He was shot while driving against protesters against police brutality. Now he is running for mayor’s office.

Ken Dudley says he’s running for Provo mayor to help make the city safer and fix issues he discovered the hard way on June 29, 2020.

The ordeal began, he says, when he drove to Home Depot to fix plumbing fixtures on his sink. As he drove through downtown Provo, he came across a demonstration against police violence – and before he knew it, demonstrators were swarming around his SUV and “holding me hostage,” he explains in a campaign video.

“I tried to leave as safely as possible,” continues the software engineer. “But I was shot twice by a Black Lives Matter protester.”

Bleeding profusely, Dudley managed to drive himself to the hospital. He had a broken arm bone and a shrapnel cut his eyelid and destroyed his tear duct.

“The aftermath of this harrowing incident inspired Ken to run for public office to ensure that Provo citizens and their families are safe and that their streets and homes are safe,” the campaign website said removing the incumbent Mayoress of Provo, Michelle Kaufusi.

But this story of the origin of the campaign glosses over or completely omits important parts of the June 29 shooting that led to the arrest and prosecution of protester Jesse Taggart.

In Dudley’s report, he does not mention that he rode his Ford Excursion down a bike lane to meet protesters lined up across the intersection to watch the 8 minutes and 46 seconds a police officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. Dudley doesn’t talk about how, before the gunshots rang, he pushed his truck forward through the protesters and even accelerated as he started hitting them, according to the footage available.

His campaign page also fails to mention that his story sparked the creation of an armed militia group, United Citizens Alarm, an organization with members charged with pepper spray and firing electric batons at protesters.

For activist Tyeise Bellamy, the juxtaposition between Taggart and Dudley – one fighting a criminal trial and the other fighting for Provo’s highest elected post – highlights the very injustices she marched against last summer.

“When we say the system is racist and it doesn’t work for all people … it works for the rich white men or for white people … Provo protest last year. “That’s the problem.”

Shane Johnson, the attorney who represents Taggert, says Dudley’s candidacy reflects the way Provo officials and residents have treated his clients and the protests against Black Lives Matter all along.

“It was a political demonstration. I think it was a political inquiry, or at least the inquiry was shaped by politics, ”he said. “And now, to top it off, we have a victim that goes into politics. I don’t think these things are coincidences. “

Johnson says his client stayed largely in the background during last summer’s demonstrations, seeing himself as a kind of protector during these gatherings. In a hearing in Taggert’s criminal case, Bellamy described him as a quiet person present and someone who would stand between protesters and anyone who hurled insults or tried to spit on them.

The attorney argues that Dudley was the one who initiated a potentially fatal confrontation with the protesters – one of them tripped and fell near the moving excursion.

“You could literally hear people’s bodies crashing into the front of his truck as he drove through a crowd,” said Bellamy. “As if a bowling ball hits pins.”

Johnson said he asked police on the witness stand why they didn’t charge Dudley. According to trial transcripts provided by Johnson, a provo detective said he likely could have brought Dudley to court for minor traffic violations, but did not believe he had committed a serious assault on protesters because “people crowd and in front of his Vehicle stationary “. and that on purpose. “

Still, Taggart’s defender said he was wondering, “What circumstances chose the winner and the loser in this case?”

“This is a call to arms”

The shooting of Dudley served as an outcry among residents of the state, who were outraged by the protests against police violence last year and urged to crack down on what they portrayed as disorderly and destructive behavior.

And after seeing the Provo protest and learning of Dudley’s shooting, Casey Robertson told the Washington Post that he posted the Facebook invitation that the United Citizens Alarm (UCA) militia group would spawn.

“This is a call to arms,” he writes on Facebook. “We’ll get down there. Come buckled up. Practice your second amendment. “

Robertson said his organization had set up a screening process to weed out violent people and the group posted on social media that they denounced racism. But it was banned by Facebook in August 2020 after the platform decided to remove sites associated with “offline anarchist groups supporting acts of violence amid protests, US-based militia organizations and QAnon”.

