Thread: Alleged ‘Boogaloo Boy' Arrested Over Threats to Top South Bay Health Official

Alleged ‘Boogaloo Boy' Arrested Over Threats to Top South Bay Health Official

Investigators say they found explosives and hundreds of guns in the family home of Gilroy man Alan Viarengo last week and say his letters were laced with the telltale symbols and phrases of the Boogaloo Movement.

By Michael Bott and Robert Handa • Published August 31, 2020 • Updated on September 1, 2020 at 7:54 am


A Gilroy man who police say is tied to the far-right, anti-government Boogaloo Movement was arrested last week in connection to 24 threatening letters, some containing telltale Boogaloo slogans and imagery, sent to Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody over the past five months, according to court and police records reviewed by NBC Bay Area.

Officers from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office arrested Alan Viarengo, 55, last week, seizing a large cache of firearms and explosives from his family’s home, according to a bail motion filed by Santa Clara County prosecutors. Detectives found more than 100 firearms, including potential assault rifles, explosives, thousands of rounds of ammunition, tools for manufacturing ammunition, and confederate flags, according to the court records.

He was charged with felony counts of stalking and harassing a public official and has not yet entered a plea.

Alleged Boogaloo members were charged earlier this year in the murder of Federal Security Officer Dave Underwood at Oakland’s Federal Building and the ambush-style killing of Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller in Ben Lomand.

Viarengo also sent harassing letters to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office and Gutzwiller’s widow replete with Boogaloo slogans and imagery, according to the police report.

Alan Viarengo

Boogaloo Ideology

According to a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office incident report, Viarengo’s ideology, which appears to advocate for violent uprisings against the government and encourage others to use recent George Floyd protests as a tool to incite violence, is partially fleshed out in his letters to Dr. Cody.

In one of the final letters Viarengo is accused of writing before his arrest, he appears to claim some level of responsibility for recent acts of violence against public officials and lays out his ideology in four parts:

1. “Enable the violent to carry out their missions by revealing the home addresses of public officials and their families.”
2. “Plant the seeds of social unrest into the minds of the violent. When the protests against George Floyd [sic] murder began, my words alone caused at least five officials to be attacked.”
3. “Regularly remind everyone that (1) the Constitution is not suspended during times of crisis and (2) your silly little ‘orders’ are not enforceable by law.”
4. “Subversively spread defiance to authority, particularly contempt for courts and law enforcement, to make their jobs more difficult. In turn, they react in a more fascist way, which creates a snowball effect. Look no further than the George Floyd riots, for which I take credit without ever casting a stone.”

The letter ends with Viarengo writing, “F**k all authority. Enjoy the Boogaloo!” according to the police report.

Viarengo teaches statistics at Gilroy’s Gavilan College, according to the school’s website.

The Santa Clara County Health Department declined to comment on the case when contacted Monday afternoon by NBC Bay Area.

Viarengo appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court Monday afternoon. He’d posted bail Friday but was remanded back into the custody by the judge Monday and was led away in handcuffs by deputies following the hearing.

Deputy District Attorney Alexander Adams said the decision to remand Viarengo was based on several factors.

“That was based on both the nature of his letters he sent to the victim, as well as the in excess of 100 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosives that were found in his house,” Alexander said.

When asked about Viarengo’s alleged ties to the Boogaloo movement, Alexander said, “That connection was made based on the investigation linking both the language and symbols used in the multiple letters that he sent.”

San Jose attorney Cody Salfen represented Viarengo in court Friday. Salfen said he’s not Viarengo’s attorney but was representing him as Viarengo seeks counsel.
In a lengthy statement, which can be read in its entirety here, Salfen blasted the District Attorney’s Office and said his client is a respected community member.
“[Alan] is a dedicated father, husband, community activist, respected professor, and volunteer,” Salfen said.

“Each year, he devotes over 400 hours of his time, guiding and teaching youth and other members of the Bay Area communities he serves. He works two jobs to support his family…Alan is a law abiding citizen. He respects the rule of law and the Constitution.”

Salfen said Viarengo and his family were shocked and traumatized by the “sneak attack” launched against them by law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Office.

“At this time we have allegations,” Salfen said.

“Allegations are not facts. Very few facts, if any, have been provided by the District Attorney's Office about the law enforcement activities in this case. But, with the little information that has been provided, at present, the only apparent attacks that have occurred are against Alan and his family.”

