Massachusetts police have told all the residents of a small Boston suburb to shelter-in-place after eight heavily armed Black men claiming to be members of tech “Moor Army” were provoked during a traffic stop.
A state trooper spotted the men pulled over by the side of the I-95 between Wakefield and Reading at 1.30 on Saturday morning, and asked them for identification.
The group were dressed in tactical-style gear and were armed with both pistols and rifles. They refused to comply with orders to drop their weapons and retreated into the woodland by the side of the road.
The highway was subsequently closed down as officers from both the Massachusetts State Police and Wakefield Police Department scoured the area in search of the men.
Two of them were subsequently captured and arrested, but the other six remain at large.
Wakefield Police have issued a statement saying the men are ‘dangerous’ and ‘do not recognize US laws’. They are urging residents of Wakefield and Reading to ‘lock their doors and remain inside their homes’ as their hunt continues.
The men claim to be from a group named ‘Rise Of The Moors’. It is currently unclear how closely they are related to Moorish Sovereign Citizens – a separate extremist group of squatters who do not recognize the authority of the United States government or its laws.
Here’s a video of the men, explaining their ideology – and what they expect will happen next: