He tried to burn Raleigh police car as protest became a riot. Now he’s going to prison.
A 22-year-old Raleigh man will spend 2.5 years in federal prison for lighting a police car on fire last summer while the peaceful protest over George Floyd’s death devolved into downtown riots.
Jabari Devon Davis stood before U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III on Monday and apologized to his family, friends, the city and police, calling his actions out of character and spurred on by deep disappointment.
Davis began the night of May 31 joining thousands in the Black Lives Matter movement as they marched through the Raleigh streets calling for reform. He later stuffed a gasoline-soaked sock in the fuel tank of a police SUV on Rock Quarry Road, lit it and tossed a Molotov cocktail toward a row of more police cars, his 2020 indictment said.
“I got caught up in all the chaos that happened, things that I witnessed,” he said. “I forgot the main reason that I went downtown in the first place: to peacefully protest.”
‘I lost a little hope’
Davis’ attorney William Finn described his client as an “outstanding young man” who had wanted to emulate his father and uncle by joining the military. But soon after enlisting in the Air Force, he was medically discharged due to hearing problems. Three surgeries later, Davis was unable to play college football, which he had also attempted.
Before the pandemic hit, Finn said, Davis landed a good job in technical support for an IT company. But forced to work from home, he did not have access to broadband internet in his Raleigh neighborhood and did not have the required space to himself needed for all-day telephone calls.
“I lost a little hope,” Davis told the judge.
A pair of protests on Memorial Day weekend saw frustration over police violence bring thousands to Raleigh for what began as peaceful demonstration. But as night fell, police in riot gear used tear gas and clashed with rioters smashing downtown windows and lighting fires.
More than a dozen were arrested and damage to downtown property rose into the millions of dollars. Protesters returned nearly every day for weeks with no arrests, many of them painting murals over the plywood-covered windows.
A Raleigh police captain extinguished the fire at the Rock Quarry Road substation before fire engines could arrive, for which all agreed the city had been lucky.
“Once fires get going, people can die,” Dever said. “That’s a fact.”
Davis told federal investigators he was “pissed off with everything going on,” his indictment said, after his fingerprint was discovered on one of the bottles. But attorneys on both sides praised him for admitting his role while his co-defendant jumped out a window and fled police.
‘An attack on the rule of law’
His attorney sought a sentence combining probation and house arrest, and federal prosecutors also sought a sentence lower than the advised 60-month guideline.
But Dever noted that Davis had not acted with total spontaneity. He did not fill the bottles with gasoline nor place them in his backpack, according to his account, but he carried them home in a backpack along with bottles of water. He must have known the bottles were there, and if he had no plans to use them, he would have poured them out.
“In this country, in this state, in this city, we have seen appropriate, peaceful protests devolve into riots,” Dever said, “and rioting is not and cannot be justified. ... Fundamentally, rioters, whatever their justification, whatever they think they’re doing, it’s an attack on the rule of law. Whatever the cause. Rioting is utter lawlessness. It is the antithesis of what those who join the military sign up to protect and defend.”
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 11:34 AM.