Photo: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo
Grandmaster Jay, whose real name is John Fitzgerald Johnson, was found guilty by a jury in Louisville, Kentucky, of pointing a firearm at law enforcement officials during a racial justice protest in the city’s downtown in 2020. The 59-year-old is the leader of the Not F##king Around Coalition (NFAC), a Black armed militia.
Johnson claims that the NFAC, launched in 2017, first appeared publicly after nine white supremacists descended on Dayton, Ohio, in May 2019. The militia’s membership numbers have never been verified but after interviewing its leader, the nonprofit newsroom The Trace described the NFAC as one of the largest militias in the U.S. The group is armed with AR-15 rifles, sniper rifles with scopes and bipods, and high-capacity magazines.
Johnson faces a sentence of at least seven years in prison without the option of parole, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 22, though Johnson has vowed to appeal the verdict. As the verdict was handed down, members of the NFAC, who were all dressed in black, were in attendance.
The incident occurred on Sept. 4, 2020, amid protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched no-knock warrant police killing. Johnson and the NFAC were participating in the protests. Johnson had been accused of pointing “an AR platform rifle” at an FBI agent, a Secret Service agent, and several Louisville Metro Police officers while they were on the roof of a building, The Courier-Journal reported.
Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who worked as a full-time emergency room technician, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment on March 13, 2020, when at least seven police officers forced entry.
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Johnson was indicted in 2021 on federal charges that accused him of pointing a rifle at law officials, as well as assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and brandishing a firearm in connection with a violent crime, AllHipHop reported.
Johnson has continued to object to the state’s description of events.
He told AllHipHop in an interview before the trial: “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break any laws.”
“What about Kyle Rittenhouse, you know the guy who actually killed people” tweeted Jables.
An armed white 17-year-old, Rittenhouse was acquitted on all counts after shooting and killing two men, Anthony M. Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz during protests following the police shooting on Aug. 23, 2020, of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin,
Photo: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo
