Less than 24 hours after what many assumed was an attack on Dallas police by a group of snipers, the truth about Thursday’s tragic Black Lives Matter protest came out. Instead of several individuals working together, the assault that killed five cops and injured seven more was carried out by one person — Micah Johnson, a former U.S. Army reservist. The suspect admitted his “lone wolf” status during negotiations with police, when he exclaimed he wanted to “kill white people, especially white police officers” for the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Since then, investigators and reporters have been trying to piece together who Johnson was, and what drove him to fire upon an otherwise peaceful demonstration in Dallas. Everything from the 25-year-old Mesquite, Texas native’s enlistment and discharge records to his penchant for black power movements calling for armed conflict across the country fueled a weekend’s worth talking heads on television. Pundits were more than willing to lay the blame on the Black Lives Matter movement and similar organizations, liberal and progressive politicians, and everything in between.
Yet as The Daily Beast reports, Johnson’s associations with the former weren’t as clear-cut as his Facebook photos suggest. When Johnson tried to join a Dallas-area black power group, an anonymous tip suggested otherwise:
Ken Moore of the Collective Black People’s Movement (CBPM) said that he was asked to look into Johnson by an unidentified black activist group. When he discovered the Army veteran was discharged for sexual harassment, he labelled him “unfit for recruitment.”
As a result, Johnson was “blacklisted” by the group, which put out an alert on his past aggressions to other organizations. Everyone from the People’s New Black Panther Party to the Black Riders Liberation Party knew who the young man was, which resulted in their denying him official membership.
Moore went on to describe Johnson as “a loner [and] a sympathizer” and suggested Sterling and Castile’s deaths might have caused a “psychological break” of sorts. However, others like Black Riders Liberation Party leader Lakesia Washington — a group that wouldn’t admit Johnson, but allowed him to attend protests and other events — celebrated the Dallas attack online.
(Via The Daily Beast)