A journalist, author and activist, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, was scouring the news coverage of five Dallas police officers last week when a tattoo on the finger of one of the slain officers, Lorne Ahrens, piqued her curiosity: the Iron Cross, a tattoo that is popular with white supremacist groups .
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While the Iron Cross isn’t inherently racist—it is also popular among bikers and skaters—it does appear in the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate Symbols Database. Chimurenga, the author of a book on the 2009 shooting of a Bay Area man by transit police, “No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant” decided to investigate further. What she and her band of investigators found calls into question the popular narrative of innocent civil servants whose only sin was the color of their skin, and their uniform.
Further scrutiny of Ahrens social media footprints showed that he displayed other white supremacist iconography on his body, and his personal Facebook page indicates he liked and followed a slew of right-wing and Islamophobic figures and organizations, including several Confederate groups.
Meme depicting Ahrens' affinity for white supremacist symbols and imagery | Photo: MikeGogulski
His left arm, the bloggers wrote in their expose of the cop, was emblazoned with a “crusader’s shield,” and his Facebook cover photo was of Thor’s Hammer, which is imagery used by Asatrúers, a Neopagan religious group, where a racist version of the theology is followed by a lot of white supremacists.
Beyond overt symbols, Ahrens also worked as a technician with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which has a history of white supremacist gangs operating within its Department.
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“They were the shoot-up crew,” Chimurenga told teleSUR, explaining that these gangs worked in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods such as Compton.
Still, this latest revelation isn’t surprising, the Los Angeles-based writer said, given how the police force in the United States originated.
“The police was established from runaway slave patrols,” Chimurenga said, adding, “Klansmen and police officers have close ties in the South.”
Meme depicting Ahrens' membership in an LA Sheriff's Department gang | Photo: MikeGogulski
Indeed, a report by the FBI has revealed “the breadth and depth of white supremacist organizations within the police force across the country,” Chimurenga explained further.
There are countless examples of white-supremacist sympathizers working in law-enforcement in the U.S., including the Louisiana detective who was fired last year after photos surfaced showing him in a KKK uniform flashing a Nazi salute, and the seven San Francisco police officers who lost their jobs for sending racist texts with phrases such as “White Power” and references to lynchings.
This is especially worrying, Chimurenga said, as racialized police violence escalates, and there is at least a possibility that officers will try “to carry out their white supremacist agendas with impunity.”