members of the anti-government group

known as oathkeepers are a focus for

federal prosecutors investigating

january's storming of capitol hill the

group has been around for more than a

decade and apparently in new jersey many

have joined it over the years including

members of law enforcement and other

officials that's the finding of a new

investigative report written by joseph

jedian a reporter at wnyc gothamist we

spoke to him as part of our ongoing

series exploring hate looking at

anti-semitism

racism and extremism

joseph when you started to do your

reporting on this just how widespread is

this situation with

law enforcement officials and others

being members of the oak keepers we

i started digging into this a couple

weeks ago when we got a data dump for

and it showed around

500

members of the oath keepers here in new

jersey

now uh

we were able to independently

verify

uh 20

police officers

active or active within the last two

years

here in new jersey and that's that's

across the state and uh

we were also able to find uh

firefighters emts first responders

people with militia military experience

uh you know and we've even found some

government workers so it's it's really

all across uh new jersey so what was the

reaction when you started reaching out

to officials such as the attorney

general for instance when we reached out

to the attorney general uh they told us

that it was concerning and they were

going to look into it the important

thing is that here in new jersey we

don't have

a

law a state law preventing

law enforcement from being here in

being in extremist groups

so

uh

right now as it stands

uh there are no repercussions that we

can expect

uh but the ag did say that they were

gonna look into it he did say he was

gonna look into it and the hudson county

prosecutor also mentioned that they

would be looking into it

what attracts law enforcement personnel

and others to the oak keepers

the oath keepers

are told that

this group is the one for them if they

want to join if they want to protect the

constitution right

it's in the name and the name

comes from

their

protection of the oath that they take

with the military

right so

a lot of this is marketed towards uh law

enforcement retired law enforcement the

people that we called and we reached out

to they told us that they wanted some of

the ones that did pick up the phone told

us that or responded via email told us

that they wanted an

uh alternative take on the news you know

the oath keepers write uh articles on

their website

uh some of them told us that they wanted

to uh protect people who couldn't

protect themselves they wanted they were

pushing for

uh protecting the constitution you know

so

uh

those are all things that uh

uh are being marketed towards uh these

people that joined this

uh really extremist

group

militia

joseph thank you for sharing some of the

findings in your story with me thank you

rhonda thank you so much

major funding for exploring hate has

been provided by

the sylvia a and simon b Poyta

programming endowment to fight

anti-semitism the peter g peterson and

joan ganz cooney fund and patty askwith

kenner

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