Utah intent on keeping supremacists out

The hate crimes jury conviction this month of three members of a white-supremacist group bent on starting a "race war" in the Salt Lake City area is just the latest effort by federal and state law enforcement to keep hate groups from establishing roots in Utah, white supremacist watchdogs say.

Mark Potok, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white-supremacist groups, credits the cooperation between Utah's federal and state officers in preventing hate groups from gaining a foothold in Utah.

"In the '90s Utah had a very active skinhead scene," Potok said. "I think that's less true now and prosecutors have done a lot to clean things up."

After a four-day trial, a jury found Shaun Walker, Travis Massey and Eric Egbert guilty of hate crimes and civil rights violations in the beating of two minority men in 2002 and 2003 outside two Salt Lake bars. Prosecutors alleged the three men, all members of the white-supremacist group the National Alliance, conspired to assault nonwhite citizens as a way to spread terror among minorities in the Salt Lake area and as a means to recruit other racists to their cause.

Federal officials say violence is often a tenet of hate groups as a way to gain status.

Walker, the former national chairman of the National Alliance; Massey, the local Utah leader of the group; and Egbert now face up to 20 years in federal prison when sentenced in July.

In recent years, white-supremacist groups have been the target of Utah law enforcement. In 2005 about a dozen members of a violent Aryan prison gang known as the Soldiers of Aryan Culture were charged under federal racketeering laws as a way to break up a gang that had plagued Utah's penal system with assaults and drug smuggling.

Officials said they had hoped to "pull it up by its roots and get it out of Utah."

The dismantling of SAC started with the indictment of the top three leaders, which included brothers Steve and Tracy Swena and Mark Isaac Snarr. Snarr was sentenced to serve more than 15 years, Tracy Swena received 20 years, and Steve Swena was ordered to serve 12 years.

A lesser member, Lance Vanderstappen, made headlines after he smuggled a shiv into a federal courthouse holding cell during his sentencing and repeatedly stabbed a Hispanic inmate based on the man's race. Vanderstappen received five years for the racketeering charge and 20 years for the stabbing.

SAC members were then purposefully scattered among various federal prisons across the country.