The people behind the violence in the American protests of George Floyd.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post explored the case of Matthew Michanowicz, a Pittsburgh man who planted bombs around an area where a Black Lives Matter protest had broken out in May 2020 — and why he received a surprisingly lenient sentence.

"The city was a tinder box that afternoon. Six days earlier, a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, sparking protests around the country. The day before, one in Pittsburgh devolved into a riot. Dozens were arrested. City leaders imposed a curfew," reported Jonathan Edwards. "The next day, Michanowicz rode his bike to check out the aftermath. He wheeled himself to a plaza below a skyscraper in the heart of downtown, planted the backpack with the three bombs he’d made and left. They never exploded, but prosecutors said they could have hurt or killed someone."

Ultimately, he was caught by police and pleaded guilty — but while prosecutors asked for at least 30 months in prison, U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose, sentenced him to time served, six months of house arrest, and three years of probation.

"Michanowicz’s lawyer, Ken Haber, told The Post in a phone interview that the judge might have considered his client’s recent mental health issues and personal struggles," said the report. "Within a year of placing the bombs, Michanowicz lost his job as a successful medical salesman who worked with neurosurgeons. His father and a good friend died. He got divorced. 'I think the judge was somewhat convinced that he had a breakdown,' Haber said, adding that his client has stressed that he never meant for the devices to go off."

The murder of George Floyd triggered protests around the nation, and ultimately led to the conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

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https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/05/30/Protest-Downtown-Pittsburgh-george-floyd-police/stories/202005300054


Bubba in the middle with the leather vest really fits in.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin appears to be on the verge of pleading guilty to violating George Floyd ’s civil rights, according to a notice sent out Monday by the court’s electronic filing system.

The federal docket entry shows a hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday for Chauvin to change his current not guilty plea in the case. These types of notices indicate a defendant is planning to plead guilty. The court system also sent out instructions for media to attend the hearing.

Chauvin has already been convicted of state murder and manslaughter charges for pinning his knee against Floyd’s neck as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe during a May 25, 2020 arrest. He was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in that case.

He and three other former officers — Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao — were set to go to trial in late January on federal charges alleging they willfully violated Floyd’s rights.

A message left with Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, was not immediately returned. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had no comment.

The information sent out Monday gives no indication that the other officers intend to plead guilty. Messages left for attorneys for Kueng and Thao were not immediately returned. Earl Gray, the attorney for Lane, is currently in a trial in the unrelated case involving the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright.

According to evidence in the state case against Chauvin, Kueng and Lane helped restrain the 46-year-old Floyd as he was on the ground — Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held down Floyd’s legs. Thao held back bystanders and kept them from intervening during the 9 1/2-minute restraint.

Floyd’s arrest and death, which a bystander captured on cellphone video, sparked mass protests nationwide that called for an end to racial inequality and police mistreatment of Black people.

All four officers were charged broadly in federal court with depriving Floyd of his rights while acting under government authority, but the federal indictment broke down the counts even further. A count against Chauvin alleged he violated Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure and from unreasonable force by a police officer.

Thao and Kueng are charged with violating Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure by not intervening to stop Chauvin as he knelt on Floyd’s neck. All four officers are charged for their failure to provide Floyd with medical care.

Specifically, the indictment says Chauvin kept his left knee on Floyd’s neck even though he was handcuffed and not resisting. The indictment alleges Thao and Kueng were aware Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck, even after Floyd became unresponsive, and “willfully failed to intervene to stop Defendant Chauvin’s use of unreasonable force.” All four are charged with willfully depriving Floyd of liberty without due process, including the right to be free from “deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs.”

It was not immediately clear if Chauvin plans to plead guilty to all or some of the federal charges against him in connection with Floyd’s death.

Chauvin is also charged in a second indictment, stemming from the use of force and neck restraint of a teenage boy in 2017.

