SUV plows into BLM protest in NYC's Times Square, similar potentially deadly attacks happening around U.S

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/07/suv-plows-into-blm-protest-in.html

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Some of the pictures show the license plate of the SUV, including the linked tweet from police asking for help in identifying it. If police have your license plate number and don’t know who you are, they DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE because they don’t actually want to do anything about it.

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Leave it to the fascists to use tactics of terrorism.

Trump loves terrorists. That actually kill people.

BLM hasn’t killed anyone.

Anti-BLM has a deathtoll. The FBI should be SWATTING anti-BLMers. That’s all the FBI seems to be able to accomplish anymore. Deadly raids.

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What’s with the weird time? It’s not even 10:17 p.m. NYC time. Also, the date stamp is July 8?

ETA: Ah, the person tweeting must be somewhere in Europe? That would explain the error in time zone and the Wednesday date. ( ETA2: The tweet is NYC local; maybe @xeni isn’t.)

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Thank goodness for that.

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You missed one: four days ago one protester was killed and another wasinjured in Seattle. The murder weapon was a Jaguar sedan instead of an SUV. The attack was pre-meditated: the driver drove the wrong way up a ramp, and then circled around some parked cars to get at the victims. The driver was not found to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he was arrested shortly afterwards. NPR article on Seattle protest attack

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Add in Seattle: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-05/black-lives-matter-protesters-injured-by-car-on-seattle-highway/12423502

It seems like different times have different characteristic crimes, as if there’s a form of fashion in this - like kidnappings and hijackings in the 70s. Here in Melbourne we’ve had I think three cars-into-crowds killings in the last few years.

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This isn’t a debate, this isn’t cultural division and this isn’t an ideological battle. This is an existential precipice and those who aren’t involved in the cause of justice are committing murder by proxy.

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Using a car to run over as many people as possible is murder or attempted murder. In some jurisdictions it is additionally mayhem.

Using threats of or actual mass harm or death to intimidate or coerce a civilian population is terrorism.

I demand that terrorists are captured and prosecuted.

If people and government officials continue to make excuses for violence, then those people are subverting democracy and an opponent of a peaceful, law-abiding society.

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and in bloomington, indiana after a protest against an attempt lynching that happened on the fourth of july

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Because they are terrorists. they are committing acts of terrorism.

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Bloomington Police, “Hard at Work and Working Smart”

There must be some info missing, because i would assume the first thing they do would be search for the plate number.

Either that or it’s just more evidence that we live in the “stupidest universe”.

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This has been happening nearly nightly here in Seattle for ~ 3 weeks with all manner of vehicles, on highway, street, sidewalk. All intentional. Some coming around for a second pass. Virtually no repercussions. Not long before the murder-by-Jag, there was a street attempt on a different group. You’d think they’d up security. I hold both State and local cops culpable in the injuries and death.

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It’s hard to tell what’s going on with all these vehicles plowing into pedestrians; there seems to be a variety of causes - both accidental and deliberate - and motivations. At least some are ideologically-driven acts of terrorism, but not all are, so at this point, in the absence of arrests/prosecutions, we don’t know what the numbers actually are.

Some are just typical American car bullshit - i.e. the drivers are stupid assholes who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, are careless, panic and hit people in the process. The drivers are the kind of people who get into accidents, but usually there aren’t a bunch of people in the road for them to hit. That happened locally in the early days of the protests where I live. It clearly wasn’t deliberate, it was due to extreme negligence. Some seem to be deliberate, but non-partisan, acts of murderous road rage. Many Americans feel like anyone getting in the way of where they want to go deserve to be run over, whoever they are.

So on the one hand, there’s less actual terrorism than the pure numbers would indicate, which is reassuring. On the other hand, those non-terrorism deaths are because Americans are fucking maniacs behind the wheel who kill large numbers of people every year under normal circumstances. Which isn’t so reassuring.

In that case, the driver was Black, so right-wing racist ideology seems unlikely to the motivator there, but it’s unclear what was.

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Seattle cops are dirtier than gas station sushi.

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Boogaloo and their police allies are waging war on the US. That is treason. Life at hard labor is appropriate.

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This is getting all very Quatermass and the Pit Martian Race-Warry.

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What about place a small rug made of nails and spikes and let all those Bugaloos advance. If they go really fast, physics and Darwin will do their job

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Probably because it’s starting low and the perpetrator are of the “other” religion, but I don’t see a press coverage and action made to avoid these problems.
Obstacle like the trees below were put on pedestrian roads, for instance (and that have a nice side effect to get them free of SUV parking in them)

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I suppose that the license plate and the car insurance is tied to the owner of the car.
So it’s easy to find the owner and the insurance on the veichle and claim for damages to the insurance or the owner. But on penal matters the actual driver has to be identified.

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