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NY Times, June 17, 2020
Air Force Sergeant With Ties to Extremist Group Charged in Federal
Officer’s Death
The sergeant had expressed his allegiance to the so-called boogaloo
movement, an extremist ideology that seeks to overthrow the U.S. government.
By Neil MacFarquhar and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
An Air Force sergeant linked to an anti-government movement was charged
with murder and attempted murder on Tuesday in the shooting death of a
federal security officer outside a courthouse in Oakland, Calif., last
month.
The sergeant had expressed his allegiance to the so-called boogaloo
movement by writing with his own blood on the hood of a white Toyota
Camry and had used the recent protests against racial injustice as a
cover to attack law enforcement, according to the F.B.I.
Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, is accused of firing an assault rifle
from the open back door of a moving vehicle and gunning down the federal
officer, according to the criminal complaint.
The driver of the van, Robert Alvin Justus Jr., 30, who had met Sergeant
Carrillo on Facebook, was charged with aiding and abetting the murder of
Dave Patrick Underwood, 53, the officer killed in the shooting, the
complaint said. Both men were also charged with the attempted murder of
a second officer who was gravely wounded.
“They came to Oakland to kill cops,” John F. Bennett, the special agent
in charge of the F.B.I. in San Francisco, said at a news conference on
Tuesday.
Evidence tied Sergeant Carrillo to the boogaloo, an extremist ideology
that seeks to bring about a second civil war to overthrow the United
States government.
Sergeant Carrillo had previously been charged with the shooting death of
a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County during a gun battle on June 6
that led to his arrest.
In that showdown, Sergeant Carrillo used his own blood to scrawl “Boog”
and other phrases linked to the movement on the hood of the car he had
stolen.
Sergeant Carrillo is the latest person tied to the movement to be
arrested in recent weeks. All of them have sought to exploit protests —
first against the coronavirus lockdowns and then around the death of
George Floyd in police custody — to accelerate their apocalyptic vision.
The term, initially derived as an inside joke from the 1984 cult classic
film “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is used as shorthand on internet
forums for a brewing second civil war.
However, boogaloo does not represent a cohesive or singular ideology. It
has been connected to what some consider humorous memes, as well as with
occasional physical violence and militaristic shows of force (similarly
to armed militias such as the Oath Keepers or III Percenters).
The reference migrated offline from social media platforms like Reddit,
4chan and Facebook with volatile speed in recent months. Adherents often
wear distinctive Hawaiian shirts, a reference to the fact that they
sometimes transform their name into the “Big Luau” or the “Big Igloo.”
Subscribing to the boogaloo ultimately translates to one core tenet: a
belief that the United States government has failed and that the
country’s divisions, inflamed by the news media, will result in a
violent internal war.
“This is a very violent movement even if they are wearing Hawaiian
shirts and using funny memes to try to soften what they are doing,” said
Kathleen Belew, a history professor and the author of “Bring the War
Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.”
Sergeant Carrillo’s case follows the arrests last month in Las Vegas of
an active-duty member of the Army and two veterans, who were charged
with trying to provoke violence between the police and protesters at
Black Lives Matter marches. Those men were also found to have ties to
the movement.
There have been other arrests of boogaloo adherents in recent months in
Colorado, Texas and Ohio, each involving plots to ambush law
enforcement. In addition, followers of the movement have backed the
conservative effort to reopen the Texas economy amid the coronavirus
pandemic. Armed men have showed up outside some businesses to support
them as they reopened in defiance of the lockdown.
The movement attracts both far-right white supremacists and some armed
men who joined the Black Lives Matter protests because of their anger at
the police and other symbols of government authority. The 1992 siege by
federal law enforcement agents over firearms charges at Ruby Ridge in
Idaho, which left two people dead, has long been a rallying cry.
Members often express admiration for training and other benefits that
come with being a military veteran. Having a small number of dedicated
activists corresponds to an increasing emphasis on violent activity, Ms.
Belew said. “They do not want 1,000 people down in the street,” she
said. “They are interested in six people who can make and detonate a bomb.”
Sergeant Carrillo was on active duty at Travis Air Force Base in Central
California when the Oakland shooting occurred, according to the
complaint. He had recruited Mr. Justus online.
In the scenario described by the complaint, the two men, using the
distraction provided by protests in downtown Oakland, parked a Ford van
directly across from the federal courthouse there. After scoping out the
area, Mr. Justus drove the van toward the courthouse and Sergeant
Carrillo fired multiple rounds at the guard post, killing Mr. Underwood
and wounding his partner, the complaint said.
That sparked an eight-day manhunt that culminated in a shootout near
Sergeant Carrillo’s residence in Ben Lomond, Calif., after a witness
reported an abandoned van that appeared to contain ammunition, firearms
and bomb-making equipment.
Sergeant Carillo, who grew up in the pine-covered mountains of Ben
Lomond, north of Santa Cruz, had joined the Air Force in 2009, according
to military records.
Deputies from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office responded to the
report and arrived at the residence where Sergeant Carrillo is accused
of opening fire on the deputies, killing Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller.
His lawyer in the state case, Jeffrey C. Stotter, said he had not yet
been retained on the federal case but expected to be involved since both
were possibly capital cases.
After Sergeant Carrillo shot Mr. Gutzwiller, according to the complaint,
he fled on foot and carjacked the Toyota Camry. It was on that vehicle
that he scrawled phrases in blood linked to the movement, including “I
became unreasonable” and “Stop the duopoly.”
The first quote is attributed to Marvin Heemeyer, who bulldozed 13
buildings in Colorado in 2004 over a zoning dispute. Mr. Heemeyer killed
himself but became a hero among antigovernment extremists who call him
“Killdozer” in chat rooms.
“Stop the duopoly,” a nonviolent political phrase, refers to criticism
that the Democratic and Republican Parties do not allow any room for
others, such as libertarians.
Sergeant Carrillo also had a patch on his bulletproof vest of the
movement’s flag, with an igloo replacing the stars plus black-and-white
stripes, with one stripe a Hawaiian motif.
The F.B.I. searched Sergeant Carrillo’s Facebook accounts, where he had
communicated with Mr. Justus and also expressed his violent intentions,
according to the complaint.
“It’s a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois,” Sergeant
Carrillo wrote, according to the complaint. The comment was linked to a
video of a crowd attacking two California Highway Patrol vehicles. On
chat rooms, “bois” is often used as an alternative spelling for “boys,”
and soup is shorthand for alphabet soup, which is how adherents refer
collectively to federal law enforcement agencies with their many acronyms.
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