Brooklyn cafe shuts down after customers learn owner is Proud Boys hate group member

Security agents and members of the New York police department stand on a closed street. Similar circumstances happened after an argument between protestors and the Proud Boys turned violent.(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

A Brooklyn cafe reportedly owned by a member of the hate group Proud Boys has now been shut down after internet sleuths discovered that the coffee shop was run by a racist.

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The owner, Guy Sands, 32, of Sands Café is a “Proud Boy” and “used to have an active alt-right twitter, but nuked it before opening this sh-tty restaurant,” blogger Colin Hagendorf tweeted.

Hagendorf’s tweet soon went viral on Twitter.

Sands said he shut down his coffee shop because of “organized threats,” the NY Post reports.

Sands, a Republican who resides in the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn, has denied that he is a white supremacist.

“I do not associate or identify with these groups in any way,” Sands wrote in an email to Eater. “Sands welcomes everybody.”

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Hate Group

Last month, videos and pictures of a group of men who call themselves, The Proud Boys went viral, showing them beating up protesters outside a Republican event in New York City.

Leaders of a Manhattan political club known as The Metropolitan Republican Club invited their members to an event where they could meet Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, a man who they refer to in their Facebook post as the “Godfather of the Hipster Movement [who] has taken on and exposed the Deep State Socialists and stood up for Western Values.”

Thank you those who’ve submitted info regarding the violent incident which took place on 10-12-18 in the UES. As we further the investigation, we urge additional victims/complainants/witnesses to come forward. If you have info, call CrimeStoppers, 800-577-TIPS pic.twitter.com/amUhGvCJLg — Chief Dermot F. Shea (@NYPDDetectives) October 15, 2018

Shay Horse, a 25-year-old photojournalist from Brooklyn who was at the scene, told BuzzFeed News that the incident started after police escorted the Proud Boys out of the building after the event had concluded. McInnes had been escorted out earlier, carrying the samurai sword, and wasn’t present during the melee.

“There was a big group of like 30 of them, and they came out grunting … trying to hype each other up,” Horse told the news outlet. Horse said he saw “two or three bodies on the ground” and the Proud Boys all beating them in a group.

“I heard them screaming and swearing at some guy on the ground,” Horse told BuzzFeed. “They were beating the shit out of him and kicking him in the head. One guy had his foot on the guy’s neck.”