We Keep Us Safe: The Sentinels

0:00This message comes from Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is designed to make language learning intuitive. It mimics how people naturally acquire speech as children. Helping users read, write, write, and think in a second language. More at rosettastone.com. Heads up, this episode contains explicit language and the sound of gun violence. Previously on We Keep Us Safe. It's an execution. There's no better word for it than execution. So somebody's lighting up the fucking block right now. These bullets are like whizzing over my head and going through these seats. And that's when I see someone approach the Jeep Grand Cherokee, like, point blank and just unload his clip.

0:44Was whoever shot Antonio really protecting the protest? And why do we still not know who they are or their motives all these years later? He was a big white man. She ain't any shells on the ground. Pick those up, pocket them. What I heard is that they were ex-military, so these people are, like, really advanced. We'd heard about shop security before. I found a blog post. saying they're members of this group called Sentinels. I did door-kicker things. Most people were introduced to the Sentinels through its most famous member, James Madison. I did the stuff that our government doesn't speak of.

1:20Throughout our investigation, there's been one video that we've watched over and over. Our colleague David Gutman was the first one to take a really close look at it back in 2020. It's a 90-second clip, and it's been online since the night of the shooting.

1:38You can hear the Jeep that Antonio and his two friends were in crashing into barricades. But it's right at the edge of the frame. You can only really see its headlights. You can hear gunshots, but you can't see who's firing them, because the view is blocked by a tree. And afterward, you see a shadow hovering near the passenger side of the Jeep, as a mystery voice says, you're not dead, huh?

2:08And then the video pretty much ends.

2:15And you watch it, and you can't help but wonder, is this the same person that witnesses were talking about? The one who's shooting right into the Jeep? Is that the shooter's voice? We contacted the person who made that video. He lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building overlooking Chop. It turns out that video, it was just a sample. This whole time, there was a much longer version that wasn't online. The guy who recorded it had two full hours of footage he'd never shared with anyone before. He said he'd never given it to police, but he said he'd share it with us. We had to follow up a few times, but months later, we got it.

2:58We were hoping this new footage could tell us something, give us a clue, help us understand who was there at the barricades when the shooting happened. All right. Am I okay with this mic here, Will, and sitting, or do you want me to move? I was the first one to watch this extended two-hour video from the beginning, and I noticed something that I am dying to show Sidney and David. So I get us all together. There are 1 ,000 Google Docs open on your computer right now. You need to get rid of some of them. It's like stressing me out.

3:34The video starts at 1.37 a.m., just over an hour before the shooting that killed Antonio. I see you, motherfucker! There are two people in the intersection near where the white jeep will crash an hour later. They seem to be chopped security, and they're trying to get someone who's throwing bottles from a nearby building to stop. Don't be a little shit. Come on here. We don't want to talk like this. One of the security people on the ground is instantly familiar. Who does this look like to you? You're showing us someone wearing, like, a black long-sleeve shirt, a tan kind of vest. Bulletproof, like, tactical vest.

4:19And tan pants. and a tan hat. And appear to have like a black mask as well, although it's hard to tell. Oh, James Madison. That's a codename. We've heard that James Madison was a leader of the Sentinels. I found an old blog post online from an anonymous writer introducing us to the Sentinels. It said they were a prominent faction of CHOP's volunteer security. The blog post alleged that the Sentinels played some kind of role in Antonio's death and then kept quiet about the shooting ever since. And here in this video is someone we've heard as one of their leaders, yards away from the shooting scene, about an hour before it happened.

5:05James Madison isn't the only one there. Look who walks on the screen. Is that Joker? Joker is another codename from that blog post. There were photos of him in it. And the anonymous writer implied he was somehow involved in the shooting. This is a big, heavy guy, has something strapped to him that may be a long gun, I'm not sure. Looks like a rifle to me, yeah. I'm pretty sure this is Joker. Yeah, that looks like Joker. He's white, dressed head to toe in army fatigues with a cap and everything. He looks like he's in a war movie. James Madison walks over to Joker. looks like Joker, to me, hands him his gun.

