It began with motorcycles.
Richard J. Boehning and other agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had set their sights on an outlaw motorcycle gang in Texas. A member of the gang was suspected of supplying guns and silencers to other members.
When agents executed a search warrant at the suspect’s home, though, they learned the connections went far further. The man was friends with a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist group with a habit of using firearms to commit violent acts, including murder.
“We saw this as an opportunity to target the leadership structure of the ABT,” says UTC graduate Boehning ’87, who will be at UTC on Nov. 7.
In 2008, a task force with 80 federal, state and local law enforcement officers dived deeply into the criminal group, using phone wiretaps, mail monitoring, multiple search warrants and interviews with more than 100 Aryan Brotherhood members.
The end result was 73 defendants facing firearms, racketeering and narcotics charges in 2012. Seventy-one eventually pleaded guilty and two were convicted at trial, resulting in an unheard-of 100 percent conviction rate for an investigation of this size.
When he comes to UTC, Boehning, who earned a degree in criminal justice, will give a detailed presentation on the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, the investigation into it and the lessons learned from it.
“Law enforcement can be a very competitive business and agencies are often reluctant to share information or intelligence,” Boehning says. “This case was remarkable in the unprecedented level of cooperation amongst our federal, state and local partners.”
The subject of white supremacy has been in the news since the deadly confrontation in Charlottesville, Va., in August, but the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas was a different level of danger.
“The ABT are all career criminals and operate under the premise of ‘respect for respect.’ It’s sort of like ‘cops and robbers’; some days we win and some days they win or, in better terms, some days we catch them, some days we don’t. But we all understand it’s not personal, just business.
“That said, the ABT ruthlessly enforces internal discipline and have killed numerous members/associates whom they believed cooperated with the police.”
With white supremacist movements and groups in the news lately, Boehning has some simple advice for anyone who wants to physically confront these types of groups and argue against their beliefs.
“While our case was largely built on internal violence, we have seen instances where the ABT has killed store clerks, girlfriends, and even someone just for truck parts,” he says. “They have burned down churches or businesses and used their affiliation with the gang to intimidate the general public.
“Anyone that disrespects the members or the group is at risk, to include the general public. My best advice is to simply not associate with the ABT—or any criminal group for that matter.”