That indictment alleges Chauvin deprived the then-14-year-old boy, who is Black, of his right to be free of unreasonable force when he held the teen by the throat, hit him in the head with a flashlight and held his knee on the boy’s neck and upper back while he was prone, handcuffed and not resisting. Information from the court gave no indication that Chauvin would be changing his plea in that case.

The three other officers were also charged in state court with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. They are scheduled to go to trial in the state case in March.

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SAN FRANCISCO — The sister of a slain federal officer is suing Facebook’s parent company Meta, alleging it bears responsibility for her brother’s killing during racial justice protests in 2020.

Facebook facilitated the hateful far-right “boogaloo” movement, leading an adherent to murder officer Dave Patrick Underwood, the lawsuit filed in a California Superior Court late Wednesday alleges.

The Homeland Security protective security officer was fatally shot in May 2020 when a van pulled up outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland and a gunman inside the vehicle sprayed bullets at Underwood and his partner, who was wounded in the shooting. Federal authorities identified the shooter as Steven Carrillo, an adherent of the “boogaloo boys,” an online extremist movement that has sought to capitalize on racial justice protests to usher in a race war. Underwood was killed as racial justice protests were underway nearby following the murder of George Floyd.

An officer was gunned down. The killer was a ‘boogaloo boy’ using nearby peaceful protests as cover, feds say.

Now Underwood’s sister, Angela Underwood Jacobs, is accusing Facebook of “knowingly promoting extremist content” and connecting individuals who “planned to engage in acts of violence against federal law enforcement officers,” according to the suit.

The suit alleges wrongful death and a survival action for the pain and suffering Underwood endured before he died, citing alleged general negligence and negligent design by Facebook.

Facebook pushed back against the allegations on Thursday.

“We’ve banned more than 1,000 militarized social movements from our platform and work closely with experts to address the broader issue of Internet radicalization,” said spokesman Kevin McAlister. “These claims are without legal basis.”

The suit takes aim at Facebook and other social media companies’ long-standing legal immunity for harmful content that is posted on their platforms. Technology companies are generally protected from such lawsuits by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says platforms are not publishers of the content posted on their sites, and thus aren’t responsible for the content that appears in such forums.

But Section 230 is coming under fire on a variety of fronts. A series of bills that seek to erode the two-decade-old law was proposed by lawmakers in both parties last year. Last month, a member of the Rohingya ethnic group based in the United States filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Meta, arguing that its platform fanned the flames of violence and led to a genocide in Myanmar in 2017. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status to represent thousands of Rohingya refugees who have resettled in the United States.

Lawyers for Underwood’s sister say Facebook should not be protected by Section 230.

Facebook said it took down hundreds of accounts and groups connected to the boogaloo movement in the wake of the violence in Oakland and an alleged plot to use explosives at a demonstration in Las Vegas, and designated the boogaloo group a “dangerous organization.” Facebook’s action came about a month after the shooting.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen tells lawmakers that meaningful reform is necessary ‘for our common good’

Rather than simply allow information to be posted on the site, Facebook actively promoted inflammatory content and steered people toward it, the suit alleges.

“The algorithms are weighted to favor untrue, inflammatory, and divisive content that will grab and keep users’ attention,” the lawsuit says. “Furthermore, the recommendations are not based on Facebook user requests for recommendations — they are pushed onto users.”

That ultimately led the killer and his accomplice to meet over the platform, attorneys allege. They point to criminal complaints from the Justice Department that say Carrillo, then an active-duty Air Force staff sergeant, and his accomplice, Robert Alvin Justus Jr., connected through a boogaloo group on Facebook on May 28, 2020. They agreed to meet on May 29 and drive together to the protests, attorneys said.

Section 230: The little law that defined how the Internet works

“Facebook bears responsibility for the murder of my brother,” Jacobs said in a news release. “Facebook must be held responsible for the harm it has caused not just my family, but so many others, by promoting extremist content and building extremist groups on its platform.” The firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll is representing Jacobs in the wrongful death case.

The complaint also alleges that Facebook “helped build” the boogaloo community that ushered in their planning.

