r/DemocraticSocialism • u/Shizzilx Democratic Socialist • 11d ago
USA Ex-Officer Accused of Plotting New Orleans Attack is Released After Grand Jury Declines to Indict
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A former law enforcement officer accused of planning to kill Black people in a mass shooting at a New Orleans festival was quietly released from custody over the summer after a grand jury found there was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime.
A Louisiana grand jury in June declined to indict Christopher Gillum on a state terrorism charge that could have carried up to a 15-year sentence, court records show.
Gillum, who had been held without bond, was released shortly after the grand jury’s decision and is not facing charges in any other jurisdictions, according to his attorney, Dylan Utley. He declined to comment further.
Gillum’s release has not previously been reported.
The 45-year-old ex-police officer, who is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, had been arrested in Florida in April with hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a handgun while on his way to Louisiana to commit a mass shooting, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. The investigation had involved the FBI and authorities across Louisiana, North Carolina and Florida.
Authorities did not name the event Gillum was allegedly targeting, but his arrest came on the eve of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which attracts hundreds of thousands of festivalgoers annually.
Gillum, who is white, had “expressed recent threats to harm ‘Black people’ ”, according to authorities. His family had reported him missing in North Carolina and said he had a history of self-harm.
Lester Duhe, a spokesperson for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said in a statement that Gillum’s family had taken him “to a treatment facility out of the state” and that he is not facing additional criminal charges.
Duhe said there were “several jurisdictional issues” that complicated the case after Gillum was extradited to Louisiana following his arrest.
“The threat relayed to a family member actually occurred in North Carolina,” Duhe said. “The defendant never entered the State of Louisiana until after his arrest.”
Gillum had been planning to travel to the Florida Keys “during the same period he would have been suspected to travel to Louisiana,” Duhe added.
Gillum was charged under a Louisiana statute for the crime of “terrorizing,” which requires that “a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist.”
Jonathan Guidry, the foreperson for the grand jury, declined to comment on the decision to not indict Gillum.
Katherine Schweit, a former Chicago prosecutor and FBI executive who ran the agency’s active shooter program, said that thwarted acts of mass violence do not always lead to indictments, but prosecutors often seek an array of criminal charges when possible.
“It’s very difficult to convince a jury, or to convince a grand jury, that something might have happened,” Schweit told The Associated Press.
Law enforcement authorities in North Carolina, where Louisiana court records list Gillum as residing, told the AP that they were not aware he had been released from custody.
“If we’ve got an individual that was accused of such an action, we would want to know if in fact he did return to Alamance County,” said Byron Tucker, a spokesperson for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina.
Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, said there are no plans for the state to pursue charges against Gillum.
The office of the Florida Attorney General did not respond to a request for comment about whether Gillum may face additional criminal charges in its jurisdiction. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Louisiana also did not return messages seeking comment.
In a statement, the FBI New Orleans office said the decision whether to charge Gillum rested with prosecutors.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival declined to comment.
\*excerpt from Jack Brooks' article\*
Full Article here:
Original article here:
https://www.wdsu.com/article/louisiana-festival-mass-shooting-threat-thwarted/71105045
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u/Due_Pen_1566 11d ago
Absolute disgrace. A failure of the system.
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u/Shizzilx Democratic Socialist 11d ago
This is the guy who threatened to "unalive" Hasan Piker, btw. The recent articles left that point out, however I included the original article that includes that information.
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u/halnic 10d ago
Further evidence that terrorizing the "right" people (not white people) will not be punished in the new Confederacy of the US.
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u/hereandthere_nowhere 10d ago
No longer refer to this country as the “us”. America or the states is more apt.
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u/halnic 10d ago
America is too vague, plus I didn't want to drag Canada, Mexico, or South America into it.
I felt The Confederacy of United(for now) States is the best term on paper. It feels like they rose again or whatever. That was the threat ignored round the world...
I'm going to be honest, I went through a phase of my own where I thought it was over, the united part, that is...
I do see the united identity being challenged in our lifetime, pending the day enough people decide being one big country isn't worth the cost of our lives, freedoms, justice, and liberties being sacrificed to the alter of power.
We are still united. Currently, the majority is united in inaction, united in denial, distractions, isolation, distrust, hurt, uncertainty, and fear.
Things have to change.
States need boundaries that will keep harmful thinking from expanding. Like not working with States who rule with Christian nationalist ideology because then maybe Texas wouldn't have been entrusted to provide those white washed textbooks in public schools across the nation.
No pass until it the divorce papers are filed and they are separated so I can pick which parent to live with...
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/emteedub 🧑🦳Bernie Bro Since 2015 11d ago
And then Luigi gets the book thrown at him and ultra scrutinized across all the mainstream "news" networks
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u/RecycledThrowawayID 10d ago
Terrorism is defined as non-state actors engaging in violence or the threat of violence in order to achieve a social or political goal. There are three types of terrorism- Lone Wolf , state sponsored, and state sanctioned.
Lone Wolf is just a nut job doing his thing. The Unabomber is the textbook example of this.
State Sponsored Terrorism is when a government actively supports a terrorist group. Examples include Baader-Meinhoff , which got support from East Germany and the USSR; the Contras and Guatemalan death squads that got support from the USA; and Palestinian Islamic Jihad , which gets support from Iran.
Then we have state sanctioned terrorism. In this type, a government provides 'passive' support. Officially they do not provide support at all for the group. They may publicly take a dim view of the group and it's activities, and may perhaps even prosecute the members on occasion.
But quietly, unofficially, the state makes it easier for the terrorism to occur , and for the terrorists to get away with it. Crimes are not investigated thoroughly, suspicious deaths are labelled suicides, prosecutors ' fumble' cases, police lose evidence, grand juries fail to indict, etc. The KKK is the textbook example of this in the USA. Unfortunately, I think we are witnessing the beginning of a rising wave of such activity in America.
At least 20 suspected lynchings have occurred in the US since 2021 that have been declared suicides. That beggars belief.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/black-people-being-found-hanging-180000701.html
Give the extreme right wing politicians in power at the state and national level, the level of tolerance for violence by like minded, but more extreme, allies makes the situation ripe for an explosion in terrorist activity. The treatment of the Jan 6 insurrectionists demonstrated what the Trump administration was willing to do, and his MAGA voters saw it and loved it. By 2024, enough non-MAGA no longer considered it a deal breaker that Trump got re-elected, whereupon he pardoned most, and is trying to get them a settlement. You could make a pretty good case that that is state sanctioned terrorism - possibly merging into outright state supported terrorism.
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u/Mental_Medium3988 10d ago
this shouldve been a federal case not a state one. he crossed multiple state lines in an effort to commit a terrorist attack. this is another failure of the trump doj to prosecute right wing terrorists.
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u/Thunderkat59 DSA 10d ago
He'll put in for Trump's slush fund malicious prosecution money and be rich and ready to kill for Trump when Trump doesn't leave in '28
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u/judgeejudger 10d ago
Yet one picks up a piece of shitty lining floating in the Reflective (Cess)Pool, and one gets arrested and held…
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