A pro-police gathering of white supremacists in Olympia, Washington turned into a "complete mayhem" on Saturday night as protesters clashed with the group, The Olympian reports.
"We don't want violence in this city and some of the demonstrators that turned out on Saturday, both white supremacists and those who were against the white supremacists, seemed to have violence on their mind," said Laura Wohl with the Olympia Police Department in a press conference.
The brawl happened during a white supremacists' gathering to support to the police in the wake of a police shooting that injured two black men.
Five to ten white supremacists showed up and about 150 protesters gathered at Percival Landing in downtown Olympia about 9 p.m. to counter-protest the gathering, according MYNorthwest. The two groups encountered each other at Fourth Avenue and Adams Street and a fight broke out, said Wohl.
Before Saturday’s demonstration, members of the white supremacist forum Stormfront had derided “Black Lives Matters” protesters as weak.
"Their arguments are weak. They have no valid points. They are inarticulate, cowardly, and moronic. They are hypocritical and aimless. We are stronger than they are, even with only half their numbers they were too afraid to act on all their disgusting threats of violence and murder," a white supremacist organizer wrote. "Stand and be counted, the enemy is broken and useless, our time to retake our homeland is nigh."
However, according to a witness who called The Olympian on Sunday, the white supremacists fled afterwards and some protesters chased them down, damaging several white supremacists' trucks with metal chairs outside a restaurant.
It was “complete mayhem,” he said.
An activist who participated in the counter-protest said “all hell broke loose” after they confronted the white supremacists.
An “older” man moved between the leader of the white supremacists and the counter-protesters in an attempt to stop an outbreak of fighting, only to be punched in the mouth, the activist said in an article posted at olydocuments.
“The skinhead with the American flag hit a girl that was charging him with the flagstaff. Another girl in black, who was masked up, struck a guy with a golf club she had attached a black flag to. People were exchanging blows everywhere. A brick flew over from the Nazi’s direction. Rocks and bottles were flying both ways and glass could be heard shattering as the bottles impacted,” the activist wrote.
“About that instant, the Nazis broke and ran, with most the crowd from the protest in hot pursuit.”
An anonymous source told The Olympian that the white supremacist group was called "volksfront" and they gathered to show support for the Olympia Police Department in the aftermath of the shooting.
According to witnesses, both protesters and white supremacists carried baseball bats.
The police controlled traffic during the protest but did not engage the protesters, according to witnesses.
After the white supremacists eventually left the area, the protesters continued to march around downtown until about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.
The police didn't make any arrest during the protest, Wohl said.
Watch a YouTube video about the brawl below.
