Police are hoping to finally issue a handful of arrest warrants next week for the white supremacy group that has been operating out of Southeast Portland for the last six months. David Yamasaki, Bias Crimes Investigator for the Portland Police, hopes to put the entire issue to rest once the warrants are issued. “We believe there is at least some organization to this group,” says Yamasaki. “We’re not sure why they’re doing it–whether or not they really buy into the white supremacy ideas or if it was just convenient for them to align themselves with those values.”
Whatever the cause, Yamasaki believes it is a somewhat amateur group, made up of both adolescents and adults. “What we’ve found is that people who align themselves with the Aryan Nation are the same people who align themselves with gangs and other hate groups,” he explains.
Since winter, the group has desecrated a Jewish cemetery and consistently painted swastikas and other graffiti around the Southeast area. Though police have been working steadily since then to make arrests, “we really believe that the most effective way of dealing with this group has been the community response,” Yamasaki explained. “The marches that the community has held, their intolerant reaction; those are the kinds of things that groups like this can’t deal with, because they’re not allowed to do what they want to do, which is intimidate people.”
Though Yamasaki admits that Portland Police have been working with the FBI in this case, he won’t comment on the extent of their involvement until after the warrants are issued.
Yamasaki does admit, however, that police do not believe the Southeast white supremacy crimes have anything to do with similar crimes committed in Tigard and Beaverton during roughly the same six-month period.