An unemployed Oshawa man who appears to be a self-styled anarchist has been arrested for allegedly posting online threats to kill police officers.

Durham Regional Police received a tip on Monday about a video that had been uploaded to Facebook in which threats were made against police.

Officers arrested Thomas Helmle, 22, that day at the place the man calls home: The basement of his mother’s house in Oshawa’s Bloor St. E. and Grandview Dr. area. Police say knives, a machete and a sword were also seized.

A video posted to Helmle’s Facebook page and YouTube shows a man family members identified to the Toronto Sun as Helmle brandishing a knife and talking of police brutality, corruption, the meaninglessness of laws, and his openness to killing police should they attempt to stop him from doing what he wants.

In one part of the 10-minute-and-44-second video, titled ‘Killing Cops: I Outline the Tough Considerations,’ he also urges viewers to “take retribution without fear of detainment or death” if they witness “unnecessary violence.”

“When we see a person getting beaten up, when we see a person getting brutalized, what do we do? I know what I’d do, stick one of them,” he says, calling himself a “bad person.”

“Take retribution for everybody ... I’m one of the people who’s OK with doing that.”

Both Helmle’s half-brother, Ron McGivney, 29, and his mother, who didn’t want to be named, acknowledged Helmle has strong views, but insisted he isn’t a threat.

“He’s on the computer a lot and talking online, and he does have a very strong view on the way police treat individuals, but I don’t think he’d go about killing anyone,” said McGivney, who also lives at the home. “He has strong views, but it’s not based on any world experience,”

McGivney, who admitted to having past involvement with the law himself, and claims to have once been beaten by a trio of police officers, says Helmle had developed a fascination with the anarchist hacker group Anonymous.

Helmle’s mother, a nurse, says she “hasn’t decided yet” whether or not she’ll post bail for her son, but “probably” will.

“To be perfectly honest, he is a very young, stupid kid,” she said. “He doesn’t have a violent bone in his body ... He talks the talk, but then when the police came to pick him up he was like a scared little kid.”

Helmle, charged with uttering threats and possessing a dangerous weapon, is being held pending a bail hearing.

terry.davidson@sunmedia.ca