Facebook’s argument that it does not bear responsibility for harmful content was undercut by a trove of documents brought forth in October by whistleblower Frances Haugen. The documents showed that Facebook is deeply involved in researching the effects of harmful content and turning the dials of its algorithms to decide how to promote it to over 2.9 billion monthly users.

The boogaloo movement arose from fringe social media channels such as 4chan before moving to mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, where their followings ballooned as their views found a wider audience. Researchers found some groups had at times amassed hundreds of thousands of followers.

Facebook removes hundreds of boogaloo accounts for ‘promoting violence’ in coordinated takedown

The group’s emergence led to a wider examination of the effects of social media on the rise of violent movements, with some making comparisons to foreign militant groups such as the Islamic State.

Carrillo is also accused in a separate killing of a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County. His attorney previously cautioned against a “rush to judgment” in the cases.

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Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, a member of the far-right Proud Boys group who has been seen in numerous videos engaging in street violence with left-wing groups, has been arrested in Oregon in relation to events that took place in Portland protest back August, The Stranger reports.

Toese was captured on video at the so-called "Summer of Love" rally shooting a paintball gun at Antifa protesters, attacking an antifascist protester who was sitting in a truck, and tipping over an empty van that was used to transport Antifa members to the rally. At the same rally, Antifa protesters were captured on video pepper-spraying a female journalist and committing other various acts of violence.

"I know days from now, I might be arrested," he said at the time. "I'm sick and tired, and if we have to die to defend ourselves, our families, and our fucking freedom in America, we're gonna do it."

Toese has been charged with three counts of assault in the second degree, two counts of assault in the third degree, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, two counts of riot, and two counts of criminal mischief.

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Over a dozen historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) reported bomb threats on Tuesday, marking the third wave of such threats in recent weeks. Earlier last month, at least eight HBCUs were targeted, then followed by another wave of threats on Monday. On Wednesday, police told reporters that the threats appear to be linked to someone claiming affiliation with the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division.

Among the schools targeted include Bowie State, Southern, Bethune-Cookman, Albany State, Howard, Delaware State, Mississippi Valley State; Fort Valley State, Morgan State, and Kentucky State universities. Many of them have imposed campus-wide closures to allow law enforcement to sweep the school premises.

While no bombs have been found, the threats have nevertheless instilled an air of anxiety for many students, faculty, and staff.

"I'm uneasy," Calvert White, a junior at Jackson State University, toldCNN. "HBCUs have a long history of physical threats just because of our existence. I think that the threats aren't individual or coincidental – that it's a clear attack on Black students who choose to go to Black schools."

Jamera Forbes, student body president of Morgan State, told The Washington Post that her "main concern is my students' mental health."

"As college students, we already have so much mentally to deal with," said Forbes. "We've tried to push through and overcome so much with covid over the years, and we're just trying to get back to a norm."

"It makes me realize how there are still these terrorists that are trying to stop minorities from advancing or just getting a simple education from a predominantly Black institution," Saigan Boyd, a 19-year-old Spelman College undergrad told CNN. "I'm just ultimately tired of dealing with this level of unsolicited hatred."

This past week, the string of threats continued into Black History Month, which officially commenced on Tuesday.

Both the FBI has said that it is working with law enforcement officials to assess the threats' credulity, and on Wednesday, the agency reportedly identified six "tech savvy" individuals in connection with the threats.

"We take these threats incredibly seriously," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday. "Let me just reiterate that we condemn these disturbing threats and our thoughts are with the students, faculty and staff at these historic institutions."

"The threats against HBCUs today demand a response," echoed Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla. "As a former law enforcement officer I'll keep working to make sure our institutions and law enforcement have the resources they need to keep all of our students and communities safe."

Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said on Wednesday that in a 20-minute phone call on Monday, a caller said bombs containing C-4 explosives would be detonated and a gunman would open fire at lunchtime Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. The caller, Young said, claimed to be affiliated with the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division. Leaders of the far-right hate group were federally sentencedlast month for a plot to intimate journalists reporting on their anti-semitism.

