Boogaloo Bois

On 16 June 2020 murder and attempted murder charges were filed against Steven Carrillo, the alleged gunman in the May 29, 2020, drive-by shooting that resulted in the death of Protective Security Officer David Patrick Underwood and injuries to a second security officer. The Department of Justice also announced aiding and abetting charges against Robert Alvin Justus Jr., the driver of the vehicle from which Carrillo is alleged to have attacked the guards. Evidence led deputies from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office to Carrillo’s residence in Ben Lomond. There, Carrillo allegedly opened fire on the deputies when they arrived at his property, killing one deputy and wounding four other officers. During the attack there was also an explosion on the property.

Carrillo appears to have used his own blood to write various phrases on the hood of the car that he carjacked. Before he was apprehended, Carrillo scrawled the word “boog” and “I became unreasonable” in blood on the hood of a car. “Boog” is short for boogaloo, a far-right anti-government movement that began on the extremist site 4chan and aims to start a second American civil war. The phrases relate to an extremist ideology that promotes inciting a violent uprising through use of militias.

Carrillo was stationed at Travis Air Force Base northeast of Oakland where he was a leader in an elite military security force and had no record of disciplinary issues.

A variety of extremist and fringe movements and subcultures have adopted the word “boogaloo” as shorthand for a coming civil war. There's a growing presence of Boogalo Bois, a gun-toting, Hawaiian shirt-wearing anti-government group, often misrepresented as a straightforward white supremacist group, at the Black Lives Matter protests. They have been accused of fomenting some of the violence blamed on Antifa by the Trump administration. Boogalo Bois, or their other iterations, openly called for people to join them in raising militias against the Minneapolis police after the police killing of George Floyd. Officials claim that much of the violence can be pinned on "outside agitators" who are seeking to distract from the main message of the demonstrations.

defines boogaloo as "a genre of Latino popular music of especially New York in the 1960s influenced by soul and rhythm and blues". "More crucial to the fate of boogaloo, however, was the rise of Puerto Rican cultural nationalism and the contemporaneous emergence of salsa, a music that, unlike boogaloo, was deeply rooted in Spanish Caribbean musical traditions". Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 2010. It is also "a dance performed to boogaloo music" - "The boogaloo is, or was, one of the thousand dances the land was full of in the 1960s …" — Luc Sante, New York Review of Books, 17 July 2003.

The term was recorded as the name of a dance in 1966, as in the August 11 issue of Jet (vol. 30, no. 18, p. 63): “Most hip Gothamites now trying to get rhythmic understanding between arms, legs and sacroiliac in order to get in on the Boogaloo dance craze.” The word figures in a number of single and album titles released in 1966 and 1967, as “The Boogaloo Party” by the Flamingos (advertised in the January 22, 1966, issue of Billboard).

The loose movement borrows its name from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, a poorly-received 1980s sequel film that is regarded as nearly identical to the first. The term "Electric Boogaloo" has come to be used to describe things of low quality, especially on message boards and social media. "Electric Boogaloo" is not commonly used in a political or violent fashion by most.

The new movement of armed, far-right adherents is gaining attention in the United States, not just for its seemingly strange name, but for its alleged links to the violence that has taken place across the country following largely peaceful protests over police brutality. On June 4, three men who allegedly belong to the Boogaloo movement were arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, on charges related to "terrorism" and involving plots to accelerate violence at protests.

Adherents of the loosely organised "Boogaloo" movement appear to believe in armed, anti-government actions that could lead to a second US civil war. Its members, known as "Boogaloo Boys" or "Boogaloo Bois", are typically seen with assault rifles and tactical gear. Some adherents of the movement have also been spotted in Hawaiian shirts in recent days, according to reports, though not all wear them. There are examples of adherents claiming they want to support protesters in the face of heavily armoured police, while others appear to have connections to "extremist ideology", according to reports.

Some far-right elements use it as a code word for a second civil war, presumably as a sequel to the first. The use of the term seems to have gained prominence among some with far-right views around October 2019. "A range of boogaloo-related phrases also emerged this year, as the term became more popular, including: 'showing up for the boogaloo,' 'when the boogaloo hits,' 'being boogaloo ready' and 'bring on the boogaloo', the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish NGO based in the US that tracks the far-right, wrote in a report on the movement.

Like other movements that once largely inhabited corners of the internet, it has seized on the social unrest and economic calamity caused by the coronavirus pandemic to publicise its violent messages. The pandemic became a catalyst for the "boogaloo" movement because the stay-at-home orders "put a stressor on a lot of very unhappy people," JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, told the Associated Press news agency. MacNab said the movement's rhetoric goes beyond discussions about fighting virus restrictions - which many protesters brand as "tyranny" - to talking about killing FBI agents or police officers "to get the war going".

In May 2020, Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo was an adherent of the Boogaloo Boys. Federal investigators allege that Carrillo fired on two security officers outside a Federal courthouse from a white van, allegedly driven by Robert Alvin Justus, Jr. The shots killed one and wounded the other. The alleged attack started with a Facebook exchange between Carrillo and Justus on the morning of 28 May. The messages showed that Justus and Carrillo planned to use nearby protests as a distraction. After the shooting, the men fled in the van and disappeared for days while police circulated photosof the vehicle. The van's VIN numberled officers that afternoon to Carrillo?s property in Ben Lomond. As they approached the home, someone fired and shot twosheriff's deputies before setting off an explosion. One of the deputies later died. Already wounded, Carrillo was subdued by a local resident when he tried to steal his car to escape. Officers arrested Carrillo there. If convicted on the federal counts, Carrillo could face the death penalty for the murder charge and up to 20 years in prison for the attempted murdercharge. Justus could face the same penalties for the aiding and abetting charges.

In June 2020 Stephen T. Parshall, Andrew Lynam, and William L. Loomis were arrested in Las Vegas on state criminal complaint alleging conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, material support for committing an act of terrorism, and multiple explosives violations. Lynam is an Armyreservist, Parshall is a Navy veteran, and Loomis is an Air Forceveteran. Nothing else is available abouttheir service as of June 2020. All three were identified as members of the Boogaloo Movement. Allegedly, the three men discussed plots to either destroy an observation station at Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, destroy power substations, throw a smoke bombat a ReOpen Las Vegas rally, and other attacks. The FBI was alerted by a confidential informant.