5:47And James Madison is... Whoa. And James Madison walks away with the gun.

5:54James Madison keeps walking all the way off screen, right toward the spot where the boys in the white Jeep will be shot less than an hour later. And that's the last we see of James Madison. From the very beginning of our investigation, the three of us had been on a journey to figure out who the Sentinels were behind their codenames and their masks. We reached out to every source we could think of. We filed public records requests. Connecting these codenames to real names. We used off-the-shelf facial recognition technology to link their faces to other parts of the internet. And gradually, over the course of months, we pieced together this picture of who made up this group.

6:43Names. Phone numbers. Now it was time to call the Sentinels. To find out where they were when Antonio was shot. And if they know who did it. From NPR's Embedded with KUOW and the Seattle Times, this is We Keep Us Safe. I'm Sydney Brownstone. And I'm Will James. This is Episode 7.

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8:34When we decided to reach out to the Sentinels, it made sense to start with the person we thought of as their leader, James Madison. And as we got ready to make this call, we were leaked a piece of audio that fleshed out our understanding of who this figure was. It was recorded secretly at a Sentinels meeting. This meeting happens a few days after Antonio was killed. and the Sentinels are planning to take over the mayor's house later that night. We're going to occupy her house for as long as possible. If she's not there, good. We want to make her feel unsafe to come back. The city has dismantled CHOP.

9:14And some protesters are mad. They want to retaliate. You can hear James Madison preparing everyone. At this point moving forward, we know SPD is going blatantly defy the law. In this speech, James Madison is saying... They used flashbangs. They have tear gas at the rain. They can and they will use it and they give zero flux. Police are going to use flashbangs. Police are going to use tear gas. If you do not feel safe doing this, that is 100 % of you. If you don't feel comfortable being a part of this, there's no shame in backing out. I commend you for stepping up and saying that and stepping back.

9:50That takes a lot of balls. Someone says they're worried about getting shot at. I am afraid that somebody's going to come out with like an AR who's not a friendly and target us because of that high ground situation.

10:08That's someone saying there are a few of us who can neutralize that kind of a threat. They go on to discuss acceptable use of force. Just really keep in mind proportional responses to proportional threats. OK, that's it. Then someone brings up this more strategic point, that the sentinels need to be conscious of the image they're projecting. Be ready to get violent, but let's not look like we're ready to be violent. And James Madison chimes in. What I was telling everyone from day one of the Americans, we are on the world stage. We need to mind our views and cues. Hi, hello, how are you? I hope we're not in the ICU.

10:54If we are in the ICU, what can we do to help? Follow the residents. Follow the residents. That ends in a lockup. We're not sure what happened to this plan, but protesters never actually did occupy the mayor's house after this meeting. What it does show, however, is James Madison acting like someone who had military experience. You'll hear us use she, her pronouns for James Madison because she came out as trans since 2020. At CHOP, she often took charge of these stressful, dangerous situations. And we know that at CHOP, she would tell people she saw combat, that she'd been deployed overseas. I've got three combat deployments under my belt.

11:37I have a rules and engagement. Here's a live streamer talking with James Madison in 2020, where she brags about her deployments. You're military? Yeah. CRPD doesn't have a rules and engagement. You probably have more training in combat and that kind of stuff than they do.

11:55I wanted to find out more about these combat deployments James Madison was talking about. So I put in a request for her military records, specifically for something called a DD-214 form. It's a piece of paperwork that details her military experience. But according to James Madison's DD-214, there's no proof of any deployments, let alone to a combat zone. She was a Marine reservist for about four years, and the only time she was ever on active duty was the year she spent training. She was assigned to a supply unit.

12:32James Madison separated from the Marine Reserves on June 1, 2020, a week before CHOP began.

