Six days before a racially divisive presidential election, where white nationalist groups have promised a “sign of force” at various urban voting locations, a white suspect has been arrested after gunning down two policemen following an incident where he waved the Confederate flag.
Two weeks ago, Scott Michael Greene was recorded being kicked out of an Urbandale High School football game for waving the Confederate flag in front of African American spectators.
After an argument with police, officers asked Greene to leave the game.
“I think I’ve been assaulted by you,” said Greene to the officers. “You grabbed me and shoved me around.”
On a video Greene said he was “offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem. Thousands more whites fought and died for their freedom. However this is not about the Armed forces, they are cop haters.”
But it was Greene who was a cop hater, murdering in cold blood Urbandale police officer Justin Martin, 24, and Des Moines police Sgt. Anthony ‘Tony’ Beminio, 38, who leaves behind a wife and three young children.
A neighbor told the Des Moines Register that Greene had put a Donald Trump poster out on his lawn about two weeks ago.
Home of accused cop killer Scott Michael Greene
The murder of the Iowa police officers happened on the same day Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin announced thousands of volunteers from the National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls with predominantly black voters, either “informally” or, they say, through the Trump campaign.
White extremists say they have been energized by Trump’s candidacy and alarmed by his warnings of a “rigged election.” Alt-right and militia movement groups are also planning to come out in full force on Tuesday.
“The possibility of violence on or around Election Day is very real,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for weeks and weeks and weeks now that they are about to have the election stolen from them by evil forces on behalf of the elites.”