For the past few months, a sheriff who employs a distinctly old school style of policing has been clashing with a very new-school band of extremely online neo-Nazis.
Mike Chitwood is a second generation cop who doesn't shy away from the spotlight — or from a fight. His swashbuckling and hard-nosed approach has clear echoes of his father, who was also named Mike Chitwood and drew comparisons to Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" during a more than half-century law enforcement career that started in the 1960s; he eventually became one of Philadelphia's most famous and decorated cops. The elder Chitwood was known for making headlines, breaking down doors, cracking high-profile cases, and attacking criminals with colorful insults like "bum" and "scumbag."
Chitwood followed his father into the Philadelphia Police Department where he worked from the late 80s when, as he puts it, "crack cocaine was running the cities," until 2005. Chitwood spent time in narcotics and ultimately became a homicide detective as the City of Brotherly Love earned a reputation as one of the country's most dangerous cities. After a stint on a gun task force gave him a taste for leadership roles, Chitwood moved south and headed departments in Oklahoma and Florida. In 2016, he was elected sheriff of Volusia County, which sits on the Atlantic coast north of Orlando and includes Daytona Beach.
Along with sunshine, Chitwood's new post found him engaged in what he calls a "war on anti-Semitism" against a hate group known as the "Goyim Defense League." These neo-Nazis, who set up shop in Central Florida within the past year, are known for a high volume of rage-filled livestreams and vulgar, aggressive protests in front of Jewish institutions that have earned them a reputation as "the nation's most prolific antisemitic propaganda group." As the GDL has harassed Volusia's residents with flyers at their homes and vile epithets hurled through megaphones outside their synagogues, Chitwood has fired back with the same kind of insults and sharp elbows that made his father famous.
The fight has made Chitwood and his family the target of death threats and left him wishing federal law enforcement agencies would do more to take on extremism. And even after years facing violent crime, in interviews with TPM, Chitwood said the things he has seen in recent months have disturbed him.
"It's all so different now," Chitwood said.
"Maybe I'm getting old. It just seemed back then everything was straightforward," he explained. "Now, with the weaponry, social media, this huge division of no common sense, people will read a blurb and it's religion, and they'll die on that hill of misinformation, of lies, of deceit."
"I don't know how you overcome that," he added.
Earlier in his career, Chitwood regularly worked at protests and dealt with political movements, he said. But he never worried about threats to his family.
"Social media turned this into a new animal," he said.
The sheriff also alluded to the fact that the rising tide of digital extremism is a problem on the streets and within the ranks of the police force. Mounting research has found links between members of law enforcement, white supremacist organizations, and militant groups. Last year, an analysis from USA TODAY found at least 19 current or former police officers were charged with taking part in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"That can destroy your department," Chitwood said of the "misinformation." "It could destroy individual officers. It destroys lives and it really, at the end of the day, makes the community unsafe."
Yet even as he is frank about the dangers of the new wave of internet-fueled extremism, Chitwood almost seems to relish facing it.
"I'm armed," Chitwood said. "Come and get me. If you're mad enough, come and get me, because I shoot back. I'm not some old person walking into a synagogue. … I'm not some mother with their children walking down the street. … I've been shot at before and I know how to return fire."
The current outbreak of anti-Semitism in Central Florida began in December 2022 after a neo-Nazi activist named Jon Minadeo II moved to the area from Northern California. A one-time rapper, Minadeo now makes regular broadcasts on his own video platform, Goyim TV. In some of these clips, Minadeo indicated he moved eastward after feeling targeted on the West Coast and expressed hope that Florida would be more fertile ground for his movement. Chitwood wants to prove him wrong.
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