Ferguson Bombers Sentenced
By Matthew Vadum
A foiled plot to use bombs to assassinate the police chief, county prosecutor, and other officials in troubled Ferguson, Mo., and also blow up the iconic Gateway Arch in nearby St. Louis, has ended in federal prison terms for two New Black Panther Party members.
In a sweetheart plea bargain deal, Olajuwon Davis and Brandon Orlando Baldwin, both radical black Muslim men in their twenties, received mere seven-year custodial sentences last week from U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey when they could have been sent to prison for decades. The men were sentenced "on charges of planning and conspiring to ignite explosive devices during the Ferguson protests and procuring firearms for convicted felons," according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.
U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan congratulated law enforcement for preventing what might have been a major disaster. "The disruption of this plot ... undoubtedly saved lives. Luckily for all of us, we’ll never know just how many," he said.
Davis and Baldwin met when they participated in the protests in Ferguson that followed the Aug. 9, 2014 death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man. Brown was killed by white then-police officer Darren Wilson when he charged Wilson after trying to wrest his service weapon from him. Brown's death sparked riots in Ferguson and across America. Soon after meeting, Davis and Baldwin began plotting to arm fellow demonstrators and destroy the Gateway Arch.
The sentencing comes as black nationalists and members of the Black Lives Matter movement escalate calls for violent attacks on police, while the Obama administration responds by sitting on its hands. Last month Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for "10,000 fearless men" to come forward and slaughter white Americans. Black-supremacist King Noble is calling on blacks to murder whites and police. "It's not safe no more to be white in America," Noble announced in a viral YouTube video. "Lurking behind any corner could be an angry black man ready to take yo ass out."
It also comes as the terrorist-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) throws its lot in with the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement. Breitbart News reports that "CAIR leaders and members joined Black Lives Matter in a march on the California State Capitol on [Sept. 2], targeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s office over a new bill that, in part, would expand bans on racial profiling to include perceived ethnicity." The fact that CAIR is siding with violent activists against police "creates a serious problem for CAIR’s defenders, which argue that its associations with Islamic extremism can be overlooked because it helps law enforcement work with, and within, the Muslim community."
Davis and Baldwin were arrested in November last year during a federal sting operation that concluded days before St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, a white Democrat, broke the news that a local grand jury refused to indict Wilson in the shooting death of Brown. McCulloch was already disliked by local activists and black Democratic lawmakers who accused him of being too close to the police. McCulloch comes from a law enforcement family and his father, a police officer, was fatally shot in the line of duty by a black man when McCulloch was 12 years old.
When Davis and Baldwin entered guilty pleas this past June, they admitted their plan to acquire explosives that were to be used against the Gateway Arch, McCulloch, then-Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson (a white man), a police station, and an armed vehicle the police used during anti-police protests.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Tihen said the two men were arrested after buying what they thought were three functional pipe bombs from a federal agent. No bombs were detonated and none of the would-be targets suffered harm. The two men also unlawfully straw-purchased three handguns for two convicted felons at a sporting goods store where Baldwin worked. The felons, who were urged to sell the guns on the street, were working undercover for the government, Tihen said.
Davis left evidence of his state of mind on social media two days before he was arrested. He signaled in a Facebook post Nov. 19, 2014, that he was being followed:
Family and Friends, everyday I got Caucasians following me in SUV trucks. Please be advised that if you show any signs of noncompliance with this Devil they will try to assasinate [sic] you. Lord smite my enemies and anyone who intends to bring me harm. Ashe! In the spirit of Ogun! Protect me. Ashe!
Later in the comments thread Davis indicated he turned off the GPS tracking function on his phone.
Thanks family! Love you all. My phone keep trying to do GPS when I disabled it. Funny...smh [shaking my head] All weapons formed against shall NEVER prosper. God got US. All is for the greater good. Know that.
In a separate, factually-challenged, semi-coherent Facebook post the same day, Davis offered some insights into why he wanted to destroy the Gateway Arch, which he described as "the Shackle of Oppression." He wrote:
"Saint Louis" is a Slave Capital in a Slave State! Look what Picture of History I discovered in McDonald's lobby. Notice the hooded Clansman [sic] !!?? Notice the crucifix[e]s and Arch!? Fireworks?!! What is being celebrated or honored!!??St. Louis, the Christian European Conqueror ... and this City was founded as a milestone of Westward expansion aka "take the land from the Native Aboriginals".The Arch is the Shackle of Oppression.My theory is, if you want to Control the New World then you Chain it at its Heart, which is Mound City/Midwest/St. Louis. ...White Supremacy has the World/Planet around its Neck link a Jesus Piece and it is linked at the Arch. Think about it, if one wanted to wear the World on a Chain or keep it Chained up, the Arch would be the place where one would connect the Links. Yet, we worship and reverence a structure that was built as a Symbol of Our destruction and demise.
Of course the main injustice Davis and Baldwin sought to make a statement about was no injustice at all. The late Michael Brown was no "gentle giant," as the media portrayed him (and continues to portray him).
Contrary to early media reports, Brown attacked Wilson and did not put his arms in the air in an attempt to surrender to the officer. That Brown attacked Wilson was confirmed by all official investigations and by the three separate autopsies performed on Brown's body. Minutes before the attack, the hulking Brown had committed a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store where he roughed up a diminutive store clerk who emigrated to the U.S. from India.
Context-free media reports that Brown was shot by a white cop while unarmed led to a firestorm that boosted the Black Lives Matter movement and the false Internet meme, "hands up, don't shoot," that was quickly adopted by left-wing activists across America. Egged on by President Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder who treated Brown's death as an self-evident racial injustice riots followed in Ferguson and across America.
Holder sent community organizers from the Justice Department's Community Relations Service (CRS) to Ferguson presumably to agitate against local authorities as they did in Sanford, Fla. following the death of Trayvon Martin, a young black man who attacked neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012.
Obama fanned the flames of racial unrest in Ferguson and elsewhere throughout the fall of 2014.
For example, after saying he wouldn't comment on the then-ongoing investigation into the shooting, Obama told a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner on Sept. 28, 2014 that the American justice system was biased against black people and that it "stains the heart of black children who feel as if no matter what he does, he will always be under suspicion." Of Brown's death, Obama said, "the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement." Of course Obama omitted the role that he played in whipping up anti-police hysteria.
Four days before, Obama did his best to turn Brown's death into even more of an international media spectacle that it already was at the time. The president criticized his own country in a speech at the United Nations, saying "I know the world took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri -- where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions." Again, the Community Organizer-in-Chief failed to mention the role he played in ratcheting up those racial and ethnic tensions.
Racial arsonist Al Sharpton, a close advisor to Obama, delivered a fiery eulogy at Brown's funeral, which Obama sent three federal officials to attend. Sharpton said the response to Brown's death, which included information on what the decedent was really like, showed that "something is wrong in America."
Sharpton is right. Something is wrong in America.
All he need do is look in a mirror.
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