SAINT LOUIS, MO (KMOX) - Pride Fest is next weekend in St. Louis. With the recent arrest of two area men linked to a white supremacist group accused of conspiring to riot at a similar event in Idaho, KMOX asks: Could there be a threat here?
"Initially we would draw from everybody who is on duty at the time if we had a major incident," says St. Louis Public Safety Director Doctor Dan Isom. Isom says at this time, he hasn't received any intel about potential threats to St. Louis' event. "We have procedures for active shooter, for large events, where we can mobilize officers."
Last weekend, St. Louis Police started working police on 12 hour afternoon and night shifts . Which Isom says gives added manpower Downtown.
Isom adds, if there were a riot situation, they would draw from all neighboring police agencies.
31 Patriot Front members were arrested Saturday, June 11th, with riot gear after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, police said.
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Among those booked into jail on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot was Thomas Ryan Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. No attorney was immediately listed for him and phone numbers associated with him went unanswered Sunday.
Also among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous Black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year. Michael Kielty, Wagner’s attorney, said Sunday that he had not been provided information about the charges. He said Patriot Front did not have a reputation for violence and that the case could be a First Amendment issue. “Even if you don’t like the speech, they have the right to make it,” he said.
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