"Does that fit the Atomwaffen bill? It does. In other ways, it could be people who have no affiliation with Atomwaffen but are using it because they know it will create shock value," Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told the Associated Press. "I just think it's too early to tell."

Dr. Steven Newton, a professor of history and political science at Delaware State, told Salon that the threats offer a "teachable moment" about the "America's difficult, ongoing, multi-sensory conversation about race."

"You have to exist and work on an HBCU campus – where I've been over the last 30 years – to realize that you will not run into a young person of color who does not have a very deeply felt anecdote about an interaction with law enforcement, an interaction with people who made them feel unwelcome, or who were threatening for them. I think that's one of the things we sanitized out of the narrative that's very much still a reality."

The threats come amid much broader racial tensions, which have recently manifested through issues related to schooling. In particular, conservative politicians and parents have railed against the use of "critical race theory" in classrooms, arguing that educators at both collegiate and pre-collegiate levels are teaching students to adopt an overly negative view of the country's racial history. This GOP-led push has ushered in dozens of state-level bills designed to crack down "wokeness" in schools, some of which have been signed into law.

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Federal authorities are attempting to disrupt efforts by the "boogaloo bois" movement to incite a violent race war that will bring down the federal government.

"The FBI quietly arrested a man living in Pomona late last month after he apparently attempted to sell gun attachments to a local group of anti-government extremists to make their firearms more deadly and easier to conceal, according to court documents," the Los Angeles Daily News reports. "Matthew Edward Chen was arrested on Jan. 28, about a week after he sold three auto sears — devices that can be attached to a firearm to make it fully automatic — to a purported member of the 'Cali Bois,' a California-based group that subscribes to an ideology known as 'Boogaloo,' an online movement that wants to bring down the U.S. government by encouraging civil war through violent acts."

Chen allegedly sold the auto sears to a second "Cali Bois" member — who was actually an undercover FBI agent — and then invited the agent to his apartment "where he allegedly showed the agent more weapons, silencers, and videos of himself firing guns in the desert."

The FBI agent described the interaction in court documents.

READ: Right-wing extremists wage 'meme war' in race to attract angry Trump fanatics

“Chen then returned to the kitchen with a rifle slung around his neck and carrying a Glock semi-automatic handgun. The handgun had a removable stock. The rifle had a removable silencer,” the FBI explained. “Chen provided the (undercover agent) with instructions regarding how to install an auto sear on the Glock handgun, and demonstrated how…the handgun would operate as a fully automatic firearm.”

The "Boogaloo" movement has a violent history.

"In the complaint, the FBI noted other attacks it believed were inspired by the Boogaloo movement: A 2019 shooting at the Earl Cabell Federal Building in Dallas, in which only the attacker was killed; and two 2020 shootings in Northern California, in which Steven Carrillo, an active-duty U.S. Air Force servicemember, was charged with killing a security guard outside a federal building in Oakland and a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department deputy," the newspaper reported. "According to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, which posted the criminal complaint against Chen, at least six Boogaloo members have been arrested in California since 2021, including two who later pleaded guilty to attempting to help Carrillo avoid arrest by federal agents. Around the country, at least 44 people espousing Boogaloo ideology have been arrested in the last two years, according to the program."

The FBI alleges "Cali Bois" movement "maintains active chapters" serving the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego areas.

Chen was released after posting $120,000 bond.

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White-supremacist groups continued in 2021 to distribute propaganda at a historically high rate, a report published Thursday says, part of what some experts call an increasingly panicked reaction to growing diversity in America.

The Anti-Defamation League’s research found 4,851 reported cases of white-supremacist propaganda in 2021, including racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ items. That’s down 5 percent from 2020 but way up from 294 cases in 2017, when the anti-hate organization began observing a rise in white-supremacist activity.
ADL researchers found 1,206 incidents of propaganda in 2018 and 2,714 in 2019.

