Little Rock Police Department Chief Heath Helton updated city leaders at their Tuesday meeting about a group of neo-Nazis who marched in front of the Arkansas Capitol and a civil rights historic site this past Saturday.

“Social media is abuzz with, I think, a whole lot of misinformation about what happened, what the city’s involvement was, what the LRPD was involved with,” Little Rock Ward 1 Director Virgil Miller said. “I wanted the chief to come here tonight and talk specifically about what we did with regard to our actions as it relates to this hate group, these cowards, these racists that came to our city with their faces covered and walking up and down the streets of our city.”

On Saturday, a white supremacist group wearing red and black, their faces covered in black ski masks that only exposed their eyes, rallied outside of the state Capitol and marched to Little Rock Central High School, which the Little Rock Nine integrated in 1957. Outside of Central High, the group displayed a banner that said “race mixing is communism,” flanked by two Stars of David. The group carried two large black flags with swastikas as they stood and as they marched to Central.

The group is called Blood Tribe, which former United States Marine and tattooist Christopher Pohlhaus founded in 2022. The Southern Poverty Law Center states that the group enjoys hosting “brash, theatrical demonstrations” that are unabashedly pro-Nazi and and that they helped popularize the racist myth spread by President Donald Trump about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats during the 2024 election. The group has held rallies across the country, including at drag show reading events.

Helton said that detectives within LRPD’s Special Investigations Division learned early last week that neo-Nazis were planning to appear at the Capitol on Dec. 6 between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. to film a recruitment video. Helton said that the information LRPD received was “very limited.” Capitol Police and Arkansas State Police also knew the group was coming, he said. 

LRPD Special Investigations Division members, state police and Capitol Police went to the Capitol to monitor the situation on Saturday morning, but the group had not shown up.

LRPD waited for about an hour and then left, asking their counterparts at the state Capitol Police to call them if the group arrived, Helton said.

“At approximately 1:30 p.m. we received information from the state Capitol PD that the group had arrived on the north portion of the state Capitol grounds, near the Little Rock Nine statue,” Helton said.

Helton said that when detectives arrived at the scene, Blood Tribe members were “chanting, posturing and displaying flags” with swastikas on them.

Helton said that at around 2:30 p.m., the Blood Tribe began marching on the sidewalk — which is legal — to Central High while chanting. As the group marched toward Central, LRPD detectives made a request for LRPD marked patrol units to respond to the area.

A white man in a pickup truck drove into the area as the group marched, honking his horn and “antagonizing” the group and impeding traffic flow, Helton said.

Blood Tribe members stopped to pose for a picture in front of the high school when a group of Black males from the surrounding neighborhood tried to fight them, Helton said.

LRPD patrol units intervened to keep the groups separated. Blood Tribe members stayed for a little over eight minutes on the sidewalk in front of Central, then walked toward a U-Haul box truck and climbed into the back.

The man in the pickup truck came back around to antagonize the group, Helton said. LRPD responded by stopping the truck, citing the man and towing the vehicle after discovering that his driver’s license was suspended and the vehicle was unregistered, among other violations.

Helton said there were about three marked LRPD units on site and that one of them followed the U-Haul to initiate a traffic stop. Helton said it is illegal in Arkansas for passengers to ride in the back of a box truck. Helton said undercover detectives were there in case a “severe officer safety issue” happened.

The chief said that the U-Haul continued onto Interstate 630 east, and LRPD requested state police for assistance.

“Keep in mind also, this is all going on about the same time the Southwest [Little Rock] city Christmas parade was going on as well, so manpower was pretty much all over the place. Plus, we were getting ready for the downtown Christmas parade,” Helton said.

Helton said that police pulled over the U-Haul on Interstate 440 before Springer Boulevard and had everyone exit the box truck. There were 22 men in total. Helton described the driver as a white man from Bloomington, Indiana, later identified as 36-year-old Zachary Platter. Platter is to be in Little Rock District Court on Dec. 17

Helton said that police talked to and identified nearly everyone in the truck and issued a citation to Platter for improperly allowing people to ride in the back of the U-Haul. Police failed to identify a man who was sitting in the passenger seat, Helton said. 

The Blood Tribe members were told that they were not allowed to get back in the back of the U-Haul, so police made attempts to contact Rock Region Metro to try and bring a bus to transport them. They were unsuccessful, and police transported them to the next exit instead.

“The decision was made to load them up in all the police cars, and we transported them down off the interstate, because we couldn’t leave them there to walk on the interstate,” Helton said. The police transported them to a parking lot near the entrance to the Watershed Human and Community Development Agency on Springer Boulevard. 

“We stood by until they called personal vehicles to come pick them up, in which they did. They had people come and pick them up. They left the area,” he said

Helton said the U-Haul was returned to its location in Sherwood 30 minutes after it left The Watershed.

Helton clarified that LRPD stopped the U-Haul and cited one of the members, not state police.

Helton said misinformation had spread online that law enforcement were fist-bumping, fraternizing with and escorting the white supremacists. That wasn’t true, Helton said.

But City Director Andrea Lewis had one concern.

“What I can’t get past, is — so we did escort them. We took them to The Watershed,” Lewis said.

Helton said that police were obligated for safety reasons to remove the group from the interstate.

“If all those officers would have left, and just left 21 people standing on the side of the interstate, a tractor trailer rig goes off the road and hits and kills them, who do you think is going to be liable?” Helton said. “We are.  … I’m obligated to make sure that their safety is taken care of, so I can’t leave people on the interstate. We moved them down to a location off the interstate to free up traffic, and we stood by until each one of those individuals had a car or somebody came and picked them up.”

Helton said that one of the men in the group had recently moved to Arkansas from Colorado late last month, while everyone identified was from out state. An LRPD spokesman initially said everyone was from out of state.
The neo-Nazi rally was met with condemnation from several Arkansas officials and local groups, including Gov. Sarah Sanders, Little Rock’s chapter of the NAACP, Democratic congressional candidate Chris Jones and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.