COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Anarchist linked to local property crimes
Jeff Humphrey, KXLY4
August 24, 2007
SPOKANE -- In one of the first property crimes connected to Spokane'sgrowing anarchist movement, a grand jury indicted a Spokane man for
vandalizing a pair of military recruiting stations in the city.
In October of 2005, someone threw a rock through the Air National
Guard's window and spraypainted the words "leave us alone" and an
anarchy symbol on another window at the North Washington recruiting station.
Though the vandalism occurred in the middle of the night with no
witnesses around, police recovered a paint can at the scene and were
able to trace fingerprints on it to self-proclaimed anarchist Travis Riehl.
Riehl is a member of Spokane Lack of Action Collective (SLAC), a
group that believes some non-violent property crimes are an
acceptable form of getting people's attention.
"We feel that corporations and logos and things like that that we are
bombarded with, and ideologies and traditions, are all entrapping us
and keeping us stagnant as a society," Riehl states. "And we fell
that atypical actions kind of break the spell that holds on people;
we're trying to wake people up."
Predictably, however, the FBI doesn't share the same sentiments, and
attempting to find the person responsible for breaking the law, they
found plenty of evidence linking Riehl to the vandalism.
Court documents show that, in the days after the recruiting center
was vandalized, early morning photos of the damage appeared on SLAC's
myspace page, with the date stamp on the photos matching the date an
army recruiting center on the South Hill was also vandalized.
The FBI also determined that the pictures were taken by a Fuji Film
Finepix 2600 digital camera and, after obtaining a federal warrant,
agents recovered the same model camera from Riehl's North Spokane home.
As part of their investigation, the FBI – who handled the case since
the Recruiting Station is considered federal property – secretly
recorded Riehl inside his home. On the tapes, he could be found
admitting responsibility for posting the pictures of the damaged
recruiting stations.
Riehl also said he knows the people who set a Humvee on fire at a
Liberty Lake car dealership back in 2004.
The Earth Liberation Front later claimed responsibility for the
attack, but anarchists say a pro-environment, anti authoritarian
philosophy is an important part of their platform.
"You can say a lot of the ideas would be anti-government, " Riehl
says, "But we would probably prefer that the idea is portrayed as pro
self-government. We think people have the right and ability to govern
themselves."
On advice from his attorney, Riehl would not discuss his upcoming
trial, which gets underway in October.
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