Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

A suspected neo-Nazi based in Sacramento who was the subject of a July 24 Huffington Post article linking him to the vandalism of a synagogue has been under investigation for about three weeks by the county sheriffs department, J. has learned.

Andrew Richard Casarez, 27, a pizza delivery driver who lives in the Sacramento suburb of Orangevale, is also the leader of an online group called the Bowl Patrol, a reference to the hairstyle of convicted white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, whom they idolize.

The sheriffs department filed a gun-violence restraining order against Casarez on July 13 and seized a handgun from his home two days later, police told J. on Monday. Officers filed the GVRO after Casarez was publicly exposed a week prior in a blog post by the Anonymous Comrades Collective, a group of anti-fascist researchers.

Sheriffs detectives had concerns after [Casarez] was doxed and his identifying information was released publicly that he could feel forced to react and/or carry out acts of violence based on his ideology, Sgt. Teresa Deterding said.

The Huffington Post story suggests that Casarez was behind a 2017 incident in which antisemitic fliers were found posted outside Temple Or Rishon, a Reform synagogue in Orangevale. When reached for comment, Rabbi Alan Rabishaw of Or Rishon referred J. to the county sheriffs office.

The same story also notes that earlier this year Casarez celebrated vandalism of a nearby Sikh temple, which was spray-painted with a swastika and the words white power.

Casarez has expressed white supremacist and antisemitic views online and in a podcast. Using the pseudonym Vic Mackey, in a 2018 episode of the podcast Bowlcast he reportedly said the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue was a wonderful thing and called Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, a saint.

The investigation of Casarez is ongoing with federal and state partners, said Deterding, who declined to specify which agencies were involved.

According to the Huffington Post, some members of Casarezs Bowl Patrol have been arrested in connection with threats or plans of real-world violence in Roofs name. Roof killed nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

An additional hearing on the GVRO is scheduled for Aug. 13 in Sacramento County.

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Suspected neo-Nazi leader under investigation in Sacramento - The Jewish News of Northern California

Category: Synagogue
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