"We've been naive," said Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner, whose city is one of several places in the state where paroled white supremacists have congregated. "We just don't want to believe these people are among us," he said.

Since the mid-1990s hundreds of supremacists have been paroled statewide - mostly to halfway houses in Weber and Salt Lake counties.

They quickly find their way back behind bars, experts say. And public safety officials say they're eager to help expedite that process for anyone who is not willing to abandon their violent allegiances to extremist groups such as the Aryan Brotherhood, the Silent Aryan Warriors and the Soldiers of the Aryan Culture.

While such organizations do recruit among disaffected white youth, public safety officials say the most violent members are those such as newly accused cop-killer Curtis Michael Allgier, for whom latent racism was molded into brazen hatred during prison stints.

"Some of these guys, they don't know the first thing about the tenants of being a white supremacist," Roy City Police Chief Greg Whinham said. "When you go through the gates of the prison, you've got to have someone who you can identify yourself with - for social reasons as well as for safety reasons."

Whinham said that while parole agents and police officers try to give all former prisoners the chance to "go clean," it can be particularly difficult for those, like the heavily tattooed Allgier, who wear their social agenda on their arms, legs, necks and faces.

"They certainly do stand out in a crowd," Whinham said.

And more than 7 in 10, according to state prison records, wind up back behind bars within three years - often for "walking the talk."

Whinham said he's proud of how a coalition of law enforcement agencies has handled the problem.

"We've been able to make some great strides in knowing where they are and what their activities are," he said.

Perhaps as a result, Utah's police agencies reported fewer reported hate crimes in 2005 than in any year since 1997.

About two-thirds of the 44 hate crimes reported in 2005 were racially motivated - for example, the March 2005 attack of a black man in Salt Lake City by three members of the white supremacist group American Front.

It's unclear, however, how many of the total number of racially motivated hate crimes were linked to white extremist groups.

mlaplante@sltrib.com