Baton Rouge Shooter’s Online Persona

Baton Rouge shooter, Captain Soggypants, went by the online persona Cosmo Setepenra

Baton Rouge Shooter’s Online Persona

The Baton Rouge shooter, who will henceforth be referred to as Captain Soggypants, had an active second-life online under the persona Cosmo Setepenra. Captain Soggypants assassinated three police officers in Baton Rouge, and shot three more; one is still fighting for his life. On his birthday, Captain Soggypants traveled from Missouri to assassinate officers as revenge for the justified officer-involved shooting of Alton Sterling.

Under the name Cosmo Setepenra, Captain Soggypants apparently authored several self-help books and labeled himself as a “nutritionist, life coach, dietician, personal trainer, author and spiritual adviser.” He also made several alarming online rants.

The Advocate reports:

Last week, on his YouTube series called Convos with Cosmo, he posted a video called “Protesting, Oppression and how to deal with Bullies”, where he discussed Sterling’s shooting and the subsequent protest.

“If y’all wanna keep protesting, do that, but for the serious ones, the real ones, the alpha ones, we know what it’s going to take. It’s only fighting back of money, that’s all they care about,” he said. “Revenue and blood. Revenue and blood. Revenue and blood. Revenue and blood. Nothing else.”

Long posted another rambling YouTube video titled “3 principles for my people” in which he urged viewers not to “get emotional” about recent current events but to make a “lifestyle change.” In the recording, he refers to himself as a “buffer between the bully and the victim.”

“Don’t get emotional about it,” Long says in the video. “When you make decisions that are based off emotion, when that emotion dies, then that fuel dies that energy for that decision. That’s why you base your decisions off logic.”

He railed against police violence, complaining that officers are rarely, if ever, charged in fatal shootings. In one Twitter post, he uploaded “bodycam footage” he said he had recorded in Dallas three days after five officers were fatally shot there. In that rambling video, he says he had been “out in the streets educating our people” about their “purpose.”

“Power doesn’t respect weakness,” he wrote in a Twitter message two days after Sterling’s shooting death. “Power only respects power.”

In another Twitter post, he wrote, “You can’t talk (or protest) the devil into changing his ways, this has never been done and never will.”

After the Dallas shooting, he wrote, “The Shooter was NOT WHITE, He was one of us! # My religion is Justice.”

When these extremists start indicating in their online posts that they may become violent towards law enforcement, we can no longer just ignore these posts as the rants of somebody who is emotional in the moment. We need to ensure that law enforcement receives the resources necessary to fully investigate these threats. Threatening anyone online is not protected speech, and it should be fully prosecuted before the suspects decide to act on their threats, just as Captain Soggypants did.