Police in northwestern Idaho on Saturday arrested more than two dozen members of a white nationalist group and accused them of planning a riot near an LGBTQ pride event, authorities said.
Lee White, Coeur D’Alene’s city police chief, told reporters that 31 members of the Patriot Front are facing minor conspiracy charges for rioting and that additional charges could be filed later.
A local resident saw the men, wearing white masks and shields, boarding a U-Haul truck and called police, telling the emergency dispatcher that “it looked like a small army,” according to White. Police pulled the truck out about 10 minutes after the call.
The video captured at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed about 20 men kneeling next to the truck with their hands tied, wearing khaki pants, blue T-shirts, white masks and similar baseball caps.
Police recovered at least one grenade of smoke and documents that included a “plan of operations” for the truck, as well as shields and shin guards, all of which made their intentions clear, White said.
“They came to disturb the city center,” he said.
The men come from at least 11 states, White said, including Texas, Colorado and Virginia.
The Patriot Front was formed in the wake of the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it split from another extremist organization, Vanguard America, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors groups. of hate.