‘NO CITY IS IMMUNE ... NO TIME IS IMMUNE,’ PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS.
What makes Monday’s horrific van attack so deeply terrifying is almost the “banality” of the new violence, said an expert in crime and human behaviour.
“Here you have a major thoroughfare in a major city and people are going about their lives and a van driving down the street just goes up the curb and starts cruising down the sidewalk,” said Frank Farley, a Canadianborn professor of psychological studies and education at Temple University in Philadelphia. “That’s what makes it so exceptionally scary. This is almost a new form of violence that takes place in our 9-to-5 lives.”
The attack happened one day after a man walked into a Waffle House in Nashville and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, killing four and injuring others. People were eating breakfast with family and friends when the shooter opened fire.
But even such acts seem “far away,” Farley said. Even eerily similar acts to the horror that unfolded in Toronto Monday — like the man who drove a rental truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on a seaside promenade in Nice, France, in 2016, killing 86 — are hard to relate to.
Monday’s incident “brings it home,” Farley said.
It’s hard to make sense of senseless violence, and it was not clear immediately what motivated the driver, Alek Minassian. But in the search for motivation, it’s clear “this is a heinous act” and an act of madness, Farley said. “So therefore mental instability needs to be looked at, for sure,” he said.
However, the mentally ill are vastly more likely to be victims than perpetrators. “Mental illness is a minor source of this kind of thing,” Farley said.
A major motive for violence, however, is violence as a form of expression to release frustrations, anger or out of-control emotions.
Another is retaliation, using violence to retaliate against those they believe have hurt them. “What if (the driver) has some generalized hate? Who knows here, honestly,” Farley said.
The van attack is even more unnerving because it happened in Canada, a country where the baseline for public violence is so mercifully low. “Who would have dreamed that would happen on Yonge Street, in broad daylight?” Farley said.
It also speaks to the reality that nobody is immune. “No city is immune, no time is immune, and no place is immune.”
“And so just be alert — be on your watch. If you see a vehicle that is very erratic, focus on it, pay attention to it. Eternal vigilance, in a sense.”