Young people in white Klan robes and pointed hoods were filmed walking through an El Paso neighborhood during a Halloween gathering this weekend. Police are now reviewing the video to decide whether any laws were broken.
The video is a set of clips first shared by a local El Paso page. About six people in robes appear in it, at a backyard gathering and out on a dark East Side street. Outlets that reviewed the footage report racial slurs being shouted while people nearby laughed.
Nobody in the robes has been publicly identified, police have not confirmed their ages, and the claim spreading online that they are a high school sports team is unconfirmed.
“Symbols and language associated with the Ku Klux Klan represent a history of terror, violence and racial hatred. They have no place in our community. Treating that history as a costume or a joke is unacceptable.”
El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas
Pacillas said Monday his department is reviewing whether the group broke any laws, including disorderly conduct. No arrests or charges have been announced.
The El Paso NAACP answered the same day with a news conference outside the county courthouse. Branch president Carl B. Dwyer Jr., a 31 year Army veteran, got emotional talking about what those robes mean. “It hurts. It hurts,” he said. He wants to talk with the young people involved, and the branch is planning a town hall on discrimination.
Rep. Veronica Escobar called the reports “deeply disturbing and unacceptable” on Sunday, adding that treating that history as a costume is not a joke.
El Paso is about 81 percent Hispanic, and in 2019 a white supremacist drove hundreds of miles to that city and murdered 23 people at a Walmart because they were Mexican. A Klan costume was never going to read as a joke there.
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