SPOKANE -- In one of the first property crimes connected to Spokane’s growing anarchist movement, a grand jury indicted a Spokane man for vandalizing a pair of military recruiting stations in the city.
In October of 2005, someone threw a rock through the Air National Guard’s window and spraypainted the words “leave us alone” and an anarchy symbol on another window at the North Washington recruiting station.
Though the vandalism occurred in the middle of the night with no witnesses around, police recovered a paint can at the scene and were able to trace fingerprints on it to self-proclaimed anarchist Travis Riehl.
Riehl is a member of Spokane Lack of Action Collective (SLAC), a group that believes some non-violent property crimes are an acceptable form of getting people’s attention.
“We feel that corporations and logos and things like that that we are bombarded with, and ideologies and traditions, are all entrapping us and keeping us stagnant as a society,” Riehl states. “And we fell that atypical actions kind of break the spell that holds on people; we're trying to wake people up.”
Predictably, however, the FBI doesn’t share the same sentiments, and attempting to find the person responsible for breaking the law, they found plenty of evidence linking Riehl to the vandalism.
Court documents show that, in the days after the recruiting center was vandalized, early morning photos of the damage appeared on SLAC’s myspace page, with the date stamp on the photos matching the date an army recruiting center on the South Hill was also vandalized.
The FBI also determined that the pictures were taken by a Fuji Film Finepix 2600 digital camera and, after obtaining a federal warrant, agents recovered the same model camera from Riehl's North Spokane home.
As part of their investigation, the FBI – who handled the case since the Recruiting Station is considered federal property – secretly recorded Riehl inside his home. On the tapes, he could be found admitting responsibility for posting the pictures of the damaged recruiting stations.
Riehl also said he knows the people who set a Humvee on fire at a Liberty Lake car dealership back in 2004.
The Earth Liberation Front later claimed responsibility for the attack, but anarchists say a pro-environment, anti authoritarian philosophy is an important part of their platform.
"You can say a lot of the ideas would be anti-government," Riehl says, "But we would probably prefer that the idea is portrayed as pro self-government. We think people have the right and ability to govern themselves."
On advice from his attorney, Riehl would not discuss his upcoming trial, which gets underway in October.
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