Not-Racist Threatens to Kill Black Legislator

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man sends emails containing racial slurs and threatening violence to African American legislator as well as President Obama. Man is arrested. Man claims that despite said emails, he is not a racist.

Franklin Glenn Sain was arrested on Feb. 22 on suspicion of harassing state Rep. Rhonda Fields (D) and unlawfully attempting to influence a public official.

Sain admitted to using racial and sexual slurs against Fields in a series of emails dated between Feb. 13 and Feb. 15. is also believed to have sent an unsigned letter to her office threatening “Death to both” her and her daughter, as well as the message, “I keep my 30 Round Magazines There Will Be Blood! I’m Coming For You!”

One of Sain’s emails, sent on Feb. 15, said of Fields and fellow state Rep. Beth McCann (D), “Hopefully somebody Gifords [sic] both of your asses with a gun,” an apparent reference to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head in a public attack. Giffords survived, but the mass shooting resulted in the deaths of six people.

Rep. Fields canceled a Town Hall Meeting over concerns about her safety and the safety of her constituents prior to Mr. Sain’s arrest. And though Sain admitted using racial slurs against both Fields and the President, he was adamant that he was not a racist. He was only expressing his opinion regarding her support for new gun control legislation, that’s all.

Sain is chief operating officer of Englewood-based SofTec Solutions, a technology services consulting firm. He says he is not a racist and was “just voicing his frustration about a sacred topic.”

A “sacred topic” which apparently gave him license to use racially offensive language and threaten the life of Ms. Shields and her daughter. Because, hey, First and Second Amendment, er … Freedums!

“It’s OK to disagree with legislators. It’s OK to express your opinion,” said Senate President John Morse. “But we’re protected by the same public safety measures as everybody else. It’s not ever OK to threaten someone.”

Morse said other Democrats in his chamber have also received threats, but none rose to the level of what Fields received.

“It is fascinating that Rep. Fields is just trying to do the best she can for the people of Colorado, and to keep Colorado children safe by limiting gun violence; and it’s met with more violence,” Morse told CBS4. “It is just appalling.”

I think in this case, “appalling” is an understatement. May I respectfully recommend that SofTec Solutions please fire this man as soon as possible. And maybe someone should take away his guns, too. Like forever.

By the way, the legislation that was passed by the Colorado House, and which Rep. Shields sponsored, called for background checks on all gun purchases, including those conducted online, and would limit magazine sizes to 15 for rifles and handguns, and 8 for shotguns. Really radical stuff. By the way, Shields represents the district where the Aurora movie theater shooting occurred last summer. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that she was likely doing the job her constituents want her to do.

Too bad, Mr. Franklin “Sacred Topic” Sain felt he had a right to threaten to murder her and her child for it.

14 Comments

rikyrah on February 26, 2013 at 2:34 pm

of course, he’s not a racist.

he just portrays one as he threatens a public official

Quaker in a Basement on February 26, 2013 at 2:36 pm

Sain? The man’s name is Sain??

Too good.

Quaker in a Basement on February 26, 2013 at 2:38 pm

Wait. Now I get it. His middle initial must be N, as in Frankly N. Sain, right?
euzoius on February 26, 2013 at 3:22 pm

perhaps he’ll deny he’s Sain as well!

euzoius on February 26, 2013 at 3:41 pm

I wonder what these violent “conservative” white males think a “racist” is? What would you have to say or do to be demonstrated a racist? Everything seems to come out in the “voicing frustration” wash…the all-purpose cleanser!

As with all these sort of domestic rightwing terrorism cases, the question is what state law enforcement decides to do with them. Well-to-do suburban white male “chief operating officers” of computer companies tend not to get charged with crimes, even when laws clearly cover the shit they pull. That’s what they rely on–White privilege.

But make a few of our Gun Totin’ Hee-roes hire expensive criminal lawyers and have to stand trial, and maybe even go to the state pen for a few months, and these “conservative” male gun nuts might rein in their blind rage, even when their “sacred topics” are questioned.

And now the (recently invented) second amendment personal gun “right” is “sacred”? Hoo boy, what a nation of lunatics we have created…

Bearpaw on February 26, 2013 at 4:15 pm

A white person isn’t a racist unless they put on a sheet and set fire to a cross.

A black person is racist if they vote for Obama.
XeckyGilchrist on February 26, 2013 at 5:46 pm

Well, these same yayhoos have no idea what “communist” or “fascist” mean, either, and they throw them around all the time.
- The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 7:08 pm
  
  A Fascist is a Democratic President, unless he is black. In that case he is a Socialist Muslim. A Communist is a Liberal Democrat.
  
