Baton Rouge cop killer Gavin Eugene Long was affiliated with a little-known black nationalist sovereign citizen group known as the Washitaw Nation, filings in Jackson Co., Missouri show.
The records, which were first reported by the Kansas City Star, show that in May 2015, Long changed his name to Cosmo Ausar Setepenra and declared himself a sovereign citizen of the United Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah Mu’ur Nation.
Members of the Washitaw Nation, which is similar to a group called the Moorish Science Temple, believe that they are not governed by local, state or federal law. So-called Moorish Americans file documents changing their names and relinquishing their power of attorney. The process involves the issuance of a special ID card.
The declaration has no legal standing, Moorish Americans and other sovereign citizens often end up being charged with crimes for refusing to pay federal and state income taxes and refusing to comply with other laws that they claim do not govern them.
An excerpt from Gavin Eugene Long’s filing for sovereign citizenship with the Washitaw Nation. (Jackson Co., Mo. recorder of deeds)
Long killed three police officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday. As The Daily Caller reported, the 29-year-old former Marine had expressed anger in the days after the police shooting of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man shot by a Baton Rouge police officer. (RELATED: Baton Rouge Shooter Gavin Eugene Long Was Nation Of Islam Member, Railed Against ‘Crackers’ On YouTube Channel)
“If I would have been there with Alton — clap,” Long says in a now-deleted video posted on July 14.
A Kansas City native, Long traveled to Dallas after Micah X. Johnson killed five police officers during a protest there. He said the shooting was “justice” for Sterling’s death and that of other black men who have been killed by cops.
Videos posted to Long’s YouTube account show that he visited with locals in Baton Rouge in the days before Sunday’s murders. He talked to several local black men about a book he recently published. He also discussed black liberationist ideology, saying that he only shopped at black-owned businesses. He also complained about “crackers.”
Before Long had been identified on Sunday, NBC News reported that law enforcement said he was associated with the sovereign citizen movement. The movement is typically assumed to consist of white followers. But Long’s involvement with the Washitaw Nation is likely to shed light on a growing sovereign citizen movement within the black community.
The Kansas City Star reported last year about Olajuwon Ali Davis, a black sovereign citizen who was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the St. Louis Arch in protest of the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown.
Like Long, Davis’ sovereign citizen group was linked to the Moorish Science Temple. Founded in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali, the Moorish Science Temple teaches that African-Americans are descended from the Moors of north Africa and are native citizens of the U.S.
The black supremacist and black liberationist views of the Moorish sovereign citizen movement have earned it comparisons to the Nation of Islam and the Five-Percent Nation, which spun off of the Nation of Islam in the 1960s.
Long said in one YouTube video that he had been a member of the Nation of Islam.
Gavin Long’s sovereign citizenship filing by Chuck Ross on Scribd
