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Damien Patton (born July 11, 1972) is known for being a founder of the American software company Banjo and as a NASCAR mechanic. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. After Patton's links to the KKK were discovered, in 2020, Banjo had several contracts suspended. He also resigned as CEO in May of that year. He is a Navy veteran.
Patton was born July 11, 1972. [1]
Patton says he lived under the freeway in Los Angeles from age fifteen on. He shaved his head and affiliated with white supremacist Skinheads. Texas KKK member Jesse Albert Johnson took him to Tennessee; Johnson wanted to move the James O. Pace organization there and open a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. [2]
Patton has confirmed his membership in the KKK, Aryan Nations, and involvement with the white power skinheads, which he called "the foot soldiers for groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations", and admitted to painting swastikas and "KKK" on buildings, as well as impersonating an FBI agent. OneZero republished a picture printed in The Tennessean of Patton at an Aryan Nations meeting where he and other members are giving the Nazi salute. [3] [1] He also built a house for Christian music producer Jonathan David Brown, and worked as a "maintenance man" at an apartment complex, where he purchased weapons for Brown. [4] [1]
After attending an Aryan Nations meeting with Brown.[ when? ]
In June 1990, when Patton was seventeen, he was involved in a drive-by shooting of a synagogue as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He drove Grand Knight Leonard William Armstrong during a drive-by shooting with a TEC-9 on the West End Synagogue. Police arrested Patton and confiscated an AK-47. He was then released and shortly fled the state. In November, he returned to Tennessee. [1]
Patton joined the U.S. Navy in February 1991. [1] In a 2015 Inc. profile, he said he wanted to enlist after seeing the 1990 Gulf War on TV. He said he rose up the ranks on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk , leaving after two tours, ending up in San Diego, California. [5] By 1992, he was on the aircraft carrier USS America (CV-66).[ citation needed ]
He admitted to fraternizing with Skinheads in the Navy during Brown's 1992 trial over the KKK shooting. In the trial he indicated he pled guilty to a juvenile offence in exchange for providing testimony. [1]
Patton said he had a "building and construction company I started as a kid", and sold it when in his mid-20s. [6]
After starting on a NASCAR pit crew in 1993, he became the chief mechanic on a NASCAR team sponsored by Lowe's. His NASCAR career lasted eight years.[ citation needed ] Patton told Inc. that he got his degree from University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Bryant School of Business in three years while working for NASCAR, graduating magna cum laude. [4] [5] [6]
He then[ when? ] was a crime scene investigator for Davidson, North Carolina Police Department while still working full-time. [7] [8] [5] [6] [4]
Later a profile said he moved to Hawaii and got into wood flooring, including manufacturing, selling it in 2006. [4] [5] [6] [8]
By 2009 Patton was taking graduate classes at MIT, commuting from Las Vegas to Boston. [5]
After hackathons in 2010 and 2011, Patton founded Banjo, then called Peer Compass, as a localized friend-finding app. By 2014 Banjo had pivoted to AI event detection of surveillance video for public safety, gaining a $20 million contract for the State of Utah in 2019 and attention from privacy advocates. When Patton's ties to the KKK were uncovered in April 2020, the company experienced significant negative publicity, and their government contracts with Utah and Indiana were suspended. [9]
In April 2020, Matt Stroud of OneZero uncovered CEO Patton's involvement with the Nashville, Tennessee-based Dixie Knights chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. [1]
On May 8, 2020, Patton resigned from the board and as CEO of Banjo, removing all his decision making authority. [10] [11] [12] [13]
Patton was married to Lynn Battistelli of Memphis,TN and had one child - at the time of his grand jury testimony in September 1991. [1] [14] [15]
By 2015, Patton was married to Jennifer Peck, who worked at Banjo. [16]
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi organization in the United States which was founded and formerly led by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. It was based in Warsaw, Indiana, and it was also incorporated as a business. In 1993, the group expanded into Canada in what they dubbed operation Maple leaf.
A Kleagle is an officer of the Ku Klux Klan whose main role is to recruit new members and must maintain the three guiding principles: recruit, maintain control, and safeguard.
The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) is a white supremacist, white nationalist, neo-Nazi paramilitary organization. Until the late 2000s, it was the second largest Klan group in the United States, and at one point in the early 2000s, it was the largest. In 2008, the IKA was reported to have at least 23 chapters in 17 states, most of which were small.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Thomas Robb is an American white supremacist, Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Christian Identity pastor. He is the National Director of the Knights Party, also known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, taking control of the organization since the year 1989.
