Lewis Arthur is not shy about saying what he wants or what he’s willing to do to get it.
What he wants, he recently told the city council of Washtucna, is for cities to allow him to patrol homeless encampments in an extrajudicial role, stopping sex trafficking. Veterans on Patrol volunteers said they were there trying to make a bucolic home for unhoused people at a “compound” of old buildings. He’s been doing similar work across the Inland Northwest and has been sleeping on the streets of Spokane for the last two months.
“I want your forgiveness for what I’m going to do in your city and to your homes, because we’re going to bring the problem to your homes now,” Arthur informed the Spokane city council at its regular session June 24. “ I’m bringing the problem to your doors.”
For Spokane City Council Member Paul Dillon, Arthur’s comment was immediately unsettling.“That wasn’t great,” Dillon said from his seat at the pulpit after Arthur had left chambers. “I didn’t like that. Is this dude gonna come to my house?”
Arthur is founder of Veterans on Patrol (VOP), a loosely-structured Pima County, Arizona, organization largely powered by volunteers Arthur claims are veterans. (Arthur is not himself a veteran). The group claims to fight child sex trafficking across the border, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has consorted with militia groups, destroyed informal infrastructure set out to help migrants crossing the desert and espoused conspiracy theories.
Those activities ran Arthur afoul of the law, though, and he has been on the run for three years from the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, which has a warrant out for his arrest for destroying watering stations for migrants crossing the desert. Arthur says he destroyed them because he believes they are only used by cartel scouts.
“I took what he said on [June 24] as a threat with the intent to do harm,” Dillon told RANGE.
Arthur, whose full name is Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, contended in a lengthy interview with RANGE that the city council has nothing to worry about. He says “bringing the problem” to the council members’ homes is a plan to bring unhoused youth to the homes of city electeds so they can talk to the electeds directly, and electeds will have an opportunity to engage with the homeless crisis.
Arthur calls many of his actions “operations.” The name of this one, he says, is “Operation City Bleeders.” He told RANGE via text that he chose the name because “City Parasites doesn’t rhyme with City Leaders.”
Arthur told RANGE the operation will ensure the city knows “what’s going on, now, from the mouths of babes” and will feel elevated pressure to act on homelessness.
On July 1, one week after his initial address to council, Arthur launched the operation, posting the names and addresses of each city council member to the Veterans on Patrol Telegram channel. The channel has nearly 7,000 subscribers.
Screenshots of Arthur’s Telegram post. RANGE has redacted addresses and identifying information.
“Obviously, this is distressing,” Dillon said, adding that he’s working with the city’s legal department to determine what action he can take under a new Washington law that criminalizes revealing “personal identifying information” without the consent of the person whose information is revealed.
“Looks like there’s a civil injunction,” Dillon said, “and that includes emotional damages.”
As of July 3, RANGE spoke with every council member except Council President Betsy Wilkerson. All of them said Arthur had not yet come to their home. (Wilkerson did not return a voicemail requesting comment.)
Arthur insisted that, though he would be present at the confrontations, he would stand off in the distance without engaging.
VOP has worked with members of several far-right, even white nationalist organizations, including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and, locally, the Panhandle Patriots.
Those organizations were attracted to some of Arthur’s operations in 2018 on the US border in Arizona, which included a prolonged presence at an abandoned Cemex concrete plant where Arthur claimed cartels were trafficking migrant children for sex. Local law enforcement found no evidence of sex trafficking at the site.
Asked if he worried organizations like the Oath Keepers would show up to any city council members’ home, he claimed they had never committed violence when working with VOP and downplayed the threat.
“What have they done in the past?” Arthur said. “They’ve talked. They’ve waved flags. They made their point. Why are we worried about what they may or may not do when these people, most of them aren’t even paying attention to what I’m doing? … Most people aren’t paying attention.”
Freddy Cruz of the Western States Center, a Portland-based nonprofit that advocates for policy changes to benefit marginalized communities, has studied Arthur and VOP for years. He told RANGE VOP has used doxxing as a tactic aimed at everyone from journalists who write critically of the organization to politicians and people working with humanitarian aid groups.