The ADL found a 27 percent increase in distributions of antisemitic propaganda, with 277 incidents in 2020 and 352 in 2021, including stickers outside a California synagogue proclaiming “Hitler was right” and dozens of drops across the country of fliers blaming Jews for the coronavirus.

Carla Hill, the report’s author and associate director of the ADL Center On Extremism, said white-supremacist activity and organizing took off in the past decade as racists became “more and more desperate, losing the chance to have America be White. And 2017 was the pinnacle point.”

Antisemitic tropes cited by the Texas synagogue hostage-taker have deep roots

Hill said there was a buildup of white-supremacist groups leading up to the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Before then, such groups had focused on college campuses. However, the event was considered a failure, she said, and the different groups “only held it together for a little while after and then fractured.”

More than a dozen of the nation’s most prominent white supremacists and hate groups involved in the deadly Unite the Right rally were found liable in November by a jury who said the men and their racist organizations should pay $26 million in damages.

After Charlottesville, Hill said, the movement shifted to anonymous distribution of propaganda.

Throughout 2021, at least 38 white-supremacist groups distributed propaganda, but three groups — Patriot Front, New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA) and Folkish Resistance Movement (FRM), formerly known as Folksfront — were responsible for 91 percent of the incidents, the ADL report found.

Patriot Front was behind more than 82 percent of incidents and was most active in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, Texas and Maryland. In 2021, it destroyed Black Lives Matter statues and murals, stole and burned pro-diversity and pro-LGBTQ yard signs and flags, and distributed propaganda at Jewish institutions, the ADL report said.

The top distributors in 2021 of antisemitic propaganda were FRM, NJEHA, White Lives Matter and Goyim Defense League.

Montgomery County police investigate antisemitic fliers

Hill said new white-supremacist networks are forming and are focused on distributing propaganda, an activity that they see as less risky and that enables a small number of people to create a disproportionately greater impact.

“In 2021, ADL documented 108 White supremacist events, more than double the 53 events held in 2020, and the most events recorded in any of the past five years,” the report found. The surge is related partially to the organizing of flash demonstrations and the focus on having events monthly.

The neo-Nazi Nationalist Social Club (NSC) held the most flash demonstrations of any group, the ADL said, including a demonstration in front of the Holocaust Memorial in Boston and a protest of critical race theory outside a school board meeting in New Hampshire.

White supremacists also held private gatherings such as white-power music concerts and conferences, the ADL said.

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DENVER (AP) — Jurors on Friday found police used excessive force against protesters, violating their constitutional rights, during demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd two years ago, ordering the city to pay a total of $14 million in damages to a group of 12 who sued.

The jury of two men and six women, largely white and drawn from around Colorado, returned its verdict after about four hours of deliberations. The verdict followed three weeks of testimony and evidence that included police and protester video of incidents.

Lawyers involved believed it was the first trial in a lawsuit challenging officer tactics during the 2020 protests that erupted around the nation over the police killing of Floyd and other Black people.

The protesters who sued were shot at or hit by everything from pepper spray to a Kevlar-bag filled with lead shot fired from a shotgun. Zach Packard, who was hit in the head by the shotgun blast and ended up in the intensive care unit, received the largest damage amount — $3 million.

One of the protesters’ lawyers, Timothy Macdonald, had urged jurors to send a message to police in Denver and elsewhere by finding the city liable during closing arguments.

“Hopefully, what police departments will take from this is a jury of regular citizens takes these rights very seriously,” he said after the verdict.

Elisabeth Epps, a lawyer and activist who was one of the protesters who sued, said the attorneys for the city she loves gaslighted the protesters during the trial, questioning their account of what happened. At one point, a lawyer for Denver called her a “professional protester” after she testified that she had attended protests since she was a child and had received training about how to respond to being tear-gassed. She grew emotional talking about what it meant to have the jury side with the protesters.

“It feels like being seen,” Epps said.