Jonathan David Brown was an American record producer and audio engineer known for his work on albums released in the Contemporary Christian music industry. Brown served federal prison time as an accessory after the fact for helping a member of the Tennessee White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan evade authorities.
The national leader of the Ku Klux Klan is called either a Grand Wizard or an Imperial Wizard, depending on which KKK organization is being described.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Ku Klux Klan organization which is active in the United States. It originated in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Imperial Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi were formed in December 1963, when they separated from the Original Knights after the resignation of Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Roughly 200 members of the Original Knights of Louisiana also joined the White Knights. The White Knights were not interested in holding public demonstrations nor were they interested in letting any information about themselves get out to the masses. Similar to the United Klans of America (UKA), the White Knights of Mississippi were very secretive about their group. Within a year, their membership was up to around six thousand, and they had Klaverns in over half of the counties in Mississippi. By 1967, the number of active members had shrunk to around four hundred.
Bill Riccio is a leader in the white power skinhead movement in the United States who gained public notoriety for his appearance in the 1993 documentary Skinheads: Soldiers of the Race War. He has been convicted numerous times on illegal weapon possession charges, the most recent of which was in 1992.
Ian Verner Macdonald was a Canadian trade diplomat and entrepreneur, known for his controversial associations with far-right figures and groups.
The Redneck Shop was a white nationalist and neo-Nazi clothing store and meeting hub in Laurens, South Carolina, which sold T-shirts, bumper stickers, and Ku Klux Klan robes, among other things.
The Meridian race riot of 1871 was a race riot in Meridian, Mississippi in March 1871. It followed the arrest of freedmen accused of inciting riot in a downtown fire, and blacks' organizing for self-defense. Although the local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter had attacked freedmen since the end of the Civil War, generally without punishment, the first local arrest under the 1870 act to suppress the Klan was of a freedman. This angered the black community. During the trial of black leaders, the presiding judge was shot in the courtroom, and a gunfight erupted that killed several people. In the ensuing mob violence, whites killed as many as 30 blacks over the next few days. Democrats drove the Republican mayor from office, and no person was charged or tried in the freedmen's deaths.
Banjo is a Utah-based surveillance software company that claimed to use AI to identify events for public safety agencies. It was founded in 2010 by Damien Patton. The company gained notoriety in 2020 when the State of Utah signed a $20 million contract for their "panopticon" software. In May, the company experienced backlash and suspending of contracts after Patton's membership in the Ku Klux Klan and participation in a drive-by terrorist attack on a synagogue was revealed.
Thomas Linton Metzger was an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi skinhead leader and Klansman. He founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a neo-nazi organization, in 1983. He was a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Metzger voiced strong opposition to immigration to the United States, and was an advocate of the Third Position. He was incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California, and Toronto, Ontario, and was the subject of several lawsuits and government inquiries. He, his son, and WAR were fined $12 million as a result of the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, 28, an Ethiopian student, by skinheads in Portland, Oregon, affiliated with WAR.
West End Synagogue, originally Khal Kodesh Adath Israel and known for a while as the Gay Street Synagogue, is a congregation in Nashville, Tennessee. It is Conservative and dates to the 1850s.
Leonard William Armstrong was a Grand Dragon of the White Knights, Tennessee's Ku Klux Klan. On the night of June 10, 1990 with Damien Patton driving, Armstrong shot at the West End Synagogue, which was empty, with a TEC-9. The two were later assisted by Christian music producer and KKK member Jonathan David Brown. He was indicted for civil rights violations in December 1991 and pleaded guilty, taking a plea bargain, in April 1992. He served 42 months in prison. Talking with OneZero in 2020, Armstrong was remorseful, stating he "was the guy who was at the root of this whole thing". He also said he has joined Life After Hate.
(5/8/20) Banjo, Inc announced today that the company's current CEO and founder, Damien Patton has resigned and that the company will be transitioning to a new, reconstituted leadership team effectively immediately. Banjo's new CEO will be Justin R. Lindsey, the current CTO of the company. "I'm deeply honored to have worked alongside the Banjo team and am proud of all we have accomplished thus far," Patton said. "As CEO, I'm looking forward to continuing Banjo's dedication to technology solutions that protect privacy." (4/29/20) Following yesterday's announcement by the Utah Attorney General's Office, Banjo has decided to suspend all Utah contracts by not ingesting any government data or providing any services to government entities until an independent third party audit has been contracted and completed. Banjo believes that any company working with the government should be subject to audits and oversight.
When asked about what structural changes might be in store to ensure Patton's functional disconnection from the company, a Banjo spokesman described the former CEO's status as one in which he "is not an employee, no longer on the board and has no operating capacity on the company."
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