SUV Disaster in Wisconsin Shows How Vehicles Can Be Used as a Weapon of Mass Killing

Police have yet to confirm what led a motorist to crash a red SUV into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Nov. 21, 2021, killing a minimum of 5 people as well as injuring many more. However, one thing is clear: Vehicles can be deadly weapons, whether used deliberately or accidentally.

The suspect, identified as Darrell Brooks Jr., is expected to face several serious charges including 5 counts of intentional homicide. It has surfaced that Brooks was previously arrested earlier in November after being accused of hitting the mommy of his child with his vehicle in a gas station parking lot.

Waukesha authorities verified on Nov. 22 that the latest occurrence, which left 18 children between the ages of 3 and 16 in hospital, was not an act of terrorism. Neither did it follow a police pursuit authorities quest, although reports suggest that the suspect might have been running away from an earlier incident.

But the manner of the deaths conjures up recent memories of terror attacks using vehicles on presumed soft targets, such as holiday markets, and concer over the threat of high-speed chases ending in tragedy.

According to Mia Bloom, a scholar who has researched the weaponizing of vehicles from the Evidence Based Cyber Security Program, Georgia State University , SUVs, and trucks can be effective ways of mass murder and one that can be practically impossible to prepare against. Furthermore, it is becoming harder to prosecute the vehicle driver associated with such casualties in some states.

“The poor man’s weapon of mass destruction“

Vehicle ramming– defined by the Department of Homeland Security as the deliberate aiming of an motor vehicle at people with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or create significant property damage– has been called the “poor man’s weapon of mass destruction.”

Members of the terrorist group Islamic State were not the first to utilize this fatal innovation– in attacks on individuals in London, Nice, and New York City– yet in the last few years, they have come to be most closely associated with the tactic.

The group featured “lorry ramming” in their publicity as one of their liked weapons versus Western targets and urged supporters to use lorry ramming versus groups. Islamic State group publicity publication, Dabiq also suggested would-be only stars which car could do the most harm.

In North America, white supremacists and various other militant and terrorist groups have also crashed their vehicles into crowds. Events of individuals running vehicles into pedestrians include that of the violent”incel”– or “involuntary celibate”– Alek Minassian, that rammed his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people. It has also been employed by members of the far-right, such as James Area, who was found guuilty of the murder, by vehicle, of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Protests and vehicle ramming

Following the protests after the police killing of George Floyd, there was a massive increase in the number of attacks, a lot of which were aimed at Black Lives Matter protests. According to a Boston Globe analysis, from the day of Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, vehicles drove into protests at least of 139 times.

According to Bloom, during her Division of Defense-sponsored research on exactly how militant and also terrorist teams use social media, she extreme right-wing groups on social media platforms such as Twitter, Parler, Telegram and Facebook sharing memes concerning the vehicular strikes in the summer of 2020. Posts minimized the civilian casualties and mocked the fundamental message of “Black Lives Matter,” transforming it into the twisted slogan “All Lives Splatter” and featuring a white SUV covered in red paint on the hood.

And also, it isn’t just right-wing groups that have targeted protesters. Police in cities such as New York City and Detroit have driven cars into protests. As well as in Tacoma, Washington, at least one was harmed after a police officer drove into a group of protesters. In Boston in 2020, Police Sergeant Clifton McHale was recorded on a police body camera bragging about hitting protesters with his patrol car.

Criminal and civil immunity

In current months, five states– Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee– have either protected drivers that kill pedestrians from legal action or have fully decriminalized hitting a pedestrian with an vehicle if they were in the street or on a freeway. Legislatures in states such as Iowa, Florida, and Oklahoma have passed legislation granting drivers criminal and civil immunity if they “unintentionally” hit or kill a protester while “leaving from a riot,” as long as they say it was necessary for their safety. Kansas, Montana, and Alabama, are planning identical legislation.

Many more Americans are unintentionally killed or harmed due to high-speed pursuits, including law enforcement. Police chases frequently take place on public roads or in residential areas. The result of multiple vehicles at high-speed in these areas can be deadly. The Department of Transportation estimates that approximately 250,000 high-speed police go after taking place each year, with 6,000 to 8,000 of them leading to a crash.

Around 500 people are killed each year due to these police pursuits, and about 5,000 are injured. The Justice Department, acknowledging the threat of high-speed chases, has urged law enforcement officers to stay clear of or abort chases that endanger pedestrians, drivers, or the police officers themselves.

The danger to the public of a vehicle driver deliberately or unintentionally creating a mass casualty event is, as the Wisconsin case reveals, simply too high.

Read the original article on The Conversation.

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