Boise police on alert over neo-Nazi event

BOISE — Police say the Boise mayor’s office is fielding numerous complaints about a neo-Nazi music festival planned for early October. Boise Police Department Sgt. Jeff Basterrechea says authorities have been on alert since advertisements for Hammerfest 2012 surfaced online. KTVB-TV reports the white supremacist group Hammerskin Nation plans to hold the event Oct. 6 near Boise. According to the SITE Monitoring Service, a private intelligence firm that searches the Internet for extremist activity, Hammerskins Nation is a skinhead group rooted in Texas. The gunman who killed six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin last month described himself as a member. Former neo-Nazi T.J. Leyden says he previously recruited for the group with events like Hammerfest. Leyden famously left the movement in 1996 and has promoted tolerance ever since.