“That’s something that’s pretty common with the group,” Cruz said. “Sharing people’s home addresses, license plates, images, social media accounts that they might have. It’s something that VOP is very well-versed in, especially for people who question their activities.”
Cruz said VOP’s doxxing has resulted in online harassment of activists and others in Arizona. “There have been confrontations between humanitarian groups and other far right militias in that area,” Cruz said. Arthur said he has gone to politicians’ homes in Arizona and that he’s willing to do so again.
“I went to [US] Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s house,” Arthur said. “I went to [Tuscon] Mayor Regina Romero’s house. I went to [Pima County] Sheriff Chris Nanos’s house. I’ll go to anyone’s home.”
RANGE asked Arthur for proof of these visits over text message, but he didn’t respond. We were unable to independently verify the visits.
Arthur said VOP is not a federally recognized non-profit. but it does operate on donations solicited on Telegram and other social media, as well as Amazon wish lists. He told RANGE he has three or four volunteers in Spokane, but when asked how many people volunteer with VOP across the country, he said: “Judge not by what you see. More than you can see are VOP.”
Arthur posted on Telegram again this morning, stating the first video of “Operation City Bleeders” would be coming soon.
Arthur told RANGE trafficking is rampant among unhoused people on the streets of Spokane, including at Crosswalk, a shelter and resource center for unhoused youth operated by Volunteers of America (VOA) in downtown Spokane. During his June 24 testimony Arthur claimed Crosswalk is a “grooming center.”
Fawn Schott, the CEO of Crosswalk, told RANGE the resource center had to shut down its services last week because Arthur or someone affiliated with VOP had tried to force their way into the center.
“Him and people from his organization have pushed themselves into our shelter,” Schott said. “They also have … watched for our young people to leave the shelter and engaged with them outside of the shelter walls,” Schott said. “We feel like he actually has some really predatory behavior.” Schott said her staff “are having continual conversations with young people related to engaging with folks from that organization.”
She said this was the second time Crosswalk has shut down its services because of Arthur’s activities.
Arthur told RANGE he never tried to force his way inside Crosswalk.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled VOP a militia and pointed out the organization has promoted “anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon falsehoods.” He has also claimed that the Biden administration is actively trafficking migrants through the United States. And while he focuses much of his effort on trafficking, Arthur also spends time on other conspiracy theories, including that the Air Force is intentionally seeding the sky with toxic chemicals.
Arthur said VOP is not a militia but said he has worked with militias in the past.
He has a long history of stirring up controversy in local communities by making threats against infrastructure and specific people. In 2017, Arthur threatened a water supply in Arivaca, Arizona.
This June, he told the Pima County Sheriff’s Office that “within 90 days” he intended “to execute a Mission to eliminate all of Humane Border’s [sic] illegal trafficking operations which they disguise as ‘humanitarian efforts.’” Humane Borders is a nonprofit that supplies water for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert at great risk to their lives. In his written threat to the Pima County Sheriff, Arthur refers to himself as a “former Resident of Pima County and current fugitive wanted for destroying dozens of water stations used to aid Cartel guides and scouts.”
In February, in a lengthy exchange with the Washtucna city council during a legislative meeting, Lewis told Council Member Cathy Blankenship that the city could not tell him to leave. “You can’t tell me no,” he said.
As the Inlander’s Nate Sanford reported in April, VOP started its operations in Spokane by distributing flyers advising people to call him rather than law enforcement if they see signs of human trafficking on Spokane streets. Sanford quoted the flyers as saying, “A consequence absent of law enforcement will be provided to the predator(s) and a solution absent of CPS [Child Protective Services] will be provided to the child victims.”
Council members are waiting to see what will come of Arthur’s latest “operation.” Council Member Kitty Klitzke said her family and her neighbors are “pretty vigilant” and they’re staying on alert for any suspicious behavior. Council Member Jonathan Bingle implied that he and his family were armed and said Arthur “doesn’t want to catch this smoke.”
Council Member Lili Navarrete, who was the only council member not to have her address leaked (although the Telegram message did reveal private information) was more cautious. She said, as an immigrant, she’s been on high alert since her family arrived in Spokane in the late 1980s.
“I never take anything lightly,” Navarrete said. “I just take precautions.”
Erin Sellers contributed to this report.
