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| Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2020 |
On May 29, four days after George Floyd was murdered, two white supremacists drove to a protest march in Oakland and killed a security officer who was guarding a federal building, David Patrick Underwood. They injured another officer.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-17/far-right-boogaloo-boys-linked-to-killing-of-california-lawmen-other-violence
The shooter used a gun that had been silenced. He was apprehended on June 6--Steven Carrillo, age 32, white.
"Carrillo used a privately made, unmarked machine gun--a so-called ghost gun--with a silencer," said FBI agent Jack Bennett.
The security officers were shot while guarding a federal building in downtown Oakland during a Floyd protest. The pair used the protest as a cover for their plans to attack law enforcement, said FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Bennett.
“There is no evidence that these men had any intention to join the demonstration in Oakland,” Bennett said at a Tuesday news conference. “They came to Oakland to kill cops.”
Carrillo lived in Ben Lomond, near Santa Cruz, and on June 6 he opened fire on the deputies who arrived to investigate his home, killing Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller.
Carrillo and his accomplice were part of a loosely organized "boogaloo" movement whose online presence increased after shutdowns for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Followers of this movement want to start a "second civil war," according to the three reporters who wrote this article, Maura Dolan, Anita Chabria, and Richard Winton.
Brian Levin at Cal State San Bernardino followed Carrillo's posts on social media as part of his work for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism there.
Three fans of that movement were arrested in Nevada recently and "charged with inciting violence with the use of Molotov cocktails at protests."
Devin Burghart researches far-right extremist activity at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. He noticed "an uptick in alt-right participation in Floyd rallies" after Trump tweeted in response to the May 30 protests in front of the White House: "Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???"
My daughter Marie considered going out to demonstrate that Friday night in Oakland, four days after the lynching of George Floyd, but she researched online to see who was organizing the march. She found that white supremacists were posting about the march, but black organizations didn't seem to be behind it.
The Anti Police-Terror Project advised against going to the protest in Oakland, so Marie decided not to go. She persuaded 3 other friends that this was not an event to be part of, though they all wanted to do their part to protest the murder of Floyd.
"Should I go?" she asked herself. "But I can't find a single Tweet from a person of color endorsing it. There's no evidence that this is organized by black leaders. I just don't have a good feeling about it."
She also noticed that the protest was to start at 8:30 pm, dusk. Responsible groups organize protests to start at 5 pm, she says.
As it turned out, a white van with an armed white supremacist was driving up to Oakland from the Santa Cruz area. At a BART station, Carrillo picked up another man he had met on social media, Robert A. Justus, Jr., and told him to drive the van. They drove through the streets of Oakland looking for a target and noticed two officers guarding a federal building.
Then "Surveillance video showed that Carrillo slid open the van’s side door to fire his weapon, officials said, as Justus acted as the getaway driver."
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