  BTW, did anyone notice that Mississippi ratified the 13th Amendment on 7 February? Going way Liberal there!

BooMan on February 26, 2013 at 3:46 pm

Check this out:

Between January 1, 2001, and May 29th of this year (2012), 18,043 people were shot in Philadelphia. That equates to about one shooting every six hours. In that same time period, there were 3,852 murders–a new body yielded up for disposal nearly every day. The entire length of the conflict in Afghanistan hasn’t produced as many dead Americans as we’ve picked up off our city’s streets.

Most the those people were black. You think maybe black folks tend to be supportive of sensible gun control because guns are decimating their communities?

These gun nuts don’t know what real fear is like. You want real fear?

Shawn “Frogg” Banks grew up in the midst of all this, and this past spring he started teaching classes for schoolkids–two groups, totaling 22 boys, in trouble for repeated behavioral issues. Most of the boys had no father figure at home, or had dads who’d done jail time. Statistically speaking, these kids are known as “at-risk youth”–a population we’re most likely to encounter 10 years from now in mug shots or victim photos.

Banks, an ex-con, is in a unique position to keep these kids from living out that fate. He calls his course The Urban Lifestyle 101. When I start attending Banks’s classes in May, at the William McKinley School, his attention is focused on a new gang that is forming–recruiting kids as young as second grade. The name of the gang is childlike: Bad Boys Rumble. But Banks says it would be a mistake not to take the group seriously.

“I grew up around gangs,” he says. “But they made you wait till you were a certain age to join. Now you got second-graders being pressured to be in a gang.”

It’s a Tuesday morning, and Banks is starting the first of two classes he teaches. The first group includes seven-to-10-year-olds, sitting at attention as he starts to speak.

“How many of y’all heard the gunshots the other night?” he asks.

Right away, five of the 13 kids in the room raise their hands.

“How many of your moms told you afterward that they saw it?”

The same five little hands remain up, tiny fingers splayed.

Banks gave up guns and drugs a long time ago. But at 42, he still appears youthful. Even his curly hair suggests athleticism and vitality. The kids can smell his experience on him like musk. And they respond with unconcealed interest to the sudden presence of a man, offering to help with their pain.

“For those who don’t know,” says Banks, “two guys shot each other out in the street. One died right there at the scene. The other died in the hospital. It’s bad, right?”

The kids nod glumly.

“And what we doin’ in here,” says Banks, “is learning how not to become one of those people.

Any questions?

The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 5:45 pm

We need more Shawn Banks’, millions of them.

marindenver on February 26, 2013 at 5:00 pm

Rep. Fields has had personal experience with gun violence as her son and his fiancee were brutally murdered a few years back. They were shot to prevent them from testifying against gang members accused of murder.

She is sponsoring 2 pieces of gun control legislation – requiring universal background checks and limiting high capacity ammunition magazines. Rhonda Fields is an extremely courageous and committed woman and I have tremendous respect for her. I hope this crackpot Sain rots in jail.

marindenver on February 26, 2013 at 5:04 pm

By the way, the killers did not get away with it. They were caught, convicted and now on death row in prison. Including the guy that Ms. Fields’ son was supposed to testify against.

The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 5:41 pm

Freedum is right. “I’m not a racist, I just play one on the internet”. COO? I can see what a joy he is to work for.

Is it a job requirement for executives to be crazed assholes?

delosgatos on February 26, 2013 at 5:42 pm

He’s apparently been suspended from his job. That’s a start:

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/02/26/man-accused-of-threatening-rep-fields-suspended-as-coo-of-comp
any/

rikyrah on February 26, 2013 at 2:34 pm

of course, he’s not a racist.

he just portrays one as he threatens a public official
Quaker in a Basement on February 26, 2013 at 2:36 pm

Sain? The man’s name is Sain??

Too good.
- Quaker in a Basement on February 26, 2013 at 2:38 pm
  
  Wait. Now I get it. His middle initial must be N, as in Frankly N. Sain, right?
- euzoius on February 26, 2013 at 3:22 pm
  
  perhaps he’ll deny he’s Sain as well!
euzoius on February 26, 2013 at 3:41 pm

I wonder what these violent “conservative” white males think a “racist” is? What would you have to say or do to be demonstrated a racist? Everything seems to come out in the “voicing frustration” wash…the all-purpose cleanser!

As with all these sort of domestic rightwing terrorism cases, the question is what state law enforcement decides to do with them. Well-to-do suburban white male “chief operating officers” of computer companies tend not to get charged with crimes, even when laws clearly cover the shit they pull. That’s what they rely on–White privilege.

