Utah Attorney General suspends state contract with Banjo in light of founder’s KKK past
Washington • 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.
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.
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.”
Piatt said that Reyes and his office “absolutely condemn the hate and violence promoted by supremacist groups and will continue to aggressively fight crimes and decry domestic terror perpetrated by them.”
In light of the news report, the attorney general has demanded immediate action.
“While we believe Mr. Patton’s remorse is sincere and believe people can change, we feel it’s best to suspend use of Banjo technology by the Utah Attorney General’s Office while we implement a third-party audit and advisory committee to address issues like data privacy and possible bias,” Piatt said. “We recommend other state agencies do the same.”
The OneZero report noted Patton has disavowed his former beliefs, which included testifying at trial that, “We believe that the Blacks and the Jews are taking over America, and it’s our job to take America back for the White race.”
In a statement to OneZero, Patton said: “32 years ago I was a lost, scared, and vulnerable child. I won’t go into detail, but the reasons I left home at such a young age are unfortunately not unique; I suffered abuse in every form. I did terrible things and said despicable and hateful things, including to my own Jewish mother, that today I find indefensibly wrong, and feel extreme remorse for. I have spent most of my adult lifetime working to make amends for this shameful period in my life.”