ST. LOUIS — Meek Mill had Jomo K. Johnson figured out early on.
It was 2012 and Mill, an up-and-coming rapper who would become an international star, had released “Amen,†a song featuring fellow rapper Drake.
Johnson, a young Black pastor in Philadelphia, wasn’t pleased. He blogged, went on the radio and about how the song offended his Christian sensibilities. Johnson called it blasphemous. He promised a boycott.
In response, Meek went on a local radio station and called Johnson out.
“It’s looking like you’re trying to get famous or you need some attention,†.
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A dozen years later, Johnson is still trying to get attention, but now in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
For the past couple of months, Johnson has pushed the idea that his private company would fly drones over neighborhoods to help combat crime. He’s garnered quite the media attention, just as he did when he pitched the idea in Memphis and Los Angeles, with his company called . He’s got a flashy website and he tells a good story. But it’s a story with holes.
Take the company’s location, with an alleged address in Frederick, Maryland, and another in Los Angeles. These are the addresses where the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ recently sent Johnson cease-and-desist letters, telling him he can’t operate his alleged crime-fighting drones in neighborhoods without a permit. The city shouldn’t hold its breath for an answer to those letters.
The address in Maryland belongs to an appliance repair business. I texted with the owner on Friday. He says he doesn’t know anything about SMS Novel or Jomo K. Johnson, who at various times in his life has also gone by Joe or Kenyatta.
And the address in Los Angeles doesn’t appear to exist.
Johnson’s record of getting attention in one city and then moving on to another is quite long. Take Savannah, Georgia. That’s where Johnson was living in 2017 when he sought publicity as a social justice activist attached to the Black Lives Matter movement. At one point, NBC did a story on a hunger strike Johnson said he was undertaking to bring attention to suicides by Black people. Then he planned a protest against a sheriff for deaths at the local jail.
But Black activists in Savannah saw through his act, like Mill had years earlier. They held a news conference to disassociate themselves from Johnson, saying he had “bad intentions,†according to a local news report.
From Georgia, Johnson set his eyes on Tennessee. He pitched his drone plan in Memphis. And then he pivoted to a tactic he had used in other cities: claiming he would open in Nashville a chapter of a church he said he founded, Church for Black Men. On his Instagram account, Johnson links to the church’s so-called website, . The link goes instead to a website that sells crochet patterns; the URL is quirky, with an expletive and “nastywomen†included.
None of this adds up to a serious company. Yet the company claims its app (which I can’t find on any app store) is offering drone flight coverage in most major cities in the U.S., and lists on its website 20 countries where it is operating. There is no SMS Novel registered as a company in either Maryland or California.
The good news is that ºüÀêÊÓƵ — from neighborhood activists in Gravois Park to city officials — called out Johnson’s latest attempt to get famous.
Jake Lyonfields, a Gravois Park resident who organized a petition drive against the drone idea, said residents who looked into Johnson’s background found “a lot of red flags.â€
They took him seriously, though, because what he wanted to do was invasive and potentially damaging to the neighborhood, with no real benefit to public safety.
“We just figured that his proposal was bad on its face,†Lyonfields said.
If there’s a silver lining in Johnson’s attempt to get his 15 seconds of ºüÀêÊÓƵ fame, it’s that he energized a city neighborhood.
“The only good thing that’s come from all of this is that he’s brought more of the neighborhood together,†Lyonfields says. “Now we plan to talk about what real public safety should look like.â€
Johnson didn’t respond to any of my attempts to reach him. On Friday morning, he announced that the “beta test†planned for Gravois Park was off but that, “rest assured,†the drone service would soon be available throughout ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Sure it will.