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Posted By admin on June 30, 2020

This 2019 photo shows Duncan Lemp in Venice, Italy. (Mercedes Lemp via AP)(Photo: Mercedes Lemp via AP)

During a congressional debate last week, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsinbemoaned that while there are frequent mentions about Black Americans killed by police, nobody talks about Duncan Lemp or other white victims of police shootings.

The Wisconsin Republican was wrong. Lemp's name frequently comes up, particularly with one group of people the followers of theboogaloo boys, a gun-toting extremist movement that sees itself as preparing for a violent civil war against government tyranny.

RELATED: The boogaloo movement is gaining momentum. Who are the boogaloo 'bois' and what do they want?

Lemp, 21, was killed in March by police, who had a no-knock warrant and charged into his Maryland home in search of weapons.

Since his death, Lemp has become a symbol to the movement, whose followers are known as boogaloo boys or bois.

Lemp's death has received international attention and has "helped solidify the nascent boogaloo movement into a defined online subculture," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist and hate groups.

His name is on one of the movement's flags and there are frequent mentions of him on Facebook. Followers, who are known for wearing Hawaiian shirts, are sometimes urged to identify themselves as Duncan Lemp when interviewed by journalists.

"Duncan Lemp's death has really animated the boogaloo movement," said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

"In the wake of Lemp's death a lot of boogaloo followers called for violence against police," he said.

Lemp's family and police provided markedly different versions of what happened in Montgomery County, Maryland, when police charged into the home Lemp shared with his parents at 4:30 a.m. March 12.

The warrant was issued because authorities believed Lemp had several firearms, including an assault weapon, despite having a juvenile criminal record that prevented him from possessing the weapons, according to media reports.

Police in Maryland say a bedroom door was booby-trapped to "detonate a shotgun shell at the direction of anyone entering, according to a Washington Post story quoting police.

Police said Lemp held a weapon at the time of the raid and detectives seized three rifles and two handguns.

Attorneys for the family dispute the police account and say Lemp was sleeping at the time police opened fire. The attorneys said police "initiated gunfire and flashbangs through Duncan Lemps bedroom window in the front of the house" before officers forced their way into the house, according to the Post story.

"Duncan Lemp became this unifying martyr figure" for the boogaloo movement, said Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

His death, she said, helped them "orientate themselves to one person and one cause."

Boogaloo followers often say, "We are Duncan Lemp," Friedfeld noted.

In the article on the center's "Hatewatch" webpage, Miller wrote that "there are well over 100 boogaloo Facebook groups, most replete with memes fantasizing about or encouraging violence against police."

Followers of the boogaloo movement showed up at protests in Milwaukee and elsewhere over the death of George Floyd at the hands Minneapolis police after an officer knelt on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes.

The boogaloo boys, a loosely organized group, toting guns, have joined some of the protest marches around Milwaukee.(Photo: Rick Wood / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Milwaukee protest organizers largely shunned the boogaloo boys, several of whom brought semi-automatic rifles to the rallies.

Earlier this month, three men who are believed to be boogaloo followers were arrested in Las Vegas and charged with "conspiracy to cause destruction." Prosecutors say the trio planned to arm themselves with Molotov cocktails and target police during a Black Lives Matters protest on the Las Vegas strip.

Grothman invoked Lemp's name during a House debate Thursday when he charged that some people were trying to "racialize the issue" of police reform by focusing on Black victims of police violence.

He asked his fellow congressional representatives why Lemp's death was not getting national attention.

"You don't hear about it talked by anybody in this body (House of Representatives), or anybody on national TV," Grothman said. "And you know why they don't talk about it? Because they want to tear this country apart. They don't want to talk about when white people are killed, because they want to enrage Black people and they want to make white people feel guilty and not like America."

Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman(Photo: handout from the candidate)

So why would Grothman use Lemp's name to make a point on the floor of Congress?

"I never heard of him and I never googled the boogaloo boys," Grothman said in an interview Friday.

Grothman said he got Lemp's name from an article given to him by Republican staff that included several names of white victims of police violence. He said he only had time to state one name, so he picked Lemp's name "at random."

"I just picked Duncan Lemp," Grothman said. "Apparently I picked the wrong guy."

Miller, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said boogaloo followers would see the use of Lemp's name in Congress as a message.

"It's a way to call out to an extremist movement," Miller said. "This is their martyr, they know what he's referring to.'

Contact Cary Spivak at (414) 550-0070 or cspivak@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @cspivak or Facebook at facebook.com/cary.spivak.

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'Apparently I picked the wrong guy': Glenn Grothman used name of boogaloo martyr Duncan Lemp during debate on police reform - Milwaukee Journal...

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