Activist Shaun King is under fire for threatening to dox police officers as Jacob Blake‘s shooter if the Kenosha Police Department delays releasing the officer’s identity.
“If you do not name the officer who brutally shot Jacob Blake on Sunday, we will simply begin naming officers from your department who may or may not be him,” said King in a tweet. “Fuck it. Your protection of his identity is unethical. What’s his name?”
King later tweeted that he has “guards outside of my house right now because we caught police literally plotting to kill me” and that he’s “not the one for finding ways to feel sorry for police departments after they murder and maim Black folk.”
“The whole system is corrupt. ALL OF IT.”
Conservative and far right-wing commentators are painting King as a “racist” and a “terrorist” who should be banned from Twitter for what they deemed a dangerous act.
Daily Caller writer Jordan Lancaster tweeted that King “is openly doxxing random police officers to his 1.1 million followers. This could get someone killed.”
Carmine Sabia (@carminesabia) of sabiareport.com wrote, disparaging King and noting the sexual assault accusation against Blake, “Typical of terrorist Shaun King. He should be in prison for all of the hoaxes he has started and lives he has endangered. We also do not know the name of the teenager Jacob Blake raped.”
The sexual assault charge, a matter of public record, was tweeted out by OAN’s Jack Posobiec to cast the police shooting of Blake in a justified light.
Breitbart News writer John Hayward compared King to Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in a tweet:
“Can Twitter give us an itemized list of the people who are allowed to use the platform to encourage lethal violence against their political enemies?” he asked. “So far I’ve got Shaun King and the Ayatollah of Iran. Can we get the rest of the names, please?”
However, while many are standing with King in solidarity, much of the talk on Twitter from those within the Black Lives Matter movement is equally dismissive of King’s motives.
Activist and Rewire News editor Imani Gandy got specific about King’s more recent issues, tweeting: “Bree Newsome, Ashley Yates, and the myriad Black women who have said this are 100% right: Shaun King is a chaos agent. The Jazmyne Barnes [sic] disaster should’ve been enough to convince most people but people stay keeping their head in the sand.”
Robert Cantrell was found dead in his cell months after his photo went viral as a suspect in the death of seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes. The 49-year-old was wrongly accused in a now-deleted Twitter post by King. The inmate resembled the sketch initially released in the investigation of Barnes’ murder but was not charged.
Initially incarcerated on a charge of robbery/evading arrest, Cantrell was found by staff at the Montgomery County Jail on July 23, hanged in an apparent suicide.
Two other men, Eric Black and Larry Woodruffe were later charged for Barnes’ death.
This story has been updated.