The arrest of 31 men affiliated with a white supremacist group at a Pride event raises questions over whether the federal government is doing enough to monitor hate-based gatherings that could spill into deadly violence, experts warned.
affiliated with Patriot Front, who police say were spotted in a hotel parking lot dressed like"a little army," piling into a U-Haul less than a quarter-mile from the"Pride in the Park" festivities.
"The manner in which these arrests were made reflects the long-standing problems in the way the FBI and the DOJ deprioritize white supremacist crimes and fundamentally misunderstand the violent element within how the white supremacy movement operates," Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said referring to the Department of Justice. He is a former undercover FBI agent who retired in 2004.
The Dallas-based founder of the Patriot Front, Thomas Ryan Rousseau, was among those arrested; he did not immediately return an emailed request for comment. An attorney for one of the men chargedthat the group does not have a reputation for violence and that the case could be a First Amendment issue.
"If, in the course of the investigation, information comes to light of a potential federal violation, the FBI is prepared to investigate," she said in an email. "I don't want the FBI targeting even the most ardent Nazi for saying he's a Nazi and preaching national socialism to his community, but what we're talking about is a group that's allegedly committing crimes," he said."There's a knee-jerk reaction that this is a group engaged in protected activities, rather than acknowledging there's a group bringing people across states lines to commit crimes.
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