Cars have hit protesters at least 104 times
Data: Incidents occur out of fear or are political
Since George Floyd’s death triggered thousands of demonstrations, dozens of people have been hurt.
Dozens of people had gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a third night of protests demanding justice for Breonna Taylor when a car barreled through the crowd, hitting several protesters.
“It just went straight into the middle of the crowd and veered off toward the left,” said Samantha Colombo, 25, an Albuquerque resident who said they’ve been protesting with dozens of other people for three nights at the same intersection. No one appeared to be injured, Colombo said. Video of the incident began to circulate on Twitter on Friday.
“For the first two nights, the police blocked off the streets. Today they did not, so we had a couple cars blocking the streets for us and people lining up their bikes,” Colombo said. “There was this one car that for a few minutes was just beeping for a minute or so straight, so a few people went up to the car to get them to move, and they eventually just started going.”
Amid thousands of protests nationwide this summer against police brutality, dozens of drivers have plowed into crowds of protesters marching in roadways, raising questions about the drivers’ motivations.
Witnesses, law enforcement and terrorism experts said some of the vehicle incidents appear to be targeted and politically motivated; others appear to be situations in which 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 supremacists, some not.”
There have been at least 104 incidents of people driving vehicles into protests from May 27 through Sept. 5, including 96 by civilians and eight by police, according to Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats who spoke with USA TODAY this summer. Weil began tracking the incidents as protests sprung up in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody.
There have been at least two fatalities, in Seattle and in Bakersfield, 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 43 of the incidents were malicious, and 39 drivers have been charged.
Most of the incidents happened in June, in the weeks following Floyd’s May 25 killing, Weil said, and half of the incidents happened by June 7. While incidents continue to happen, they’ve trended downward since then, he said
“While these incidents were clustered in the beginning of the protest period, they continue to occur,” Weil said on Twitter on Thursday. “As violent rhetoric intensifies in the lead up to the election, I worry about an uptick in these incidents.”
New York, California, Oregon and Florida have seen the greatest number of incidents, according to Weil’s data.
Just this past week, drivers struck protesters in Denver, in Laramie, Wyoming, and in Los Angeles, where one person was hospitalized, according to local news reports.
On Saturday, in Yorba Linda, California, south of Los Angeles, a woman believed to be supporting Black Lives Matter with the group Caravan4Justice drove through a crowd of protesters and counterprotesters, injuring two people who were transported by ambulance, according to the Orange County Sheriff ’s Department. A man had possible broken legs, and a woman had “multiple injuries all over her body,” according to Carrie Braun, director of public affairs for the department.
The department released a statement late Friday saying the driver would be booked for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and that the investigation is ongoing.