A new neighborhood watch group in Fairview, Pennsylvania, has a very surprising sponsor: the local chapter of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
After a spate of break-ins and crimes in the neighborhood, the KKK chapter said that members of the Fairview community called the group’s Traditional American Knights hotline to report that police aren’t doing enough to keep the community safe.
The chapter claims they queried their national headquarters in Missouri to ask if they would be allowed to host a neighborhood watch program.
According to PennLive.com, the group’s Imperial Wizard gave his blessing.
“It’s just like any neighborhood watch program. It’s not targeting any specific ethnicity. We would report anything we see to law enforcement,” Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona said from his Park Hills, Missouri, office. “We don’t hate people. We are an organization who looks out for our race. We believe in racial separation. God created each species after its kind and saw that it was good.”
With this blessing given, the local chapter printed fliers featuring a hooded KKK figure pointing and ominously saying, “You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake!”
Local police assured PennLive.com that they were aware of the situation but would not comment further.
The paper also was not able to interview any of the local Pennsylvania members of the KKK group. Ancona said that local members are not permitted to speak outside the organization and that only he can speak for the group.
He also claimed that the policy was to prevent members from going “rogue” and bringing bad publicity onto the group.
The leader said that his group–with chapters in every state but Hawaii–is a “non-violent” and “law abiding group” consisting of an all-white Christian membership. Ancona asserted that his group has “been misunderstood for years.”
But a local resident finds the situation shocking. Fairview Township resident Dylan Shaffer told the media, “I would think in this year, 2014, we would be a little past this movement and not be worried about people’s color and move beyond this.”
Fairview Township Lieutenant Jason Loper pointed out that only the police are fully authorized to do anything about crime. “There’s nothing the KKK would be able to do. We’re the only people authorized to enforce the law in Fairview Township,” he said.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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