Heat City

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups nationwide, published a detailed history on Friday of Dennis Mahon, one of two men arrested the day before on suspicion of bombing Scottdale’s diversity office in 2004.

The history, based on the organization’s decades of work tracking extremist groups, shows a long pattern of Mahon’s involvement in racist organizations and tells what caused him some eight years ago to move to Arizona, where he called home for several years afterward.

“In 2001, Mahon announced his intention to move to Kingman, Ariz., where (Timothy) McVeigh lived while he plotted the Oklahoma City bombing,” the center says. Citing news reports from the time, it continues: “Mahon liked Kingman because of the prevalence of anti-government types and wanted to develop links with white supremacist organizations in Phoenix.”

A white supremacist leader whose Indiana home was raided Thursday in connection with the 2004 bombing of Scottsdale’s diversity offices told his followers not to worry about the raids or arrests of their fellow extremists because “there are more out there.”

Tom Metzger, who runs a fringe group called the White Aryan Resistance, left a 7-minute message on a group hotline just hours the raids. He told followers that three of his home computers were seized, along with notebooks and address books. The seizure knocked out his ability to access the group’s website or broadcast his regular Internet radio show, he said.

At about the same time Metzger’s house was being raided in Warsaw, Ind., federal authorities in Illinois were also arresting two brothers with ties to the group who are suspected of carrying out a race-motivated bombing in Scottsdale in 2004 that badly injured two city employees.

Federal court documents say the two men arrested today on suspicion of a 2004 Scottsdale bombing were teaching others how to conduct domestic terrorism as recently as this year, and one of them even instructed another person to attack power grids in Arizona or Texas in the event of their arrest.

The paperwork, made public this afternoon following the arrests of Dennis and Daniel Mahon in Illinois, says the brothers engaged in a conspiracy to “promote racial discord.” They did so, it says, on behalf of an Indiana-based hate group called the White Aryan Resistance, or WAR, by attacking government and business institutions. It also says the men were teaching others “the tactics of terrorism” to help the cause.

Dennis Mahon, who has extensive ties to white supremacist and extremist groups, also sent numerous pieces of radical propaganda to someone in Wickenburg, whom the indictment did not name.

Scottsdale city employees this afternoon got an email saying that two suspects had been arrested in the 2004 bombing of the city’s diversity office. The text of the email is after the jump. For more information on the arrests of Dennis and Daniel Mahon, please see Heat City’s exclusive report posted earlier today.

Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 2:29 PM

To: ALL CITY STAFF

Subject: HotLine No. 353 — 2004 bombing incident arrests

Federal agents earlier today arrested two suspects for the February 2004 mail bombing that seriously injured two employees of Scottsdale’s Office of Diversity & Dialogue.

The two suspects were arrested in the state of Illinois, where they are being arraigned today. The arrests are the first in the case since the bombing incident more than five years ago.

Read the full story…

Two brothers, one of them a neo-Nazi with ties to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, were arrested Thursday in a federal raid at their rural Illinois home on suspicion of carrying out the 2004 mail bombing of Scottsdale’s diversity office, Heat City has learned.

Dennis Mahon, a longtime white supremacist organizer, and Daniel Mahon were taken into custody by federal agents outside of Rockford, Ill., after authorities were able to link to them to the bombing that injured Scottsdale’s diversity director and two other city employees more than five years ago.

The men were charged by a federal grand jury with three counts related to the bombing and other conspiracies.

Mike Denney

Mesa’s second-most powerful cop, a current contender to take over as the city’s police chief, was investigated criminally last year on suspicion of attacking a fellow officer, Heat City has learned.

Assistant Police Chief Mike Denney, who is also the department’s chief of staff, was accused by a subordinate of hitting him in the groin with a water bottle during a confrontation last May, newly released documents show. The incident took place inside police headquarters the same day the agency announced it had collared a suspected serial strangler.

Denney, 57, was eventually cleared of criminal wrongdoing, as well as of breaking department rules, but not before 16 of the department’s top brass and another police agency were dragged into the investigation. A department spokesman said on Friday neither Denney nor the subordinate, commander Fred Ruhland, were available to comment.

Denney was mentioned this week as one of at least three people inside the Mesa Police Department being considered to head the agency after current Chief George Gascón accepted an offer to lead the San Fransisco Police Department.