Several men were arrested on a beach in Oregon Saturday night after allegedly hurling racial slurs and Nazi salutes at a Black family.
When police arrived, the men allegedly challenged the cops to a fight and shot off illegal fireworks. Seven Washington state residents were ultimately arrested and charged with rioting, interfering with police, disorderly conduct, harassment, possession of illegal fireworks and offensive littering. One man was also charged with resisting arrest.
Details from the incident came from a Lincoln City Police report — the victims were not identified, and it wasn’t immediately clear Monday whether the arrested men had legal representation.
A man of the same name of an arrestee Saturday, Gennadiy Kachankov, was arrested in May last year for allegedly stabbing a man in nearby Battle Ground, Washington, local reports noted.
The incident took place on the beach nearby a resort, the Inn at Spanish Head, at around 9:30 p.m., police said.
Police responding to the scene were “immediately” surrounded by a group of about 10 people who began taunting the cops when they began seizing illegal fireworks, according to the police report.
Once more police arrived, the family that the group had allegedly harassed with slurs and Nazi salutes was able to leave the area.
The men, meanwhile, challenged officers to a fight and “then began shooting off multiple large illegal aerial fireworks in front of the officers,” according to the report.
Eventually, enough law enforcement showed up to make arrests of the “highly intoxicated” group.
Six of the men gave police their names and, due to COVID-19 policies, were released from custody with criminal citations Sunday. One man who refused to identify himself was transported to Lincoln County Jail, police said.
In a phone call Monday, Lincoln City Police Chief Jerry Palmer told TPM that his department wasn’t aware of whether the men were part of an organized group.
“I was grateful for the victim family to work with us in deescalating the situation and allowing us to get them safely to a different location,” he said. “The only frustration on everybody’s part is that, because of COVID, we were not able to lock these people in jail and hold onto them a little longer.”
This post has been updated.
