LINCOLN HEIGHTS, Ohio — The One In Five Foundation for Kids, formerly known as the Uvalde Foundation for Kids, has pulled its volunteers out of Lincoln Heights and Evendale, where the nonprofit was facilitating STOPNOW school community patrols.
The foundation said Thursday night it opted to stop the patrols and pull its volunteers out because it is concerned "conflicts are imminent."
"After learning this evening that several neo-Nazi groups are planning to return to Lincoln Heights and Evendale on a larger scale, more consolidated demonstration in the next few weeks, and with concerns of potential violent conflicts resulting, our planned STOPNOW school community patrols have been immediately canceled," reads a statement from Daniel Chapin, the organization's founder and national director.
Community members deny any involvement with this organization. However, the same organization also issued an update on Monday, Feb. 17 that said it was concerned that neo-Nazi counter-protests "are also expected" alongside community-driven, anti-hate demonstrations that were held in the days following the neo-Nazi demonstration. Those counter-protests did not happen.
Learn more about what the foundation and community members said here:
The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office told WCPO Friday they are not aware of any "planned return" of any apparent neo-Nazi groups. HCSO also made it clear that they have only received two documented reports of armed Lincoln Heights residents stopping people.
The One In Five Foundation has said it has been speaking with members of the Goyim Defense League, which it believes facilitated the neo-Nazi demonstrations on a highway overpass on Feb. 7.
The Anti-Defamation League categorizes the group as "a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism."
Watch body camera footage that shows police responding to the neo-Nazi demonstration:
"After speaking with the group earlier this week, foundation officials noted that the group originally promised not to return to the Lincoln Heights community," a Feb. 17 update from the nonprofit said.
The foundation announced days after the demonstration that it planned to deploy "specially trained STOPNOW citizen school patrol teams" for schools near Lincoln Heights, including Princeton High School, Heritage Hill Elementary, Lincoln Heights Elementary, and Princeton Community Middle School.
The organization later widened that effort to include the Lockland School District after surveillance footage near the Lockland Local School District Educational Annex building captured the U-Haul the neo-Nazi group was using on school property.
WATCH: Evendale police interact with neo-Nazi group after they left the overpass near Evendale and Lincoln Heights. This is an extraction from a larger clip that is nearly 50 minutes (NOTE: This video does include profanity):
Those patrols, the foundation says, are comprised of over a dozen team members who are trained in crisis intervention, conflict resolution and situational awareness. They were also planning to recruit and train more volunteers from local communities to help, the organization said.
David Piscopo, a contractor who claimed he was stopped and prevented from going to work, described it as “neighborhood watch but to another level.”
Now, those volunteers are being told to leave Lincoln Heights and Evendale as the organization said it's concerned about violence.
"Several area neo-Nazi groups are declaring on their sites and print publications a 'race' and 'turf' war," Chapin's statement says. "Armed residents of Lincoln Heights themselves are walking the streets, calling themselves 'the police.' This collectively is not an environment I, nor our national board, can in good faith place our volunteers in due to the unique volatility at this time."
RELATED: 'They're gonna be pissed' | Video shows more of Evendale police's interaction with neo-Nazi group
Negotiations with the neo-Nazi group were previously successful, the One In Five Foundation said.
Piscopo agrees. He claims he was misidentified as being a part of the neo-Nazi group and his work truck was posted online after being approached while heading to a work site in the area.
“It’s OK to want to protect your area to a point," Piscopo said. "But when you’re demanding people to roll their windows down and cussing at them. That’s not protecting, that’s being a whole another thing.”
Those negotiations "have now broken down, plain and simple," Chapin said.
The organization urged local law enforcement and school district officials in the area to be alert, increase support presence and review their safety standards.
“We do not want to create neighborhood militias, okay," Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey said in a news conference Tuesday. "We don’t want to do that. Because we understand, again it leads back to the tactics of these neo-Nazis. They want people to do that. They want people to put themselves in risky situations so that potentially harm can come to those good people who are simply trying to protect their communities.”
WATCH: Lincoln Heights community members speak about why some in the community have conducted armed patrols
Evendale police said they first became aware of disturbances near the I-75 overpass on Victory Way at around 2:06 p.m. on February 7. WCPO received several calls into the newsroom at around the same time reporting that there were armed men with flags showing swastikas on the sidewalks.
Hamilton County sheriff's deputies and Evendale police said they responded to the overpass. Mutual aid was requested, and during that time, the Village of Lockland said one of their police units responded to the scene to help.
Evendale police stated the neo-Nazis did not apply for a permit nor did they tell police ahead of time. The department states it had no contact with the neo-Nazis until arriving on the scene Friday. Lockland police also had no awareness of the demonstration beforehand, the village's mayor said.
The Lockland Local Schools Board of Education has requested a third-party investigation of both Evendale and Lockland police after the district reviewed and released footage of the neo-Nazis on school property just minutes before dismissal following that interaction with officers.
Photos circulating online showed the U-Haul the men left in parked near the Lockland Police Department and the Lockland Local School District Educational Annex building with a cruiser in front of it. Lockland Mayor Mark Mason Sr. said in a release that the officer was not a Lockland officer. Evendale police said it was one of their officers, who was following the group and told them to "leave the area."
WATCH: Surveillance footage of the moments the U-Haul pulled onto Lockland Schools property
