Micah Johnson sought to join a black militant group two years before he targeted white police officers for death but was turned away after a background check.
After being sent home from Afghanistan for stealing women’s underwear, Johnson was discharged from the Army in late summer 2014 just as the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were energizing the nascent Black Lives Matter movement. With his Army identity shattered, Johnson then sought a new one in the black power movement by joining one of several groups that believe in armed resistance against white society, especially police.
Before he could join, though, a tipster asked a man in the Dallas-area movement to screen Johnson for involvement in black activist groups.
Ken Moore of the Collective Black People’s Movement (CBPM) said that he was asked to look into Johnson by an unidentified black activist group. When he discovered the Army veteran was discharged for sexual harassment, he labelled him “unfit for recruitment.”
Malik Shabazz, former chair of the New Black Panther Party, told The Daily Beast that the background check system described by Moore effectively blacklisted Johnson from membership in black nationalist and black liberation groups across the country.
“Once you’re blacklisted by the alert that we put out, that’s a rap,” Moore told The Daily Beast.
Though shunned from groups like the People’s New Black Panther Party and the Black Riders Liberation Party, Johnson continued attending protests and events in the area, according to multiple people within the Dallas activist community.
Online, Johnson was loosely affiliated with the African American Defense League, the Black Riders Liberation Party, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and South Dallas’ Muhammad Mosque Number 48, which is run by acolytes of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Both the Houston and Dallas chapters of the People’s New Black Panther Party said unequivocally that Johnson was never a member of either group.
“He was basically seen as a loner, a sympathizer,” Moore said.