The protesters said the actions of police violated their free speech rights and rights to be protected from unreasonable force. Jurors found violations of both rights for 11 of the protesters and only free speech violations for the other. The protesters claimed Denver was liable for the police’s actions through its policies, including giving officers wide discretion in using what police call “less lethal” devices, failing to train officers on them, and not requiring them to use their body-worn cameras during the protests to deter indiscriminate uses of force.

During the trial, Denver admitted that mistakes were made at the protests, which it says were unprecedented in their size, duration and amount of violence and destruction. Over 80 officers were injured as protesters hurled rocks, water bottles and canned food at them, and the state Capitol, the hub of the protests, incurred $1.1 million in damage, according to the city. Lawyers for the protesters who sued stressed they were not accused of being violent themselves.

One of Denver’s lawyers, Lindsay Jordan, told jurors that the city had planned a large training in crowd control in the spring of 2020 because of the upcoming presidential election, but it was canceled because of COVID-19. She stressed that mistakes made by officers during the protests do not automatically equate to constitutional violations, noting thousands of people returned to exercise their free speech rights despite the force police used over the five days of demonstrations.

“The violence and destruction that occurred around the community required intervention,” she said.

Five Denver police officers have been disciplined for their actions during the protests, according to the department. Another officer, who was new and still on probation, was fired during the protests after posting a photo of himself and others dressed in tactical gear on social media with the comment “Let’s start a riot.”

Aggressive responses from officers to people protesting police brutality nationally have led to financial settlements, the departures of police chiefs and criminal charges.

In Austin, Texas, officials have agreed to pay over $13 million to peopleinjured in protests in May 2020, and 19 officers have been indicted for their actions against protesters. Last month, two police officers in Dallas accused of injuring protesters after firing less lethal munitions were charged.

However, in 2021, a federal judge dismissed most of the claims filed by activists and civil liberties groups over the forcible removal of protesters by police before then-President Donald Trump walked to a church near the White House for a photo op.

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CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago City Council has voted to pay nearly $1.7 million to five people, including a Black woman who said police dragged her from a car by her hair at a shopping mall amid unrest following George Floyd’s 2020 killing.

The council voted 34-13 Wednesday to approve the $1.67 million settlement of a federal civil rights lawsuit Mia Wright and four relatives filed against the city.

Wright was a passenger in a car that arrived at the Brickyard Mall on May 31, 2020, amid widespread looting in the days after Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Wright said she and four relatives drove to the mall to go shopping and did not realize it was closed due to the unrest. The lawsuit alleges police officers suddenly surrounded their car, broke the windows with their batons and pulled Wright out of the vehicle by her hair.

Wright alleged that the confrontation left her blind in one eye from flying glass caused by police breaking the car windows.

Officers said they thought some members of Wright’s group were attempting to break into a store at the mall to steal goods, city lawyer Caroline Fronczak has said, but the officers also acknowledged nobody in the group matched the descriptions of the suspected looters.

After an investigation, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability recommended eight officers face discipline for their actions in the incident, ranging from firing to reprimands, and Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown agreed with the recommendations, Fronczak said.

Under terms of the settlement, Wright will receive $650,000 in damages, while the other four people who were in the car with her will get $243,750 each, WBBM-TV reported.

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On an appearance on a show hosted by Trump campaign attorney and conspiracy theorist Jenna Ellis, Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse complained that President Joe Biden hasn't responded to his phone calls.

"I reached out to Joe Biden several times," said Rittenhouse. "Crickets. Nothing. He still hasn’t replied. So it just shows how much of a man he is to not sit down and talk."

Rittenhouse traveled from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020 with an AR-15 style rifle, in response to civil rights protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police, which ended with him fatally shooting two people an injuring a third. He was charged with multiple counts of intentional homicide but was acquitted, after arguing that the killings were lawful self-defense.

He has since demanded a sit-down with Biden, who used Rittenhouse's picture in a tweet attacking former President Donald Trump for "refus[ing] to disavow white supremacists," to "tell him the facts of what happened".

