New York Has Most Oath Keeper Cops In The U.S., Study Shows

NEW YORK CITY — New York has the most cops in the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group that played a key role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, of any U.S. state, according to data compiled from a leaked membership roster.

Forty-five members of law enforcement in New York are also Oath Keepers, a study released by the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism found.

"A law enforcement officer who engages in this type of extremist activity clearly violates their oath of office," the Anti-Defamation League study states.

“Even for those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers have espoused extremism since their founding."

There are 1,996 Oath Keepers in New York, according to the Anti-Defamation League study. Among them are five elected officials.

Few individual cops were named in the Anti Defamation League study, but leaked data collected by Distributed Denial of Secrets and previous reports show some of those law enforcement officials were from the NYPD.

The Oath Keepers — a conspiracy theory-fueled group whose members believe the federal government is out to strip U.S. citizens of civil liberties — has been dubbed one of the largest far-right anti-government groups in the nation.

Among their beliefs is the "New World Order" theory that the government is secretly planning to seize Americans' guns, put those who resist in concentration camps and launch a worldwide totalitarian government, the Southern Poverty Law Center says.

"They are often confrontational and have participated in multiple armed standoffs against the government," the Southern Poverty Law Center says.

More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers, including founder Stewart Rhodes, were arrested in the Jan. 6 attack.

Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers members are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weeks-long plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

A WNYC/Gothamist investigation into a leaked Oath Keepers membership roster uncovered two active NYPD members on the list who were later cleared in internal investigations, the New York Daily News reported.

Some former NYPD members — Oath Keepers or not — have faced scrutiny for their ties to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Ex-NYPD cop Thomas Webster received the longest sentence yet for a rioter who stormed the Capitol.

And court records show former NYPD officer Salvatore Greco recently filed a wrongful termination suit admitting his relationships with convicted felon and Trump ally Roger Stone, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

"Other than his personal 'political' relationships with members of the OATH Keepers, Proud Boys, others who support Trump's America," the federal lawsuit states, "there is no 'credible' evidence he was involved in any criminal or subversive activities with them or anyone else to overthrow the United States government."

The report found there are at least 370 members of both Oath Keepers and law enforcement office nationwide.