A San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy charged with possession of illegal firearms, explosive devices and grand theft in connection with the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang pleaded not guilty Tuesday, April 9, at his first court appearance on the charges.
Shackled and wearing a green jail jumpsuit indicating he has been isolated from the general population at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, Christopher Bingham appeared before Judge Colin Bilash in San Bernardino Superior Court.
Bingham, 45, is charged with 10 felony counts, including grand theft of a Remington 870 shotgun — reportedly stolen from the Sheriff’s Department — and possession of a machine gun, a short-barreled AR-15 assault rifle, two explosive devices and four gun silencers. He is being held on $240,000 bail and was ordered to return to court April 18 for a preliminary hearing.
Each charge against Bingham includes a gang enhancement alleging the crimes were committed “for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang,” in this case, the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang.
Bingham, an 18-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, was arrested on Thursday, April 4, at his home in Twentynine Palms, where a March 23 raid by sheriff’s investigators yielded 160 firearms, explosive devices and Mongols paraphernalia, including a fully-patched leather vest, according to the Sheriff’s Department and sources close to the investigation.
Clutching a white motorcycle helmet as he left the San Bernardino Justice Center following Tuesday’s proceedings, Bingham’s attorney, Jeff G. Moore, declined to comment, other than to say, “The preliminary hearing should be interesting.”
Asked to elaborate, Moore, a former Riverside County prosecutor, said, “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Background checks
The criminal case against Bingham isn’t his first brush with trouble from his own department.
In late 2019 or early 2020, Bingham came under suspicion for improperly using the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or CLETS, to conduct criminal background checks. The Sheriff’s Department referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office to potential charges, but county prosecutors turned the case down in January 2020 due to insufficient evidence, district attorney’s spokesperson Jacquelyn Rodriguez said Tuesday.
Rodriguez could not confirm whether Bingham had allegedly misused the CLETS database to conduct criminal background checks on customers at his former gun shop in Twentynine Palms, O’Three Tactical.
O’Three Tactical gun shop
Bingham, a former Marine, operated O’Three Tactical from 2015 through 2021 near the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, on Twentynine Palms Highway, east of Adobe Road.
With its proximity to the military base, O’Three Tactical was popular with Marines and law enforcement officers from as far away as Downey and Newport Beach, according to a former employee who asked to not be identified.
The employee, who described Bingham as a dirt bike enthusiast who rode a Kawasaki motorcycle and drove a Jeep, said the gun shop sold firearms and magazines to and did repairs for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department as well as other agencies.
“Everything we did was legit,” the employee said. “It was really by the book. … (Bingham) was teaching us the right way. Everything was certified.”
Bingham would kick people out of the shop for wearing the “colors” of an illegal motorcycle gang or smelling like weed, and also participated in fund-raisers with the Sheriff’s Department and conducted gun raffles, said the former employee, who left in 2017 and described Bingham’s arrest as “off-putting.”
Bingham shuttered O’Three Tactical on June 23, 2021.
“After being unable to maintain any kind of inventory and hemmoraging (sic) my own personal finances over the last year trying to keep our doors open, O’Three Tactical will be permanently closing its doors,” Bingham said earlier that June in a post on the gun shop’s Facebook page.
Origins of raid
The March 23 raid on Bingham’s home stemmed from an ongoing sheriff’s investigation into his activities that began in January and culminated with his arrest earlier that day on the westbound 10 Freeway in Beaumont. A source close to the investigation said Bingham and another man were riding Harley-Davidsons when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled them over for speeding.
The man Bingham was riding with was wearing a black leather vest with Mongols patches, according to the source.
The CHP officer, according to the source, seized from Bingham an unregistered Glock 9 mm handgun he had in his possession, and Bingham identified himself as law enforcement. A sheriff’s deputy who had followed Bingham and his friend from Yucca Valley arrested Bingham and booked him on suspicion of being a gang member carrying a loaded firearm. Bingham subsequently was released from custody.
A Sheriff’s Department news release said Bingham was riding with two other “outlaw motorcycle gang” members — not one — at the time of his first arrest.
Outlaw motorcycle gangs
The U.S. Department of Justice lists the Mongols among a group of outlaw motorcycle gangs, or OMGs, “whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises.” The Justice Department characterizes them as “highly structured criminal organizations whose members engage in criminal activities such as violent crime, weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking.”
The United States is home to more than 300 active outlaw motorcycle gangs ranging in size from single chapters with five or six members to hundreds of chapters with thousands of members, according to the Justice Department.
And the outlaw motorcycle gangs often clash, typically triggering law enforcement investigations.
Last month, authorities in Stanislaus County arrested four men and seized drugs, guns and bomb-making materials as part of a months-long investigation into outlaw motorcycle clubs. The investigation began last year amid violent altercations between dozens of members of the Hells Angels, Mongols and Salida Nomads.