12:41So we have a lot we want to ask James Madison about. What kind of experience did she bring to CHOP? Did she see it as a combat mission? And she's on video walking toward the barricades less than an hour before the shooting. What happened after she walked off screen? After tracking down her contact information, I gave her a call. And to my surprise, she was totally open to talking. And in fact, she told me that she had a video of herself that apparently exonerated her from being involved in the shooting. She was at work, though, and couldn't talk, so we agreed to follow up. But a few days later, I got a message from James Madison.

13:25She said she'd changed her mind about speaking to us. Her message read, This decision is based almost entirely on the current geopolitical climate in the States and the risks associated with speaking publicly about past activism and potential retribution for doing so. And she added something else. I wish you luck in recording your episode and getting to the bottom of this and figuring out who murdered Antonio. I tell James Madison we're sensitive to her concerns, but she appears on a video from the night Antonio was killed, and I want to hear her side of the story. But she tells me no, she doesn't want to talk, and to stop contacting her.

14:13so james madison went from one of our most tantalizing leads to a dead end but she wasn't the only sentinel we tracked down so david sydney and i meet up we're all sitting there in front of microphones and we kind of just take turns going through the list one of us calls someone hi Hi, my name is David Gutman. I'm a reporter calling from the Seattle Times. My name is Will James. The other two hold their breath and cross their fingers. We're really interested in speaking to some of the people who... Job security. You get a lot of voicemails. If you give me a call back, I could tell you more about the problem.

14:53And then every once in a while, someone answers the phone and the air in the room switches a little bit. And you're like, oh, is someone going to talk to us? I don't know if you could hear it, but she said, how in the hell did you get my name? I did hear that. You did a great job. You kept your cool. And so, yeah, we're just taking turns, crossing people off the list. We're leaving some great voicemails. We are crushing these voicemails. Let's bang out the next one. David is calling Slate. This is a high-up Sentinel. Slate is someone we really wanted to talk to. We thought of them as James Madison's lieutenant, maybe a second-in-command of the Sentinels.

15:31and so they might be someone who would know what James Madison was up to the night Antonio was killed. Hello, my name is David Gutman. I'm a reporter with the Seattle Times. I call and someone picks up and I think they said something like, I'll think about it. Okay, well, I appreciate it. Thanks for considering. Take care. So what just happened? Someone answered the phone and it was a really deep voice, like so deep it sounded like it was being altered. I could hear like a rumbling coming from your phone. It sounded like, yeah, like when TV news interviews someone with a voice distorter on. It is Slate.

16:10They think it over for a couple hours and then they agree to talk on the phone. I'd like to ask you about the night of June 29th. When they pick up again, their voice sounds normal. Are you amenable to that? We do know Slate's real name. Slate uses they, them pronouns. But what Slate basically said to us was, look, I'm worried about being doxxed. I'm worried about losing my job. I'm worried about my life being blown up online. And so we granted them anonymity. Is it OK if I start recording now? And so I kind of just want to keep them talking to learn as much as we can learn about this whole operation.

16:47So before we get to the night of the shooting, we start there. Tell me how you first got involved with the protests in 2020. I was there as, like, just covering everything. Slate says they first showed up to the protests as a journalist. They were there to document the standoff with police. But then they saw protesters arming themselves, and they say they got worried about where everything was headed. This is going to end really badly. So they tried to get some sort of organization going among all the people who were showing up to defend CHOP. And what Slate did was they got all these security volunteers on the same encrypted chat on the messaging app Signal.

17:31It was just a way to be like, hey, look out for this thing. Hey, look out for that thing. We're rotating the Signal group every day. So if you're not there, you can't show up for one day, get added to the Signal group, and then be able to see everything that's going on. Basically, Chop Security is just whoever shows up and gets handed a walkie-talkie on that day. I tell Slate that we'd heard that a lot of Sentinels came from these very specific subcultures around Seattle. Club kids, furries, people who did circus tricks, live-action role players who, you know, dress up and act out these Dungeons & Dragons-type scenarios.

