METH FUELS SUPREMACIST UTAH GANGS

Utah's white supremacist groups are not as wedded to racist philosophies as
they are to drugs -- particularly methamphetamine -- and money, two gang
experts said Thursday.

"Everything about these guys is just meth, meth and meth," said Ogden
police Detective Tony Hansen, a member of the federal Joint Terrorism Task
Force. "They're not the neo-Nazis you see on TV."

Hansen and Detective Brent Jex, a West Jordan police officer and member of
the Salt Lake Area metro gang unit, spoke Thursday at the 2003 Gang
Conference at the Salt Palace Convention Center. Aimed mainly at law
enforcement, the conference is sponsored by the metro gang unit.

There are five major supremacist gangs in Utah -- the Soldiers of Aryan
Culture, the Silent Aryan Warriors, Fourth Reich, American Peckerwoods and
Krieger Verwandt.

Their members are "really into dope and ripping people off" despite their
sometimes prominently displayed racist tattoos, Hansen said.

The crimes they commit are more likely to be drug-related than triggered by
racism, he said -- home invasions to collect owed drug debts, for example.
Members have also been known to dabble in identity theft.

And Utah's white supremacists are not averse to hooking up with Latino
gangs or those of other races for drug-related business deals. "When it
comes to meth, they don't care," Jex said. "It's funny to see how they're
trying to portray themselves and how they actually are."

At least one of the groups also sought to align itself with a national
white supremacy organization, the World Church of the Creator, Jex said.
But "a lot of the national groups are looking at them and saying, 'You guys
are a mess,' " he said.

"I have no doubt there are some that have the [white supremacist] belief
system," he said. "But they don't follow it."

Utah's white supremacist groups originated in state prisons or jails,
mostly during the 1990s, the officers said.

They continue to flourish there today, although some people join the groups
for protection in prison and disavow them when released, Hansen said.

In prison, white supremacists will also join with other races for
drug-related business, said Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford.

Currently, about 300 documented white supremacists are in prison or on
probation or parole, he said. They comprise about one-fifth of the total
gang members identified by the department.

Officials said, however, they see little evidence to support claims by some
law enforcement officials in northern Utah that parolees and white
supremacists are flocking there, particularly to Weber County.

Ford discounted the notion that the area is attractive because there are
fewer parole officers in Weber County than in Salt Lake County.

The number of parole agents is equal, considering the number of parolees in
each area, he said.

According to Corrections figures, 5.6 percent of the nearly 1,400 parolees
released this year who were convicted in Salt Lake County now live in Weber
County.

That percentage, however, is higher than any other area except Salt Lake
County, where 85.4 percent returned.

Of the 264 convicted in Davis County, 28 percent now live in Weber County,
compared to 41.3 percent who moved to Salt Lake County.

And of 644 people convicted in Weber County, 52 percent returned there.
About 33 percent moved to Salt Lake County and 8.7 percent moved to Davis
County.

Hansen said he does not believe white supremacists are more prevalent in
any one area of the state.

"They're everywhere," he said. In addition, they tend to be fairly
transient, Jex said. "We chase them from [Salt Lake City] to Ogden, Ogden
will chase them back," he said.