USA TODAY International Edition
Lone gunmen rival threat of international terrorism
“You have to prepare for emerging threats . ... We have to change our focus.”
Ed Davis Former Boston police commissioner
WASHINGTON – The week before three lone gunmen cut bloody swaths through three American cities, FBI Director Christopher Wray sounded a prescient alarm about the growing threat within.
Wray described the risk posed by domestic violent extremism, animated by racial tension, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other unrest, as nearly on par with the once all-consuming threat posed by international terrorism.
“The FBI is most concerned about lone offender attacks, primarily shootings, as they have served as the dominant lethal mode for domestic violent extremist attacks,” Wray told a Senate panel July 23. “We anticipate law enforcement, racial minorities and the U.S. government will continue to be significant targets for many domestic violent extremists.”
The FBI director’s warning came on the heels of an unusual appeal by the Secret Service, which requested the public’s assistance last month in an effort to thwart attacks by lone assailants.
An agency review of mass attacks in 2018 found that in more than threequarters of the cases, the attackers engaged in suspicious or alarming communication that posed potential safety concerns to family members and others.
“Because these acts are usually planned over a period of time, and the attackers often elicit concern for the people around them, there exists an opportunity to stop these incidents before they
occur,” the Secret Service concluded.
Just as 9/11 opened the nation’s eyes to the peril posed by international terror, the nearly weekly examples of gun violence highlight a gathering storm led by untethered extremists inside a country riven by racial and political discord.
The massacre Saturday in El Paso, Texas, followed closely by a deadly attack in Dayton, Ohio, underscore a crisis that the nation struggles to confront. Almost a week before those attacks, a gunman killed three people at a food festival in Gilroy, California.
“My emphasis is based on the body count, and given the numbers we’re seeing now, it has to inform the response,” said former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who helped oversee the investigation into the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, whose plotters were motivated in part by Islamic extremism.
“You have to prepare for emerging threats. In the 1980s, it was sexual assault; in the 1990s, it was the drug epidemic,” the commissioner said, referring to the periods before the post-9/11 spotlight moved to international terrorism.
“We evolve from issue to issue. We have to change our focus.”
Darrel Stephens, former executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said ideologically motivated mass attacks have been “on the radar” of law enforcement officials for years, but authorities lacked critical support from lawmakers on gun regulation and mental health assistance.
“The challenge for law enforcement is that unless these (suspects) are extremely active and visible, they are hard to detect,” Stephens said.
Investigators reviewed the Texas massacre as a possible hate crime because of a racist screed spewing disdain for Hispanics that was purportedly posted by the suspect on social media just before the attack.
Emmerson Buie, chief of the FBI’s El Paso office, confirmed Saturday that federal authorities initiated a hate crime and domestic terrorism review that will run parallel with a state murder investigation.
Well before the spasm of weekend violence, lawmakers and law enforcement officials expressed concerns over the threat of domestic extremists.
In May 2017, a joint bulletin issued by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security highlighted the risk posed by white supremacists, detailing 49 deaths in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016.
The numbers exceeded “any other domestic extremist movement,” according the FBI-DHS bulletin.
Wray said that although homegrown extremists inspired by international terror groups and global jihadists remain the “greatest terror threat to the homeland, that does not mean that we don’t take domestic terrorism extremely seriously.”