Statement on Police and FBI Harassment of Silent Sam Defendant

A statement on recent FBI and police harassment in North Carolina.

On Tuesday, September 4th, at 5:37 pm, I was contacted by a Captain of my local police department in Western NC. He expressed that he had received a call from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (agent name not specified), in which they requested he set up a time for them to meet with me.

I expressed that as the FBI had no warrant or subpoena for me, I would not be meeting or cooperating with them, and directed all further inquiries to my attorney.

For context, I am one of the folks arrested in connection with the toppling of Silent Sam on August 20th, 2018. The Captain expressed to me that my name had come up regarding that arrest, but that the FBI agent did not disclose the nature of the questions they wished to ask me.

Several days later, my attorney was able to speak with a FBI agent, who claimed the reason for the attempted meeting was due to my pistol purchase permit. The exact claim of the agent was that when an individual is arrested, and immediately applies for a PPP, it sets off an algorithm of sorts that makes the FBI set up a meeting, to ascertain that the individual was not attempting to purchase the pistol with nefarious intent. As a note of clarification, I did not, in fact, apply for the PPP after my arrest, but the day before. It was in “pending” status on 8/20/18.

While it is easy to speculate that the whole incident is related to silent Sam coming down, we don’t have any concrete evidence of that at the moment. It is important to remember that the FBI is less interested in the specifics of any one protest than curbing the movement against white supremacy and state violence that have rapidly been growing and intensifying over the past few years.

Regardless, it is a good time to refresh your knowledge on what to do if you are approached by federal or state agents, or local cops. I reaffirm my commitment to not talking to or working with any authorities, and hope everyone reading this will do the same. For a quick primer on what to do if you are approached by the so called “authorities”, check out: Knock on the Front Door: Preparing for Repression.

Love and rage,
A WNC Comrade

photo: Dave Newman via Flikr (CC BY 2.0)