After receiving information from an interested citizen, police arrested and charged 31 people belonging to a far-right group known as the Patriot Front, Coeur d’Alene police chief Lee White told a news conference. They are accused of conspiracy to riot, misdemeanor, he said. Bob Norris, Kootenai County Sheriff, said one person reported seeing a group of people jumping into a U-Haul truck near the intersection of Northwest Boulevard and Interstate 90 in Coeur d’Alene. “And they were all dressed like a small army,” said Sheriff Norris. “We had units in their area and we were able to stop them fairly quickly.” A few miles away, the North Idaho Pride Alliance hosted the annual “Pride in the Park,” at Coeur d’Alene City Park. The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors extremist organizations and hate crimes, describes the Patriot Front as a Texas-based white supremacist group formed when members of another white supremacist group, Vanguard America, left after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. ., in 2017. The arrested members had come to Idaho from several states, police said, including Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and Virginia. At least one of the members lived in Idaho, authorities said. According to the ADL, the Patriot Front often participates in “flash demonstrations” designed to create video content, for which members generally wear masks and “khaki pants and a blue or white polo shirt” and sometimes use smoky . Chief White said the detainees were wearing khaki pants as well as patches and hats with Patriot Front logos. Videos from the arrest that are circulating on social media show men kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. Many of the men are masked and wear blue shirts. “If you go online, look for the Patriot Front, that’s exactly how these people are dressed,” said Chief White. Many of the men also had shields and shins, and police found a smoke grenade, they said. No other weapons were reported. “I have no doubt in my mind, they were coming to the city center to revolt,” said Chief White. Chief White denied the rumors circulating online that the arrests came from the work of informants. “It all came from a worried citizen,” he said. An apparent team leader had a seven-page document outlining a business plan in great detail, the leader said. After extracting a digital image of the document, Chief White read brief excerpts from The New York Times detailing how the tobacco was used: approach”. and “once the right amount of collision momentum is established, the column will disengage and head toward Sherman.” Sherman Boulevard crosses downtown Coeur d’Alene. Kootenai County jail records revealed that Thomas Rousseau, the founder of the Patriot Front, was among those charged with criminal conspiracy. In the weeks leading up to the Pride event, Sheriff Norris said there was “a lot of talk” from both far-right and far-left sources about possible rallies at the rally. Some of them came from local groups, including the Panhandle Patriots, an extreme right-wing motorcycle club in northern Idaho. But several of these groups publicly changed their plans as concerns grew over a violent confrontation. The Panhandle Patriots renamed a planned “Gun d’Alene” anniversary event as “North Idaho Prayer Day.” Mr White said at the time he had no information suggesting that local members of the alt-right or other far-right groups were involved in the Patriot Front’s plans. Chief White said there were members of antifa groups present at the Pride event. But attendees at Pride in the Park “felt relatively safe, at least as the event organizer,” said Chief White. “There were people walking around the event with long guns and pistols and bear spray and all that stuff,” he said. But, he added, “this is legal in Idaho.” Sheriff Norris hailed the arrests as a victory for the community and for Kootenai County law enforcement. Without the actions of the police and the call from the person, he said, “we would be talking about a different situation”.
