Boogaloo Boy ‘terrorist’ sent to prison for his role in Columbia George Floyd protests

An ex-Marine turned “domestic terrorist” who played a major role in the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots in Columbia that injured law enforcement officers and destroyed police cars has been sentenced to two years in state prison.

Joshua Barnard, 28, of Florida and Columbia, is the first person sentenced to state prison in the Columbia riots that followed George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, said Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose deputies joined Columbia police officers to protect the city’s downtown business area in May 2020 as waves of anti-police riots swept the country.

“Once a police car was attacked, he took a police jacket out of the car and gave it to the rest of the rioters,” Lott said. “He was inciting the crowd — probably one of the main inciters of the riot. They intended to burn the Columbia police department down.”

The rioters were stopped from attacking the Columbia police headquarters by a phalanx of Columbia police officers joined by Richland County sheriff’s deputies. But stores in the downtown Vista area were damaged, along with multiple police cars, some of which were set on fire.

In all, 90 persons were identified and charged with crimes committed on those two days of Columbia riots. Columbia police reported that 24 police vehicles were damaged by broken windows, spray paint and fire. Two Columbia fire trucks were also damaged, according to an after-action police report. Injuries to officers included being struck by bottles, brick fragments and pieces of wooden barricades, as well as heat stroke.

Like many cities around the country, Columbia was rocked by anti-police riots on May 30 and 31, 2020, after a video showed a Minneapolis police officer strangling Floyd, a Black man, to death by putting his knee on Floyd’s neck while other officers stood around.

Although many of the Columbia protesters were Black, some — like Barnard — were members of white militias and extremist groups. Barnard was a Boogaloo Boy, an anti-government and anti-police extremist group, Lott said.

Rioters threw bottles and rocks at police and deputies.

Several dozen Columbia police officers were in court last Thursday for Barnard’s sentencing.

“The adage ‘time heals all wounds’ does not apply in this situation,” Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said in an interview with The State Media Co. Monday morning.

Many of his officers “carry both physical and mental scars every day. It’s as raw today as it was three years, nine months ago,” Holbrook said. “We had several officers injured, we had one who had multiple skin grafts.”

The incident was so shocking because Columbia is a capital city, “and we pride ourselves on us protecting people who are exercising their right to protest,” Holbrook said. “We see it all the time, and after those two days of rioting, we had 60 days in a row of protests. We showed up every day, and we protected everybody who was there to protest, and there was not one single incident.”

Investigations showed that Barnard was one of the leaders in “the planning and execution of chaos and causing personal injury,” Holbrook said.

Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson, whose office prosecuted Barnard, said Monday that most of thousands of protesters in front of the Capitol were peaceful and stayed peaceful, but the Boogaloo Boys “preyed on the emotions” of some in the crowd and got them to riot.

They were throwing matches on gasoline,” Gipson said. “In one of the videos used as evidence in the case. you can hearing them saying, ‘Let’s destroy as much government property as we can.” So there’s not question that’s what they set out to do.”

Only the line of Columbia police and Richland deputies prevented wholesale destruction from happening, Gipson said.

Some of the most violent clashes took place downtown, where video show bare-chested rioters screaming, repeatedly hurling rocks at a large white SUV, beating it with wooden poles, and kicking and jumping on top of it. Then-Mayor Steve Benjamin declared a 6 pm curfew the first day of the riot.

It took more than three years to bring the charges against Barnard because of COVID, the office’s already-large criminal case backlog and the fact that it took time to comb through all the sexually explicit violent content,” Gipson said.

Charges against Barnard, who pleaded guilty late last week before state Judge Daniel Coble, included rioting, sexual exploitation of a minor, breaking into a motor vehicle, theft and possession of a controlled substance, according to court records. He could have been sentenced to up to 35 years.

Lott said Barnard had more than 3,000 sexually explicit images of minor children on his cell phone and used military tactics he had learned in the military to help incite the riot.

Aimee Zmroczek, Barnard’s lawyer, had asked for probation. She said Monday in an interview that her client was proud of America, but not proud of what the police had done to George Floyd.

“He fell into the political climate of good intentions, but wrong actions,” said Zmroczek, who confirmed Barnard is an ex-Marine.

Lott said Barnard “was an insult to the Marines and anybody who ever wore the uniform. He took an oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic and he turned into a domestic terrorist. He violated that oath. ”

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published January 22, 2024 at 12:20 PM.