Driving into protesters becoming disturbing trend
Experts document 66 incidents in 10-day span
People running, screaming and shouting words of disbelief. Bodies thrown in the air, lifted onto windshields or trapped under cars and semitrucks. It has become a horrifying and familiar scene in recent weeks.
Amid thousands of protests nationwide against police brutality, dozens of drivers have plowed into crowds of protesters marching in roadways, raising questions about the drivers’ motivations.
Although witnesses, law enforcement and terrorism experts said that some of the vehicle incidents appear to be targeted and politically motivated, others appear to be situations where the driver became frightened or enraged by protesters surrounding their vehicle.
“There are groups that do want people to take their cars and drive them into Black Lives Matters protesters so that they won’t protest anymore. There’s an element of terrorism there. Is it all of them? No,” said J.J. MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “I look at it as an anti-protester group of acts, some of which are white supremacist, some not.”
There have been at least 66 incidents of cars driving into protesters between May 27 and Monday, including 59 by civilians and seven by law enforcement, according to Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats. Weil began tracking the incidents as protests sprung up in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody.
There have been two fatalities – in Seattle and in Bakersfield, California – and at least 24 of the civilian cases have been charged by law enforcement, Weil said.
This week, drivers struck protesters in Bloomington, Indiana, and Huntington Station, New York. Similar scenes have played out in Los Angeles, Boston, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tallahassee, Florida, and San Jose, California.
Weil said that by analyzing news coverage, court documents and patterns of behavior – such as when people allegedly yelled slurs at protesters or turned around for a second hit – he determined that at least 19 of the 59 civilian incidents were malicious and four were not. Weil said he did not have enough information to classify the motives of the remaining 36 incidents.
One of the more “clear-cut” cases of malice, MacNab said, was in early June in Lakeside, Virginia. An “avowed Klansman” drove up to protesters on a roadway, revved his engine and then drove through the crowd, wounding one person, Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor said in a statement.
The 36-year-old man was “a propagandist of Confederate ideology,” Taylor said. He was later charged with four counts of assault with hate crimes, two counts of felonious attempted malicious wounding and one count of felony hitand-run.
In Visalia, California, on May 30, occupants of a Jeep displaying a “Keep America Great” flag hit two protesters who were in the road, causing minor injuries, according to Visalia police. Witnesses said those inside the car were mocking protesters by cupping their ears as if they couldn’t hear their chants. The protesters started chanting profanities and throwing items before they approached the Jeep, which then accelerated, hitting the protesters before driving off.
County prosecutors didn’t charge the driver Wednesday, saying that the protesters involved weren’t “seriously injured” and the driver and his passengers felt threatened. Other civilians and police officers have similarly claimed that they drove through protesters because they were afraid of them and wanted to escape the situation.