A high-school administrator and his brother face a conspiracy charge for threatening cops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The educator, as public-school pedagogues are called, is John Bennett, an assistant principal at Kempsville High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia. His brother is Mark Bennett.
News accounts claim that the pair only discussed kidnapping agents. The Department of Homeland Security alleges that the pair wanted to murder agents.
Criminal Complaint
Citing the criminal complaint against the pair, 13 News Now reported that “an off-duty Norfolk police officer overheard the two brothers while dining inside a [Vietnamese soup] restaurant … on Nov. 15.”
The officer reported that the two discussed kidnapping agents, and that the gist of the conversation persuaded him that they “needed to do something about it.”
“The complaint says the brothers discussed reuniting and that Mark Bennett said he planned to fly to Las Vegas to meet with ‘like-minded individuals’ and return with ‘enforcement ideas and plans,’” the station reported:
Mark also allegedly said he had recently purchased an assault rifle because it could fire explosive rounds capable of penetrating body armor and claimed he wanted to “go hunting.” Investigators wrote that John Bennett expressed support during the conversation and showed interest in joining the Las Vegas trip.
The off-duty officer told investigators that Mark Bennett disclosed he had purchased a plane ticket for Nov. 19. Detectives later confirmed the booking.
The pair was charged with a count of conspiracy to commit malicious wounding, a class five felony.
“These allegations of violence against law enforcement, the very ones who protect and serve our communities, are incredibly alarming,” said VBPD Chief Paul W. Neudigate.
Mark Bennett’s defense attorney, Happy O’Brien, claimed that his client was heading to Vegas to watch a Formula 1 race with his sons when cops nabbed him at the airport, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported.
“I’m not trying to be flippant,” O’Brien told the court during the pair’s first hearing:
“But it’s frightening that we’re here based on a hearsay statement in a restaurant a few booths away.”
He characterized the lunch conversation between the brothers as Seinfeldian, and said the government’s case was based on a few lines taken out of context of an hour-long conversation “about nothing.”
John Bennett’s attorney claimed that “there is no criminal conspiracy, no intent to hurt anyone,” the newspaper reported.
The pair was released on a $25,000 bond each and put under house arrest.
DHS: They Planned to Murder ICE Agents
DHS claims that the pair had something more than kidnapping in mind.
Rather, DHS reported, the pair planned “to ‘kill police officers and ICE agents,’” and “Mark Bennett was also overheard saying he was planning to meet with likeminded individuals in Las Vegas, Nevada, to purchase firearms with explosive rounds to carry out the attacks.”
Department spokesman Tricia McLaughlin added more detail:
It’s chilling that a human being, much less a child educator, would plot to ambush and kill ICE law enforcement officers — offering such specifics as to getting a high caliber rifle that would pierce the law enforcements’ bullet proof vests.
Curiously, despite what DHS calls the threat to murder agents, federal authorities have not charged them with that crime. It is covered by 18 US Code 115, “influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a Federal official by threatening or injuring a family member.”
The law covers anyone who “threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder, a United States official, a United States judge, a Federal law enforcement officer … with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official, judge, or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such official, judge, or law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties.”
The crime is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
DHS did not explain why the two have not been charged with a federal crime.
Agents face “a more than 1,150% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats while they risk their lives every single day to remove the worst of the worst including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members,” McLaughlin said:
From bounties placed on their heads for their murders, threats to their families, stalking, and doxxing online, our officers are experiencing an unprecedented level of violence and threats against them and their families.
Last month, DHS revealed that Mexican cartels had created a three-tiered bounty program for information about or kidnapping or murdering ICE agents. “These criminal networks have issued explicit instructions to U.S.-based sympathetics, including street gangs in Chicago, to monitor, harass, and assassinate federal agents,” DHS disclosed.
“Gathering intelligence [on] or doxxing agents, including photos and family details,” pays $2,000. “Kidnapping or non-lethal assaults” pays $5,000 to $10,000. Murdering an agent makes a hefty payday of up to $50,000.
A Latin Kings gang member was recently arrested in the Chicago area for soliciting the murder of Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino.