18:07Give me that list again. uh the larping community the circus community um the furry community here's the thing right from my position i can't say no to anybody like it this is functional anarchy the larping community is because there were people that were showing up in full suits of armor for a while and they could fight let me tell you uh the circus community sure i'd believe that um the furry community and here's the other thing is that like when they're using these terms they're using them as weapons right they're trying to use the mental image that you get from them to detract from what was actually happening like you think furry you're like ew furries until you realize that like there is no such thing as the furry community you don't get a membership card right there is no like furry agenda none of these things are very real so many people used codenames.

19:08Most of them didn't seem to know each other outside of CHOP. And Slate said that after a while, some of them started to believe that CHOP was the real world and that these personas they'd created were the real thing and they were kind of all-consuming. If you stay in the zone full-time and you don't leave the zone, you will start to think that this is real life and that we don't have to integrate the world around us. Slate said they kept their CHOP identity really separate from their real identity. They have Slate on one side and real life on the other, so that they could leave CHOP, leave that identity behind, and just go on with their life in the real world.

19:45Because Slate doesn't exist. They don't have to exist anymore. Maybe someday they will again.

19:57I asked Slate about James Madison. What was your impression when you met them? That they're probably a narc. And that was very much the vibe I got from them initially. Slate might have thought James Madison was a narc or an informant because she claimed to be military. We'd been thinking of James Madison as the leader of the Sentinels. James Madison got involved to a degree. But Slate says James Madison was just the public face. This is somebody that I can, like, maybe I can put my trust into that. And I very quickly realized that, like, they don't have what I'm looking for. James Madison was, in Slate's words, not the politician that I was.

20:39They could supervise things, and I could trust them not to burn everything down. But I knew that if I, like, just handed the reins to them for a couple of days, it could go downhill. The role Slate saw the Sentinels playing at CHOP, at least in the beginning, was protecting the protests from violent threats. Things like Proud Boys or white supremacists. We're not here to sit here and try to, like, control what happens in the zone. We're trying to keep the zone safe. And then Slate tells us, essentially, that the vibes inside CHOP started to shift. It kind of became an open-air, like, festival of, like, anarchist festival.

21:20People would be like, hey, can we get help? There's a guy that's really drunk He's trying to start fights with blah, blah, blah. And yet people are coming here, you know, taking LSD, doing all these drugs and treating it like it's a music festival is fucking insane. Slate says when CHOP started getting more violent and people started asking them for more help, the sentinels stepped back and they let other security groups take the lead. We're not here to be your personal army. We're here because the movement necessitated it. And now you're going to try to turn us into your, like, little, like, junior police force?

21:58But the Sentinels kept showing up, including Slate. So maybe Slate is telling me all this to distance the Sentinels from what came next.

22:13On the night Antonio died, Slate says they were driving home from CHOP. And their phone started blowing up. And I was in the process of taking my kit off and getting ready to just go to bed, basically. And then I started getting this flood of messages about stuff. Reports of a Jeep driving around, reports of shots. Are the reports saying it's, you know, chop security? Because a lot of what we've heard is that people thought they were stopping a mass shooting. The reports I got from the ground was that there's an individual that had been there the last week, at least the last week. I talked to him a couple times.

22:59I only ever knew him as Steve. Slate tells us it wasn't James Madison who walked up to the Jeep and shot at close range. It wasn't even a Sentinel. Slate says it was a guy named Steve. What'd Steve look like? You know, race, hair. shorter than six foot, bald, like a goatee and facial hair, white guy. And the reports were that these kids had hit the barricade and this guy comes up and, you know, yelled something. I couldn't tell you exactly what was said and then fired twice into the passenger side of the Jeep. This sounds an awful lot like what the two neighbors, the ones who called 911 said they saw that someone shot into the front passenger seat of the Jeep at close range.