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Two Washington men connected to the white nationalist group Patriot Front are facing charges related to the vandalizing of a Pride mural. They were also arrested last month and charged with attempting to riot at a Coeur d’Alene Pride festival back in June, Fox13 reports.

Before a building in downtown Olympia was torn down, residents commissioned a mural to go up on the building that read, "Respect and Love Olympia." The mural was then defaced in October 2021, and evidence of the deed posted online in a video that showed a group of masked Patriot Front members slipping through a cut fence and spray-painting over the mural.

The suspects are now charged with aiding and abetting graffiti, a misdemeanor. Colton Brown and Spencer Simpson were also among 31 Patriot Front memberswho were arrested by Coeur d’Alene Police and charged with attempting to riot at the town’s Pride festival.

READ: Jan. 6 panel to pinpoint one single decision Trump made that set Capitol violence into motion: reporter

Anna Schlecht from Unity in the Community says she wants the two to pay restitution for what volunteers had to cover up.

Police are using the video to identify more members.

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Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed an indicted Austin police officer accused of using excessive force during 2020 protests to Texas’ regulatory law enforcement agency.

Justin Berry was among 19 Austin police officers indicted earlier this year in the protests spurred by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Berry is charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant.

He also ran as a Republican for Texas House District 19 but lost in the primary runoff election this year. Abbott had endorsed Berry in the race, saying his “strong conservative values and experience stopping violent crime are exactly what we need in the Texas House.”

Now, at the governor’s hand, Berry will serve on the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which sets minimum licensing and training standards for police. Abbott did not immediately respond to The Texas Tribune's request for comment, but in a press release announcing Berry’s appointment Friday, he said the commission ensures “that the people of Texas are served by highly trained and ethical law enforcement, corrections, and telecommunications personnel.” Berry posted a statement to Twitter on Friday but did not respond to requests for comment.

“The demands and expectations of today’s professional police officer have never been so great,” Berry said about his appointment via Twitter. “I look forward to ensuring Texas has the best police officers in the world. Ensuring those who answer the call to serve their respective communities have the training and resources necessary to be set up for success are a priority to not only keeping Texan’s safe but ensuring trust is earned and maintained by those very communities.”

Sara Mokuria, co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, said Abbott’s decision to appoint Berry to TCOLE is dangerous, not based in public safety and flies in the face of “what’s in the best interests of Texans.”

“This is an indicted officer who is now part of the body licensing and regulating law enforcement agencies,” Mokuria said. “It’s a move in the wrong direction, and it makes us unsafe. And, quite frankly, it’s a message that has been reiterated from the governor’s mansion over and over again, whether that be families in Uvalde who were not safe to send their kids to school, or all Texas residents during the winter storm. Our lives and our safety have consistently been put at risk because of this governor.”

Berry’s exact role in the Floyd protests is unclear, but Austin officers grievously wounded several people after shooting them with “less-lethal” ammunition in the head. That included a 20-year-old Black man police said was not their intended target after a man nearby tossed a water bottle and backpack up toward steps where police were in formation. Video also showed a 16-year-old Hispanic boy collapsing to the ground after police fired a beanbag bullet at him while he was standing alone near the freeway.

The violent police tactics during the protests against police violence were heavily criticized. Along with the indictments of 19 officers, the city of Austin agreed to a $10 million civil settlement with two men shot by police with beanbag rounds, including the 20-year-old.

Chas Moore, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, said Abbott appointing Berry despite his indictment “isn’t surprising.” Moore feels the governor said all of the politically correct things after Floyd’s murder but followed up with inaction.

“He’s never cared about making sure that everybody can be safe,” the activist said. “He doesn’t care about the national conversation that happened in 2020, where every state had some form of protest for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, you know. He’s a diehard Texas Republican.”

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hanimmal said:

Im glad Biden is finally actually able to turn his focus on the hate mongering domestic terrorists that are trying to tear our society apart.

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