White Domestic Terrorists Killed His Son. Bob Paudert Is A Chief-Of-Police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/23/domestic-terrorists-killed-his-son-he-wants-trump-to-remember-america-makes-extremists-too/?utm_term=.0360216c86bf
Domestic Terrorists Killed His Son. He wants Trump to remember that America makes extremists, too.
By Peter Holley February 23 at 7:00 AM
If you ask Bob Paudert how many times he has watched the unwatchable — a heinous video of his only son being gunned down on an Arkansas highway — the retired lawman can only give you an estimate.
"Thousands of times, if I had to guess," he said recently. "Easily."
Brandon Paudert, a seven-year veteran officer with the West Memphis Police Department, was killed in 2010 alongside his partner, Bill Evans, during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 40. The officers were fatally shot by a 16-year-old, Joseph T. Kane, and his father, Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, both of them members of the sovereign citizens movement — a far-right, antigovernment group whose adherents believe they're constitutionally exempt from U.S. laws.
Bob Paudert, the West Memphis chief of police at the time, was among the first to arrive at the scene and vividly recalls the moment he discovered his 39-year-old son's bullet-riddled body lying faceup in the middle of the road.
"I found him with the back of his head shot off," Paudert told The Washington Post. "It was a horrible, horrible scene. I didn't care about going to work after that. I lost my passion for law enforcement that day."
The officers' killings were a wake-up call for law enforcement, raising awareness about the threat far-right extremists pose to officers. The double-slaying led the FBI to classify sovereigns as a growing "domestic terrorist movement" in a bulletin published by the agency the following year.
https://leb.fbi.gov/2011/september/sovereign-citizens-a-growing-domestic-threat-to-law-enforcement
Now, Paudert and other experts in homegrown extremist movements fear that the Trump administration is ignoring that threat as officials shift federal resources to root out Islamic extremism.
Reuters recently reported that the administration plans to rename "Countering Violent Extremism" (CVE) — a Department of Homeland Security program that funds local terrorism prevention efforts — to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism."
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-idUSKBN15O2QT
The news was met by strong resistance from Democratic politicians such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who joined 10 other senators in drafting a letter to Cabinet secretaries warning that ignoring far-right groups "would severely damage our credibility with foreign allies and partners as an honest broker in the fight against violent extremism, and prove divisive in communities across our country."
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment about CVE and how the Trump administration plans to prioritize far-right groups such as the sovereign citizens.
Paudert went public with his concerns on the Trace, in an as-told-to commentary headlined: "My Son Was Murdered in the Line of Duty by Right-Wing Extremists. Trump Should Focus on the Threat Posed by 'Sovereign Citizens.'"
https://www.thetrace.org/2017/02/right-wing-extremists-sovereign-citizens-target-law-enforcement-trump/
Using information from government reports and the trials of tax protesters, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated in 2011 that the number of people testing out sovereign techniques nationwide was about 300,000, with one-third of those being "hardcore sovereign believers." Among the movement's best-known acolytes is Terry Nichols, who helped plan the Oklahoma City bombing, according to the FBI.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/sovereign-citizens-movement
https://leb.fbi.gov/2011/september/sovereign-citizens-a-growing-domestic-threat-to-law-enforcement
Mobilized by economic uncertainty and fears that the federal government planned to confiscate people's firearms, far-right groups increased dramatically in number nationwide during President Obama's eight years in office, experts say.
Even so, Paudert cautioned, the sovereign ideology is apolitical in nature and attracts followers from inside and outside the mainstream — regardless of who's running the federal government.
"A lot of people think these are disgruntled people who are out of work, but doctors, lawyers and FBI agents have all been involved with sovereign citizens," Paudert said. "They hate government and they're willing to kill and be killed for their beliefs."
Of the 66 criminal justice/military homicides perpetrated by al-Qaeda and its associated movement and far-right extremists from 1990 to 2015, 54 of those deaths — more than 80 percent — came at the hands of the far right, according to an analysis by the University of Maryland's START (Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) program.