Though Robertson has called his group’s deplatformation as unjustified, Kurt Braddock, an American University professor who studies extremism, said that far-right groups often do everything they can to sound harmless. At one court hearing, Dudley described the UCA simply as a “neighborhood watchdog”.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ken Dudley, a Provo mayoral candidate who was shot in the right arm during a protest against Black Lives Matter on July 29, 2020, speaks about Wednesday’s shooting. Dudley and other activists pressing for a forensic review of the 2020 Utah election rallied at the Capitol on October 20, 2021. The rally took place prior to the 1pm meeting of the Interim Judiciary Committee on electoral integrity to “hear presentations on prospects related to the elections”. Integrity “according to the agenda.

Braddock, a communications professor and faculty member at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Laboratory, says it is more important to pay attention to a group’s actions than to how they describe themselves.

“Presenting yourself as this kind of community watch, or presenting yourself as the defender of that constituency, but then seeing them take an aggressive stance … I mean, that says a lot in and of itself,” Braddock said.

The United Citizens Alarm social media accounts are holding a rally for the release of the defendants of the 6th uprising in their own hands.

“Antifa scum in San Diego attacks citizens,” it says in a post. “When will the citizens get up and fight? If the legislature does not allow the police, we have to do that! “

A few members were charged with violence against those protesting the police brutality. The case against one of them has been dropped, court records show, and Robertson said he had kicked one of those people out of the UCA.

Since the group’s inception, it has come into effect during protests in Cottonwood Heights, West Valley City, and elsewhere. And it seeks to expand its presence beyond street demonstrations – with an interest in everything from disaster relief to training “keyboard warriors” who can keep an eye on “the agitators, criminal activists and disruptors in our community”.

United Citizens Alarm is also trying to wade into politics.

His social media channels have promoted Dudley to mayor, and another UCA member set up a campaign page for Herriman’s City Council, even though he didn’t end up on the ballot.

Dudley said in a taped interview with Liberty Defenders of our Constitution that he has long been conservative but recently joined the Independent American Party, an ultra-conservative organization whose nationwide most famous member is the Nevada ranchers and federal government critic Cliven Bundy.

Neither Dudley nor Robertson gave an interview to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The UCA also has what is known as a political committee, which, according to its website, “aims to induce politicians to introduce or thwart laws” and to keep an eye on issues ranging from critical racial theory to vaccination records.

Robertson and Dudley have already built bridges with state lawmakers and joined Senator David Hinkins earlier this year to campaign for civil unrest law. As originally drafted, the law would have banned state unemployment benefits and public benefits for anyone convicted of committing capital crimes in the past five years.

It has also created legal protection for drivers who, under certain circumstances, accidentally run over while trying to escape a riot, killing or injuring someone.

(Rick Egan | Tribune file photo) Casey Robertson of Utah Citizens’ Alarm group brought more than 20 armed counter-demonstrators to the State Capitol grounds, where a handful of protesters were protesting the recent violence in Portland on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 .

Dudley spoke in support of SB138 and shared his personal experiences from the Provo protest, and Robertson thanked Hinkins, R-Orangeville, for putting the bill on behalf of the UCA.

“The citizens of Utah overwhelmingly support harsh penalties for seditious, violent and illegal behavior,” said Robertson. “Especially in the current climate where these things happen more often in our country.”

Although the legislation was not passed, Bellamy, an activist and founder of the Black Lives For Humanity Movement, says she is concerned about the willingness of Utah lawmakers to even invite UCA to the table.

And Dudley’s claims that Provo city guides failed to safeguard “the general safety and wellbeing of Provo citizens” don’t seem to resonate with voters – at least not in the primaries when he finished more than 50 percent Points behind Kaufusi.

In a prepared statement, Kaufusi said she was a strong supporter of public security officials and was supported by the Brotherhood Order of Police and Provo Professional Firemen.

“As mayor, I will continue to do everything I can to keep Provo one of the safest cities in America,” she said in the statement.

Senator Curt Bramble, a Republican from Provo, said he hadn’t heard any frustration with Kaufusi’s response to the summer protests [Dudley’s] Narrative in perspective. “