New Black Panther Party Members Plead Guilty Plans of Assassination and Police Station Bombing

They met in August in Ferguson, during the protests over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by then-Officer Darren Wilson. Davis, a “frequent” protester, and Baldwin started talking about buying guns and organizing protesters to “be like an army” and fight back against police, their plea agreement says.

Federal agents and police tracked them and their calls and texts for weeks, recording some of the conversations. The two discussed using Baldwin, who was then an employee of the Cabela’s store in Hazelwood, to buy guns for felons and others. Baldwin admitted that he did buy three guns, falsifying federal forms by saying that the weapons were for him.

The men also talked about buying bombs. On Oct. 31, Davis “put it out there that he was a terrorist” during a conversation with a confidential informer, his plea says.

Baldwin, speaking to a second informer, said he wanted to build “bombs and blow things up,” his plea says, and “hit them in places where it hurt, hit someone important.”

On Nov. 8, Baldwin told the second informer that they wanted bombs that would divert police attention and others that would be “the last line of defense,” the plea says. Baldwin said they wanted at least 10 bombs with a blast radius of at least five yards.

Baldwin said that they wanted “five for the people,” with two more for ATMs and one “for one of them tanks,” meaning the armored vehicles police were using. He later was heard saying, “We at war, you understand, bro.”

Baldwin said one target was an unidentified police headquarters, to “destroy their communications.” Also mentioned as targets were St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch and then-Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, the plea agreements say.

Baldwin also talked of targeting “somebody personal to them and then at his funeral we gotta get a couple more … ‘Godfather’ style.”

Neither McCulloch nor Jackson was harmed. Law enforcement sources and neighbors said the homes of both had been closely guarded.

Law enforcement sources previously identified the Gateway Arch as a bomb target.

Asked about that Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan, who was not the source of the original information, said the Arch was not mentioned in recorded conversations but may have been mentioned in others. He also said a bomb would not have made it past Arch security measures.