Utah AG suspends state contract with Banjo in light of founder’s KKK past

NewRoxFan · Apr 28, 2020

Wow.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office will suspend use of a massive surveillance system after a news report showed that the founder of the company behind the effort was once an active participant in a white supremacist group and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue. Damien Patton, who helped launch and now leads the secretive Park City-based startup Banjo, was part of the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a 17 year old and joined a leader of the group in a drive-by shooting of a synagogue in a Nashville suburb, according to a report by the online outlet OneZero citing transcripts of courtroom testimony, sworn statements and more than 1,000 pages of records produced from a federal hate crime prosecution.
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Utah officials in 2018 had awarded Patton’s company a sole-source, $750,000 contract to provide massive real-time surveillance of 911 calls, social media and traffic cameras. The company has also signed a $20.7 million contract with the state.
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Patton, according to OneZero, had “admitted to participating in white supremacist talks and meetings, where, according to his own testimony, speakers advocated for the elimination of Blacks and Jews, among other beliefs built around racism and religious discrimination.” Attorney General Sean Reyes’s office “is shocked and dismayed at reports that Banjo’s founder had any affiliation with any hate group or groups in his youth,” said Reyes’ spokesman, Richard Piatt. “Neither the attorney general nor anyone in the Attorney General’s Office were aware of these affiliations or actions. They are indefensible. He has said so himself.”
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https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/04/28/utah-attorney-general/?utm_source=pushly

jiggyfly · Apr 28, 2020

NewRoxFan said: ↑

Wow.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/04/28/utah-attorney-general/?utm_source=pushly
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Not sure I like this.

Do we all want to be judged on what we did as a 17 year old.

Did he serve his time?

Is he still affiliated with any of these type of groups?

The more perplexing issue is the program he was tasked to oversee, now that sounds fishy.

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Utah AG suspends state contract with Banjo in light of founder’s KKK past

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