From the opening Forbes article link:
by Tommy Beer, Forbes
TOPLINE
The FBI announced Tuesday that Steven Carrillo, the U.S. Air Force sergeant who allegedly murdered law enforcement officers in California during protests earlier this month, was associated with the right-wing Boogaloo movement, and that Carrillo chose the timing of his attacks to "take advantage of a time when this nation was mourning the killing of George Floyd."
KEY FACTS
•Last week, Carrillo was charged with murder after he ambushed Santa Cruz deputies and threw pipe bombs at police on June 6, killing Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and wounding four other officers.
•On Tuesday, the FBI announced Tuesday that Carrillo has also been federally charged with the murder of federal security officer Pat Underwood, who was killed in a drive-by shooting on May 29 in Oakland.
•A suspected accomplice, Robert Alvin Justus Jr., has been arrested as well.
•Justus was allegedly the driver of the van used in both the Oakland Federal Building shooting and the Santa Cruz attack.
•Before he was apprehended, Carrillo reportedly scrawled the word "boog" and "I became unreasonable" in blood on the hood of a car.
•"Boog" is short for boogaloo, which, according to NBC News, is a far-right anti-government movement that began on the extremist site 4chan and aims to start a second American civil war.
•The phrase "I became unreasonable" has seemingly become a meme in public Boogaloo communities on Facebook.
•Authorities say they also found a "boogaloo" patch in the van the duo used.
KEY BACKGROUND:
During Tuesday's press conference, FBI agent Jack Bennett said Carrillo and Justus purposefully chose the protest as the locality of the killing to blend in better and to take advantage of community grief over the police killing of George Floyd. "There is no evidence that these men had any intention to join the demonstration in Oakland … They came to Oakland to kill cops," Bennett said. Carrillo has been charged with 19 felonies related to the attack, and the charges carry enhancements of "lying in wait," which means that Carrillo will be eligible for the death penalty. However, prosecutors have not said if they will pursue death. According to an ATF official, the weapon used in the fatal shootings was a homemade so-called ghost gun without a serial number. "This firearm is a machine gun with a silencer attached to its barrel," said the official.
TANGENT:
Attorney General William Barr and other top government officials, including President Trump, have frequently blamed Antifa activists for the violence stemming from recent demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd's death. However, last week NPR published a review of court documents of 51 individuals facing federal charges related to protests, and none is alleged to have links to the Antifa movement. Among all the cases brought by the Justice Department thus far, the only extremist group mentioned in court documents is the right-wing "Boogaloo movement."
CRITICAL QUOTE:
"Elements of The Boogaloo have evolved from a gathering of militia enthusiasts and Second Amendment advocates into a full-fledged violent extremist group, which inspires lone wolf actors and cell-like actors alike," said Joel Finkelstein, director of the Network Contagion Research Institute. "Given recent events and the inability of law enforcement to grasp and intercept this new mode of distributed terror, we think an increase in these kinds of violent attacks against police are almost inevitable."
It seems to me this Forbes piece bends over backwards to dismiss that Antifa had any part in the protest violence. Whereas in truth Antifa
cannot be PROVEN to have orchestrated violence. Despite that many individuals can be seen in video of the protests in any city wearing the Antifa uniform, and were arrested with knapsacks full of rocks and incendiary devices that are clearly part off the Antifa operating tactics and training. What I've seen is that many Democrat police officials, city council, mayors and district attorneys,
simply refuse to prosecute Antifa activists arrested, for political reasons. Even in the videotaped attack on reporter Andy Ngo. They have the evidence, they just refuse to prosecute it.
In this particular "right wing" case, all I see is one guy who did all this, with a second un-indicted guy who is believed to be the driver of the van this Carillo character fired on police from. One guy. Without specifics, this article implies "they" (who? ATF? FBI? DOJ?) are concerned this will inspire other crimes. While Carillo is one guy working alone, he has exploited memes online for other white supremacists, in an attempt to incite others he doesn't know to do similar attacks. There is "concern" (again, specificaally who? not disclosed) that he will inspire other attacks. But there is no evidence others share his ideology and thirst for similar violenct attacks.
Law enforcement has Carillo in custody, they have his self-incriminating posts online, they have the murder weapon, and apparently are closing in on Justus, Carillo's driver in the attacks. It seems clear this jerk will spend the rest of his life in jail.
I don't know what you expect me to be concerned about, as you paint this as equal threat of "right wing" violence, from a guy in custody who is an army of one. As compared to a widespread Black Lives Matter movement that talks on their site about "killing all white babies" with a rabid hatred that equals or surpasses the KKK, and has a membersship that exceeds the KKK (the KKK nationwide is estimated to have about 5,000 members).
I'd like to give acknowledgement to the deaths of police officers David Dorn and Patrick Underwood who were killed during the riots and looting of the last few weeks. By everything reported, they were kind and exceptional men, whose deaths were tragic and pointless.
Whatever end of the political spectrum their killers came from, I want them to spend the rest of their lives in jail.
