East Texas community leader, former jailer issues call to attack anti-police activists

Photo: 2003 Getty Images Nathan Ener drew attention for a video rant he posted Tuesday on...

An East Texas community leader and former jailer posted a video rant Tuesday, encouraging viewers to attack black people with rocks, slingshots or firearms if they protest police issues, and pledging to target anti-police activists in their homes.

Nathan Ener's call is in reaction to the unprovoked shooting death of a Harris County sheriff's deputy on Friday, and represents heightened national tensions over police relations with minority communities. The execution-style killing of the white deputy allegedly by a black suspect came after a year of many highly-publicized and protested killings of unarmed black men by white officers, and emotions run high on both sides today.

On Wednesday, the Houston Police Officers Union also asked the FBI to investigate online videos promoting violence against police.

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Ener, who worked as a Texas Department of Criminal Justice officer until 1999, deleted the video rant soon after posting it, but not before Internet users saved independent copies. In it, he pledges to target black anti-police protesters.

"You'd better run and you'd better hide," he said. "Because we're looking at videos, we're looking, pulling names and addresses and we're going to hunt you sons of [expletive] down."

The Texas Observer has highlighted Ener's role as an activist in race-related issues in the East Texas town of Marshall. According to the Observer, Ener in 2014 had a tense shouting match with Houston activist Quanell X, captured on video, during a Hemphill protest by black groups over local law enforcement's handling of a black man's murder. Now he says he won't allow such protests to happen again. If they do, he will lead an offensive, he said, encouraging "grandmas" and kids to buy a slingshot if they can't use a gun.

"Get you some [expletive] rocks and when they come out in that street we'll give you a few minutes to pepper their [expletive]," he said to his less able-bodied viewers. "You light them up like they'll have mumps or measles when they go home with all the bumps and knots all over."

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Later he picks up a shotgun and cocks it, saying that sound will be "the last thing some of you sons of [bitches] will hear is that noise right there when we come in your [expletive] house."

That's all in hopes of preventing another killing of a Texas law enforcement officer, which Ener swore won't happen again. And he offered a message to Texas police.

"Law enforcement, I'm talking to you now," he said in the video. "When we get there, and we're going to be there, step aside. Do not try to stop us because our fight is not with you, it's for you."

Ener did not respond to requests for comment Thursday morning.

Notably, the Chronicle also featured Ener in 2003 after he found the massive nose cone of the wrecked Space Shuttle Columbia in the East Texas woods.