White Man Gets Away With A Plot To Kill Black People [Op-Ed]

Christoher Gillum mugshot — Source: Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office / Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

Back in April, a former North Carolina police officer was arrested in Florida after being accused of planning to kill Black people in a mass shooting at a major music festival in New Orleans. In June, a Louisiana grand jury declined to indict the ex-cop on a state terrorism charge, and now, we learn that 45-year-old Christopher Gillum has been quietly released from custody — and apparently Black people in and outside Louisiana are supposed to just be OK with that.

In fact, according to the Associated Press, Gillum, who had been held without bond up until his release, was declared free to go home shortly after the grand jury’s decision that there wasn’t enough evidence to indict him on a state terrorism charge that carried up to a 15-year sentence, which, again, happened in June.

Back in April, Gillum was wanted for “terroristic threats,” according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, which said federal authorities told the sheriff’s office that Gillum, a white man, was in the Florida Panhandle “heading to do a mass shooting at a large festival in Louisiana.” AP noted that, while “authorities in several states did not name the event,” the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, commonly known as Jazz Fest, was the only large festival running through early May at the time. The festival attracted about 460,000 people last year, according to organizers, and if you’re familiar with the annual event at all, you know it’s a Black event — hundreds of thousands of Black folk in one densely populated space.

But before Gillum could make his alleged trip to New Orleans, he was arrested without incident by Okaloosa sheriff’s deputies at a hotel room in the city of Destin, where deputies reportedly recovered a handgun and about 200 rounds of ammunition.

Here’s what the sheriff’s office reported back in April, via AP:

Gillum was arrested as a fugitive from justice and will be extradited to Louisiana to face charges there, the sheriff’s office said. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer. The Associated Press left a message at phone numbers listed for him.

Gillum’s family reported him missing on Tuesday and he has a history of self-harm, according to Lt. Clint Lyons of the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina. Gillum’s family told law enforcement he had a gun and had “expressed recent threats to harm ‘Black people,’” according to a bulletin from police in Burlington, North Carolina.

Lyons said Gillum left the state before his agency could prepare the paperwork to involuntarily commit him to psychiatric treatment. Lyons said there were no criminal grounds to detain Gillum despite his comments about Black people “because there was no victim,” however the agency decided it needed to spread the word about him to other departments.

So, police in North Carolina were already aware of Gillum’s alleged murder fantasies and desire to see those fantasies realized, but saw no cause to arrest him “because there was no victim,” which certainly is a much more digestible way of saying, “because he hasn’t targeted and killed a Black person yet.” And, of course, Gillum skipped town before he could be involuntarily committed to a mental health facility — because already the potential mass shooter is a lone wolf white man and victim of the mental health crisis in the U.S. — so, what then? Obviously, his arrest in Florida was the next step, right? Right?

Well, not exactly.

According to Lyons and Burlington police, the first time Gillum was located and stopped by law enforcement in Okaloosa County, police determined, again, that he “did not present any grounds for involuntary commitment or criminal charges” and was allowed to continue on his way, having told officers he was “en route to New Orleans.” Michele Nicholson, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said at the time that Okaloosa deputies were initially asked to make a “welfare check” on Gillum, but they didn’t know then that he had made violent threats and was under investigation. Once deputies learned he was being investigated, they surveilled him until an arrest warrant arrived from Louisiana, Nicholson reported.

Before now, Gillum’s release had not been reported publicly. Lester Duhe, a spokesperson for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said in a recent statement that Gillum’s family had taken him “to a treatment facility out of the state” and that he is not facing additional criminal charges.

Regarding Gillum’s case, Duhe said there were “several jurisdictional issues” that complicated prosecutorial procedure after Gillum was extradited to Louisiana following his arrest.

“The threat relayed to a family member actually occurred in North Carolina,” Duhe said. “The defendant never entered the State of Louisiana until after his arrest.”

Duhe also said there was evidence Gillum had been planning to travel to the Florida Keys “during the same period he would have been suspected to travel to Louisiana.”

Furthermore, Gillum was charged under a Louisiana statute for the crime of “terrorizing,” which requires that “a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist.”

Bruh…

In the U.S., particularly in the redder states, not only is there a fierce opposition to any form of gun control, or any real effort to address the mental health crisis that politicians cite as the root cause of mass killings, but many states don’t even have the legal mechanisms to prevent mass terrorism, mass shootings and/or mass hate crimes until the acts are imminent or already occurring.

It’s scary enough that, regardless of what out-of-state facility Gillum’s family says they took him to, Gillum is a free man, meaning he’s potentially free to re-plan his alleged mass killing of Black people on a later date, but what’s even more disconcerting is how recently he worked in law enforcement in some capacity, even after leaving his first police job in 2019.

More from AP:

Gillum served as a sworn police officer in Chapel Hill from 2004 until his resignation in 2019, town spokesperson Alex Carrasquillo said.

He worked as a police officer in the coastal town of Carolina Beach from October 2019 until his resignation the following October, town administrative services officer Sheila Nicholson said. Gillum became a detention officer in October 2023 with the Orange County, North Carolina, sheriff’s office and left in July 2024, spokesperson Alicia L. Stemper said.

He returned the Chapel Hill police force as a non-sworn employee in 2024 before leaving again by the end of the year, Carrasquillo said. He was then rehired as an Orange County sheriff’s deputy in January 2025 but resigned that September, she said.

So, as recently as early last year, Gillum had been bouncing from one law enforcement agency to another, leaving each one within the year for —well—who knows?

Then his family says he’s planning to kill Black people, and he gets arrested in Florida with a gun and 200 rounds, after being dismissed as non-threatening multiple times before the arrest, which, lest we forget, resulted in zero criminal charges.

And they wonder why we go so hard over Nolan Wells, all the mysterious Black hangings going on in the South, and police violence against Black people. They wonder why Black Lives Matter is a thing. This is why. We simply aren’t protected here.