Baton Rouge shooter's social media account encouraged violence

The ABC7 I-Team looked into social media accounts left by Gavin Long, who shot six Baton Rouge, La., police officers this weekend.

Long apparently enjoyed road trips, visiting Dallas and Chicago, and also traveled to Africa, according to his social media posts.

In a chilling crossroads of violence venues, Long was in Dallas just after the attack on police that left five officers dead. Along the way, the former Marine was posting videos that encouraged the kind of bloodshed that he caused Sunday morning in Louisiana.

"You're in a world that's ran by devils," he says in one of his videos. It was the world according to Cosmo, which was his online brand which he peddled on his blog and books.

He became the latest face of evil when he shot six officers - three fatally - on his 29th birthday.

What happened should have been no surprise to anyone who followed Long's videos. After the Dallas shootings, he went there and peddled his message, even in a barbershop.

In a video documenting his barbershop visit, he says, "Money is not real. You the real power, man. I promise you, this means nothing."

Long claimed he had planned to come Dallas even before the deadly ambush.

"I guess it was just the spiritual had told me it was the right place to come," one video message said.

And he carried a message of violence.

"One hundred percent have been successful through fighting back. Through bloodshed," he said in a video.

A week later, he was the trigger man behind the Baton Rouge bloodshed.

He was also a supporter of Chicago-style protests that followed the police-shootings.

On July 10, he wrote on Twitter: "Out of all the cities that protested last night. Chicago had the smartest approach/slogan..."No justice, no revenue."

Blood and money were often recurring themes of Long's rambling videos, with him claiming that both were the only way to stop violence against blacks.

Long visited Chicago in April 2011, according to a photo posted that shows him standing on the ledge at the Willis Tower.

After leaving the Marine Corps in 2010 with an honorable discharge, Long said that he had spent several years in Africa, which was also a frequent topic on his blog.

"When Africans fight back, it's wrong. But every time a European fights back against his oppressor, he's right," he said in a video.

Investigators found no evidence that Long worked with others in the shooter. Initially, police had thought otherwise because it appeared that someone had posted to his account after he was dead. However, it was later determined that it was a fake account set up after the shooting.