people at once than was strictly necessary, which were the classic signs of a police informer trying to incriminate as many of his accomplices as possible. When Atwell asked why he had not been killed if he was a suspected informer, he received the reply from Myles: "That's why we're here right now". Atwell recalled that he felt deeply terrified at that moment, knowing he was suspected of being an informer and that his fellow Angels were debating the merits of killing him. Atwell left the meeting feeling grateful that Myles had decided to talk to him instead of having him killed as his fellow Angels had wanted while feeling very troubled knowing his life was in danger. When he got home, he found himself consuming a massive amount of alcohol, feeling that his life was in balance. When Atwell worked his final shift as it turned out as a bartender at the downtown clubhouse, he noticed that there was a coldness to his fellow Angels despite their superficial attempts to be friendly as he noticed their smiles and jokes seemed a little too forced. The next morning, Atwell was ordered to go into witness protection by his police handlers, who suspected there was going to be a murder attempt against him at any moment.

On the basis of the information gathered by Atwell, the police ordered a series of raids on Hell Angels clubhouses across Ontario on 4 April 2007.

Life in witness protection In April 2007, on the basis of the information provided by Atwell, the police charged 31 Hells Angels with 169 criminal charges, plus seized drugs worth $3 million and property worth half-million dollars. At a trial that took place between September 2010 and May 2011 where Atwell was the star witness for the Crown, five Hells Angels including John "Winner" Neal, the president of the Downtown Toronto chapter, were convicted on charges relating to dealing in GHB and cocaine plus possession of illegal weapons, but all of the accused were acquitted on charges of belonging to a criminal organization.

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