A Seattle radio host told Fox News that Antifa activists weren’t shy about their presence at a violent riot in Tacoma, Washington last weekend.
According to Fox, Jason Rantz from KTTH Radio said individuals aligned with Antifa were among the ranks at a violent demonstration said to be protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and alleged police brutality.
“I saw what we’ve been seeing for the past eight months, which is a group of mostly Seattle-based folks and some Portland-based folks from Antifa showing up to Tacoma to sort of take control of the neighborhood, despite lots of locals and Tacoma saying we don’t want you here,” Rantz said Wednesday.
“Not only were they flying an Antifa flag, they chanted ‘Antifa.’ That’s what they do. They make it very, very easy to identify themselves,” he added, according to Fox.
“As bad as you might expect”
It’s just the latest development in what will soon be a year full of violence that started to hit American streets last summer. According to reports, rioters set fires, looted businesses, and even attacked motorists as protesters decried the death of a Black man in police custody in Minneapolis last May.
While Rantz says the latest demonstrations are “not the same as some of the protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and some of the other movements that are critical of police,” it seems the chaos in Washington state hasn’t ceased since.
“They tried to break prisoners out of the local jail by trying to pull down the fencing,” Rantz said Wednesday, according to Fox. “It was as bad as you might expect.”
Rantz also said that local authorities were apparently fine with letting the destruction play out rather than confronting it head-on.
“The city basically allows it to happen until it peters out, and that’s when police are able to go in,” the radio host alleged, as Fox reported.
Armed and arrested
A report released Monday by Fox said rioters attacked various buildings in Tacoma and that some were armed. Two individuals were reportedly arrested after being caught with weapons.
The latest violence is said to have come about after footage emerged of a Tacoma Police Department officer striking several people with his vehicle after it was surrounded.
“Two people were injured and went to the hospital with injuries not believed to be life-threatening,” Fox News reported.