(Los Angeles) Police officers in Idaho have received death threats after the arrest of 31 far-right activists accused of planning to carry out violence at a Pride party, the chief of the police said on Monday. the local police.
Posted at 5:10 p.m.
The activists, linked by police to the nationalist group “Patriot Front”, were intercepted on Saturday in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after a call from a local resident reporting “what looked like a small army” of masked men piled into a truck.
They were equipped with “shields, shin guards and other riot gear […] including at least one smoke grenade,” according to police chief Lee White.
Photo Young Kwak, Associated Press
Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White
They were charged with attempting to organize violence.
Lee White said his office had received around 150 calls from anonymous callers since Saturday. “They yelled at us and yelled at us” and “made death threats against myself and other police officers, for simply doing our job,” he explained during a press conference.
He blamed the threats on “hate groups outside” the city, with one of the calls even coming from Norway.
The police officer said he was surprised at the “degree of preparation” and “equipment” of the militants.
“It was immediately very clear that it was a group of rioters” with “malicious intentions”, he added.
The men arrested come from at least 11 American states, he said, indicating that he had never yet dealt with the “Patriot Front” group in Idaho.
This mountainous region of northwestern Idaho has long been associated with the neo-Nazi group “Aryan Nations,” which hoped to found a territory there exclusively populated by white people and committed numerous violent crimes throughout the country.
Photo Young Kwak, Associated Press
Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond
But Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said the region would not “go back to the days of the Aryan Nations” and was “capable of [se] get rid of this group and the horrible culture” they were trying to promote.