The Letters
In the months following her March COVID-19 “Shelter in Place” order, Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody was targeted with letters riddled with threats and vile language, according to the police report. Her home address was blasted across the internet and protestors began demonstrating in front of her residence.

Concerned for her safety, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office assigned Dr. Cody a personal protection detail.

Cody and her security detail found the letters concerning, according to the police report, but they were not overly-worried about her safety, at least initially. Pandemic-related death threats against public health officials have been widely reported across the country for months.

But the level of concern for Cody’s safety soared in late June, according to the police report, when a letter addressed to Cody showed up at the county health department with a picture of an igloo where the return address would normally be and the phrase “Let’s Boogie” written above.

“I’m glad you are getting threats,” the anonymous person wrote in the letter, according to the police report. “I posted your residence everywhere I could; I hope someone follows through.”

The igloo and phrase “Let’s Boogie” were obvious symbols of the Boogaloo movement, whose members have recently been tied to a terrorist plot in Nevada, efforts to foment violence at George Floyd protests in South Carolina, an alleged plot to kidnap the children of East Bay elected officials, and very real violence carried out against law enforcement officers, including the murders of Underwood and Sgt. Gutzwiller.

“The boogaloo term is used by extremists to reference a violent uprising or an impending civil war in the United States,” Northern California U.S. Attorney David Anderson said in a press conference when Air Force Sergeant Steven Carrillo was indicted for the murder of Underwood and Gutzwiller.

The group is believed to have first formed in online chat forums on sites like 4chan.

Detectives, according to the police report, believed the same man was responsible for what would ultimately become a series of 24 threatening letters sent to Cody between April 8 and July 29, which grew increasingly offensive and threatening as time went on.

The first letter called Cody degrading names, railed against law enforcement and China, and included a sketch of a hand extending a middle finger, according to the police report.

“We are stronger than you pigs in every way,” the letter said. “We are out to defeat you.”

Before the June Boogaloo letter arrived, Cody had already received a steady stream of letters containing misogynistic language, threats, pornography, and anti-government views, according to the police report.

“Maybe this is the spark we need for a bloody revolution!” the sender wrote in one letter, according to the police report.

Another said, “You’re done…it’s over…say goodbye,” according to the report.

On June 23, an officer safety bulletin sent to surrounding law enforcement agencies by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office shifted detectives’ attention to one man: Alan Viarengo of Gilroy.

According to the Santa Cruz bulletin, Viarengo had a history of sending harassing letters to law enforcement agencies, and Santa Clara detectives inquired about the bulletin, according to the report. Authorities in Santa Cruz informed them the Sheriff’s Office and the widow of Sgt. Gutzwiller were receiving mocking letters from people apparently associated with the Boogaloo movement.

One of those letters described a specific Las Vegas detective as a “piece of sh*t,” according to the police report. The same detective had arrested Viarengo in the early 1990’s for sending police threatening letters while he was attending an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang rally in Nevada, according to the police report.

Viarengo was convicted but had his conviction overturned years later because the criminalist who reviewed the evidence in his case was later accused of unethical practices.

On July 29, according to the police report, detectives surveilling Viarengo watched him as he drove his black Tesla Model 3 up to a mailbox and dropped a letter inside. It was addressed to Dr. Sara Cody and mocked her for her handling of the pandemic, according to the police report. He was arrested almost a month later, on August 27, according to Santa Clara County Jail booking records.

On the same day a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Captain was arraigned on bribery charges, Salfen questioned the credibility of the department.

“I can say that there are one or more law enforcement officers directly involved who have serious credibility issues,” Salfen said. “The investigation in this case was apparently spearheaded by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office – the law enforcement agency headed by the county’s top law enforcement officer, Sheriff Laurie Smith. This is the same Sheriff Laurie Smith who just recently refused to testify in a grand jury indictment into allegation of public corruption…”

NBC Bay Area found a trove of public letters sent by Viarengo over the years, mostly letters to the editor at the Gilroy Dispatch. His letters, which sometimes received backlash from readers, advocated strongly for the first and second amendments and railed against taxes and government intervention in people’s lives.

In a 2019 letter sent to Gilroy Life, Viarengo calls Julian Assange a hero, called the San Francisco Police Department’s raid of journalist Bryan Carmody an “atrocity,” and says most major news outlets are “political.”

