Suspected White Supremacist Arrested in King County

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Dakota Reed, a suspected white supremacist, was arrested last week at his mother's home in Lake Forest Park in King County.

Reed is accused of threatening to carry out a mass killing in Washington state, a violation of state hate crime statues, as the Daily Herald first reported. After Reed was arrested, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department and the FBI seized 12 guns and ammo from Dakota Reed's home in Monroe.

Reed, according to court records, has a history of posting racist and anti-Semitic content online. He allegedly posted photos of himself making Nazi salutes with AR-15-style and AK-47-style weapons and allegedly pledged allegiance to the KKK and the Northwest Front, a far right-wing group that calls itself "a political organization of Aryan men and women who recognize that an independent and sovereign White nation in the Pacific Northwest is the only possibility for the survival of the White race on this continent."

Under a series of pseudonyms, Reed also allegedly posted multiple threats of violence, including, “Gonna make the news some more and shoot some Jews in 2025." The FBI has apparently been watching Reed for at least a month and alerted Snohomish County about the potential threat last week. Area Jews are, understandably, concerned, especially in light of the recent mass killing at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and an alleged neo-Nazi attack on a black man in Lynnwood last weekend.

“In the context of what we've been experiencing in our community and nationally, it's not surprising that this is right in our backyard,” says Rachel Kort, rabbi at Temple Beth Or in Snohomish County. "It's in everyone's backyard.”

While Kort does think the recent uptick in anti-Semitic threats and violence can be in part attributed to the Trump presidency, she says this isn’t just a result of the president's rhetoric.

“[Anti-Semitism] has always been there,” she says. “A member of our community is a survivor of the 2006 Jewish Federation shooting in Seattle. That shooter was inspired by anti-Semitic propaganda on the internet, and internet propaganda has gotten much more savvy. Anyone who is considered ‘other’ is a target.”

Kort, however, says she has been heartened by the response to hate crimes both locally and across the country. "As terrifying as this is, we know that terror and hate are meant to cause division," she says. "After the shooting in Pittsburgh, we were comforted by the outpouring of support. The vast majority of our neighbors are our allies."

Reed posted bail and was released from the Snohomish County Jail on Tuesday evening. According to the FBI's most recent hate crime report, Washington State has the third highest per capita rate of reported hate crimes in the nation, second only to Kentucky and Washington, DC.