A disturbing voicemail detailing a plot to murder Black children in the Sacramento area was left on the phone of the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum in the wee hours of Sunday morning. But local police say there’s no need to sweat about it.
Black Lives Matter Sacramento released a recording of the voicemail on their Facebook page after the museum founder forwarded it to them, according to KCRA 3 News.
“In California, agendas are active to murder Black children in the Sacramento area. Murders are to be in cold blood with no remorse. The intel relay has contacted more than 100 schools in the Sacramento area to structure this agenda.,” the recording said.
In the post, the organization said they weren’t sure if the threat was real or not but encouraged Black families in the city to be on their toes and practice forms of self-defense and protection. BLM Sac founder Tanya Faison told ABC 10 News it seemed like the message was doctored but doesn’t imply it’s any less of a concern.
“It sounds like they used some type of AI technology, voice messaging system and probably a fake phone number but they threatened to kill all Black children in Sacramento. They said it’s organized,” Faison said. “-Even if they don’t think it’s credible, they need to act like they think it’s credible.”
Read more from ABC 10 News:
The Sacramento Police Department told KCRA 3 it is aware of the voicemail and that detectives are looking into the threats. Police said Monday that “preliminarily” they did not believe the threats to be credible.
KCRA 3 reached out to several school districts across the Sacramento region to see if they had heard of any of these messages.
A Sacramento City Unified School District representative said its Safe Schools Department had not received a complaint about a voicemail, though schools are closed for the summer. The San Juan School District said it also did not directly receive the voicemail.
Anyone with information is asked to call the police department’s non-emergency line at 916-808-5471.
Hopefully, the idiot behind the voicemail will be tracked down before the threat becomes “credible.” Payton Gendron had a mean digital footprint of white supremacist garbage leading up to the day he shot and killed 10 Black people in a Buffalo grocery store. But, he wasn’t considered a threat to society until it was too late.
On the other hand, some families have been waiting years for justice in the unsolved murders of their loved ones. In 2022, the Murder Accountability Project reported that 100 percent of the country’s unsolved homicides were attributed to Black victims while homicides for white or Asian Americans were steadily resolved over the past three decades.
Consider the latest example: the unsolved murder of three little Black girls in Texas. Their murder was ruled an accidental drowning until their autopsy revealed signs of strangulation turning the case into a homicide investigation one year later.
Another example is the murder of 20 Black children by serial killer suspect Wayne Williams, known as the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 80s. The case is being reinvestigated with old DNA evidence to find matches between each victim and Williams. However, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also opened a secret probe on the suspicion that the Ku Klux Klan was behind the murders of two or more of the children, attorney Ron Kuby told The Daily Beast.
Threats against Black people and children are very real. But alas, as of 2020, only 59 percent of Black families have received closure in the murder of their loved one, per CBS.