A Florida man arrested last week told an acquaintance that he’d considered killing law enforcement officers and engaging in a race war, police documents alleged.
The man, David Kasanof, was arrested Friday on charges of violating a risk protection order.
Six weeks ago, Kasanof, a middle-aged white man from Plantation, Florida, had a “long conversation” with a black man who he considered a friend, police records released to the journalist Nick Martin on Monday show. It turned grim.
During the chat, Kasanof allegedly told his friend John Garrison, an administrative sergeant at U.S. Southern Command, that he was upset Garrison and another man, Larry Washington, had stopped speaking to him.
Garrison told Kasanof that his “relationship with white supremacist groups had created a strain” on the relationship, to which Kasanof replied that “we” — meaning white men, Kasanof clarified — were “sick of being pushed around,” police documents alleged.
According to what Garrison told police, Kasanof also said that he’d developed a “kill list” that included two local law enforcement officers.
Garrison said he opposed Kasanof hurting people, to which Kasanof replied that “he would be standing with his people, meaning his white supremacist friends, and if Garrison was on the other side, he would respect that and shake his hand in the center of the battlefield.”
“But after that, it was on,” Garrison recalled Kasanof saying. The sergeant took the remark to mean that Kasanof saw himself as the potential hero of a race war, the affidavit obtained by Martin noted.
Court documents cite a Facebook post in which Kasanof mentioned a similar “kill list.”
“Once you are on it,” he allegedly wrote, “you never come off, until the end.”
“I have no interest in committing random acts of violence,” wrote separately in the post, the date of which was unclear. “I do, however, identify with the frustration that likely leads to so many mass-shootings,” he added.
Kasanof also allegedly told Garrison last month that he had actually seen one of the police officers on the list in Fort Lauderdale, but that the officer “was with too many other police and that Kasanof only had his handgun.”
“Kasanof went on to state that if he had his rifle, he would have killed [the officer] right there,” Garrison said, according to the affidavit.
Kasanof asked Garrison to tell people he was a good person, should his death make the news, and then asked Garrison not to tell the police about their conversation. But Garrison did just that, ultimately providing testimony for a risk protection order served to Kasanof last week.
While executing a search warrant on Kasanof’s house, Kasanof’s booking report read, “a previously undisclosed handgun was discovered,” placing him in violation of the risk protection order and landing him in jail.
A judge on Friday set a $50,000 bond. On Monday, according to sheriff’s records, the Florida man remained at the county’s main jail in Fort Lauderdale.
