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Colorado Neo-Nazis Doing a Great Job Picking Up Highway Trash

(KCNC Denver)
(KCNC Denver)
BRIGHTON, Colo. (CBS/KCNC/AP) - Their free speech may not be pretty, but their highway just might be. A Colorado neo-Nazi group that's being allowed to participate in an Adopt-A-Highway program hit the road Saturday to start picking up litter.

Photo: Neo-Nazis picking up trash.

The National Socialist Movement, which calls itself "America's Nazi Party," is responsible for cleaning up along a one-mile stretch of Highway 85 in Brighton, Colo., near a suburb north of Denver.

Earlier in the week, the Colorado Department of Transportation shifted the neo-Nazis to that location after accidentally assigning them a road in front of a church.

Talk about bad bookkeeping.

Photo: An Adopt-A-Highway sign for the National Socialist Movement.

The department says it thought long and hard about allowing the neo-Nazis into the Adopt-A-Highway program, according to CBS affiliate KCNC. But since it did not want to face a lawsuit over free speech, it agreed to let them pick up trash.

VIDEO COURTESY OF CBS AFFILIATE KCNC.

"I don't think there's very many people that agree on what they do and what they believe in besides themselves," one passing motorist told KCNC.

The white supremacist group describes itself as "patriots."

The rules for any group in the cleanup program prohibit flags, or in this case, any obvious Nazi symbols, but they do get their name displayed on a state highway sign.

A spokesman for the National Socialist Movement, Neal Land, says the group is "doing good things."

Reporting Contributed by CBS Affiliate KCNC

TELL CRIMESIDER WHAT YOU THINK: Should the neo-Nazi group be allowed in the Adopt-A-Highway program?

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