Three more people associated with the hate group Proud Boys were arrested in connection with a brawl between the group and anti-fascist protesters, police said on Monday.
Irvin Antillon of Queens, 41, and Douglas Lennan, 40, of Northport were both charged Monday with rioting and assault. Maxwell Hare, 26, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was charged with gang assault, assault, rioting and criminal possession of a weapon. All three turned themselves in, police said.
The arrests come after police vowed to investigate the fight that broke out earlier this month after an event at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side featuring Gavin McInnes, the leader of the males-only group, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Proud Boys, created in 2016, are a right-wing international fraternal organization known for their penchant for violence.
Last week, two more people associated with the Proud Boys were charged: 38-year-old Geoffrey Young of New City in Rockland County was charged with attempted assault and rioting; and 39-year-old John Kinsman, of Morristown, New Jersey, was charged with attempted gang assault, attempted assault, riot and criminal possession of a weapon.
"I would anticipate additional arrests," Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said at an unrelated news conference on Monday.
McInnes has also said he had "a lot of support in the NYPD," according to Newsweek.
But Police Commissioner James O’Neill on Monday said that is "absolutely a flat-out lie."
"What the Proud Boys represent is antithetical to what the NYPD represents," he added. "There is no association with anybody within the NYPD and any hate groups."
The fight started after a group of Proud Boys were being escorted south on Park Avenue on Oct. 12 and a group of six protesters wearing masks circled the block "to try to intercept the group," Shea has said. He added a bottle was thrown, then a fight broke out.
A few minutes later, a second fight ensued out a few blocks away, which police have said, involved the apparent theft of a backpack. Three of the protesters were arrested shortly after the fight, but no Proud Boys were initially arrested, sparking outrage from some city officials.
Video has shown several Proud Boys pummeling a protester lying on the ground.