“They pick and choose the stories that fit their agenda,” Viarengo wrote. “They drone out [sic] about ‘diversity,’ but have never had one local right-wing writer.”

He ended the letter with, “Make America Great Again (and Keep America Great in 2020)!”

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/alleged-boogaloo-boy-arrested-over-threats-to-top-south-bay-health-official/2355341/

At Least 32 Boogaloo Adherents Present Day of Kenosha Shootings, Group Loyalist Says

BY JOCELYN GRZESZCZAK ON 9/1/20 AT 1:24 PM EDT


Aloyalist to the "boogaloo" extremist movement said that at least 32 group adherents were in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the same day that Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed two protesters.

Ryan Balch, an Army veteran from West Bend, Wisconsin, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he had met with the 17-year-old prior to the shootings, which took place August 25. Balch said Rittenhouse "had no connection" to the boogaloo movement but claimed that as many as 32 loyalists were present in the city that day.

Several men were spotted that night wearing the insignia of the "boogaloo bois," The Washington Post reported.

Balch told Newsweek that much of the media has "tossed" him and other boogaloo bois into a "crowd that we're not aligned with."

The word boogaloo has been adopted by white supremacists and other far-right extremists as shorthand for a future civil war, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The term refers to a "casual acceptance of mass violence" and may even signify an "increased willingness" to participate in such violence among some adherents, the ADL said.

But Balch, who described himself as a "Boog Boi" in a series of Facebook messages to the Sun-Times, said that there is a difference among those aligned with the far-right and the mission of the boogaloo movement he adheres to.

"We're just trying to make it so we can help protesters when they need it without causing a confrontation," Balch wrote in a message to Newsweek.

While Balch told the Sun-Times that there is a "general consensus" among "boogaloo bois" that a civil war is "imminent," he clarified that the group he adheres to believes the war wouldn't have to do with race.

"The Boog boys tend to adhere to extreme libertarian and anarchist ideals so race is a non issue for us," Balch told Newsweek. "There are Boog boys out there of all races and creeds."

The estimated 32 boogaloo members present for Tuesday's protests "all shared the same ideology" as Balch, he said. Those who identify with the far-right and attempted to join the boogaloo movement "tend to support very authoritarian ideals," he said.

"[Members of the far-right are] differentiated by the fact that as soon as bad press started hitting, they jumped ship and stopped using the [boogaloo] label," Balch told Newsweek.

Balch has not been accused of any crimes relating to the August 25 shootings, but Hatewatch, a Southern Poverty Law Center project, tied Balch to a Twitter account that published white supremacist propaganda. The background on Balch's personal Facebook page currently shows a meme associated with the boogaloo movement.

One of the accounts highlighted by Hatewatch was a Twitter profile Balch helped run which had the goal of "baiting members of the Alt-right," he told Newsweek.

In a Facebook post published August 26, Balch detailed his version of the events leading up to the shootings. He wrote that he was with Rittenhouse and a contingent of militia members who traveled to Kenosha "to protect citizens, their property and their livelihoods."

The post suggests that Balch and others were present that night to "protect, to aid and to offer a bit of comfort" to everyone involved. His account states that Balch helped administer aid to wounded Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters and antifa members.

"I don't nor does the Boogaloo Movement have any issue with their protests against police brutality. We support that 100% and even join the protests when we're welcomed," Balch told Newsweek.

Balch told the Sun-Times that the boogaloo bois in Kenosha arrived independent of a call to action put out by the Kenosha Guard, a new militia group, asking for "Armed Citizens" to help "defend" the city from racial justice protesters.

"Law enforcement is outnumbered and our Mayor has failed," according to the online plea. "Take up arms and lets defend our CITY!"

The Kenosha Guard also denied any connection to Rittenhouse, the Post reported.

Newsweek contacted the Kenosha Police Department for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.


National Guard troops arrive while demonstrators hold a Back the Blue Rally in front of the Kenosha County Courthouse on August 30 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A loyalist to the “boogaloo” extremist movement said that at least 32 group adherents were in Kenosha the same day that Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed two protesters.SCOTT OLSON/GETTY


Kenosha has been the site of daily protests since the August 23 incident involving Jacob Blake, a Black man who a police officer shot seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. The shooting marked the latest in a summer filled with civil unrest and protests over police brutality and systemic racism, many of which turned violent.

https://www.newsweek.com/least-32-bo...t-says-1528980