But make a few of our Gun Totin’ Hee-roes hire expensive criminal lawyers and have to stand trial, and maybe even go to the state pen for a few months, and these “conservative” male gun nuts might rein in their blind rage, even when their “sacred topics” are questioned.

And now the (recently invented) second amendment personal gun “right” is “sacred”? Hoo boy, what a nation of lunatics we have created…
- Bearpaw on February 26, 2013 at 4:15 pm
  
  A white person isn’t a racist unless they put on a sheet and set fire to a cross.
  
  A black person is racist if they vote for Obama.
- XeckyGilchrist on February 26, 2013 at 5:46 pm
  
  Well, these same yayhoos have no idea what “communist” or “fascist” mean, either, and they throw them around all the time.
  - The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 7:08 pm
    
    A Fascist is a Democratic President, unless he is black. In that case he is a Socialist Muslim. A Communist is a Liberal Democrat.
    
    BTW, did anyone notice that Mississippi ratified the 13th Amendment on 7 February? Going way Liberal there!
BooMan on February 26, 2013 at 3:46 pm

Check this out:

Between January 1, 2001, and May 29th of this year (2012), 18,043 people were shot in Philadelphia. That equates to about one shooting every six hours. In that same time period, there were 3,852 murders–a new body yielded up for disposal nearly every day. The entire length of the conflict in Afghanistan hasn’t produced as many dead Americans as we’ve picked up off our city’s streets.

Most the those people were black. You think maybe black folks tend to be supportive of sensible gun control because guns are decimating their communities?

These gun nuts don’t know what real fear is like. You want real fear?

Shawn “Frogg” Banks grew up in the midst of all this, and this past spring he started teaching classes for schoolkids–two groups, totaling 22 boys, in trouble for repeated behavioral issues. Most of the boys had no father figure at home, or had dads who’d done jail time. Statistically speaking, these kids are known as “at-risk youth”–a population we’re most likely to encounter 10 years from now in mug shots or victim photos.

Banks, an ex-con, is in a unique position to keep these kids from living out that fate. He calls his course The Urban Lifestyle 101. When I start attending Banks’s classes in May, at the William McKinley School, his attention is focused on a new gang that is forming–recruiting kids as young as second grade. The name of the gang is childlike: Bad Boys Rumble. But Banks says it would be a mistake not to take the group seriously.

“I grew up around gangs,” he says. “But they made you wait till you were a certain age to join. Now you got second-graders being pressured to be in a gang.”

It’s a Tuesday morning, and Banks is starting the first of two classes he teaches. The first group includes seven-to-10-year-olds, sitting at attention as he starts to speak.

“How many of y’all heard the gunshots the other night?” he asks.

Right away, five of the 13 kids in the room raise their hands.

“How many of your moms told you afterward that they saw it?”

The same five little hands remain up, tiny fingers splayed.

Banks gave up guns and drugs a long time ago. But at 42, he still appears youthful. Even his curly hair suggests athleticism and vitality. The kids can smell his experience on him like musk. And they respond with unconcealed interest to the sudden presence of a man, offering to help with their pain.

“For those who don’t know,” says Banks, “two guys shot each other out in the street. One died right there at the scene. The other died in the hospital. It’s bad, right?”

The kids nod glumly.

“And what we doin’ in here,” says Banks, “is learning how not to become one of those people.

Any questions?
- The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 5:45 pm
  
  We need more Shawn Banks’, millions of them.
marindenver on February 26, 2013 at 5:00 pm

Rep. Fields has had personal experience with gun violence as her son and his fiancee were brutally murdered a few years back. They were shot to prevent them from testifying against gang members accused of murder.

She is sponsoring 2 pieces of gun control legislation – requiring universal background checks and limiting high capacity ammunition magazines. Rhonda Fields is an extremely courageous and committed woman and I have tremendous respect for her. I hope this crackpot Sain rots in jail.
- marindenver on February 26, 2013 at 5:04 pm
  
  By the way, the killers did not get away with it. They were caught, convicted and now on death row in prison. Including the guy that Ms. Fields’ son was supposed to testify against.
The Voice In The Wilderness on February 26, 2013 at 5:41 pm

Freedum is right. “I’m not a racist, I just play one on the internet”. COO? I can see what a joy he is to work for.

Is it a job requirement for executives to be crazed assholes?
delosgatos on February 26, 2013 at 5:42 pm

He’s apparently been suspended from his job. That’s a start:

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/02/26/man-accused-of-threatening-rep-fields-suspended-as-coo-of-comp
any/

Not-Racist Threatens to Kill Black Legislator

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