Utah suspends company due to founder’s involvement in synagogue shooting
Damien Patton Image by youtube
(JTA) — The state of Utah has suspended the use of a service to help first responders and law enforcement after learning that the founder of the company providing the technology has a white supremacist past and was involved in a 1990 synagogue shooting.
Damien Patton was 17 and part of a Ku Klux Klan faction when he participated in a drive-by shooting of a Nashville synagogue on June 9, 1990. His involvement was reported on Tuesday by One Zero, a technology platform on the online forum Medium.
Patton drove the car as a Klan leader and shot out the windows of the synagogue with a semi-automatic weapon. No one was injured in the attack.
On Wednesday, Banjo responded by suspending its operations in Utah, the Deseret News reported. The state had entered into a $20.7 million contract with Banjo for the “event detection” surveillance technology.
Patton pleaded guilty to acts of juvenile delinquency in connection with the shooting.
He said in a statement to the Deseret News that he felt remorse for his actions and has turned his life around since being involved in such hate groups in his teenage years, when he “was lured into a dark and evil world.”
Patton’s mother is Jewish, according to the report.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes’ office said it will put in place a third-party audit and advisory committee to address issues such as data privacy and possible bias.
The post Utah suspends use of surveillance technology over company founder’s involvement in 1990 synagogue shooting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
