Police officers in a northwestern United States city have received death threats after arresting 31 far-right activists accused of planning violence at a pride party, the local police chief reported Monday.
The activists, who police say are linked to the nationalist group Patriot Front, were intercepted Saturday in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after a local resident called who reported “what appeared to be a small army” of masked people Men who were poured 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.
They were accused of trying to organize violence.
Lee White said his office has received about 150 calls from anonymous callers since Saturday. “They yelled and yelled at us” and “made death threats against me and other police officers for simply doing our job,” he said 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 “level 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 arrested men came from at least 11 American states, he said, implying that he had never been associated with the Patriot Front group in Idaho.
This mountainous region of northwest Idaho has long been associated with the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, which hoped to establish an all-white territory there, and has committed numerous violent crimes across the country.
But Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond assured that the area would not “relapse into the days of the Aryan nations” and was “able to get rid of this group and the terrible culture” he was trying to promote.