I would think with the amount of video and planning involved, police could find at least one perpetrator. Lean on that person with terrorism and conspiracy charges to turn over on the rest. Force a plea, rise, repeat.
Removing the fencing from the overpasses would help.
Where’s Lakeisha Holloway when you need her?
Guys, that was awesome! Did you all miss the part where they made their tires smoke? I mean, SMOKE! Totally worth inconveniencing hundreds of people.
Vroom vroom! Loud noises!
Yeah. Police routinely shut down perfectly legal protests and advocacy in the same area that is not blocking traffic or threatening harm to anyone, and sometimes threaten the Constitutionally-protected participants with arrest, but these guys are “impossible” to stop?
Some guy being a dick on a motorcycle is not a terrorist, and misusing laws intended to protect us from actual harm for the sake of expediency is a terrible idea, and you should be ashamed for suggesting it.
At a press conference yesterday the Prince George’s Police Public Information Officer stated that there are very specific situations that county police may give pursuit. Almost all involve immediate, deadly danger. Motorcycle hooligans are more dangerous when pursued than not (tendency to crash and kill innocent bystanders).
She also remarked that the DC VA MD region had an auto task force that is aggressively pursuing these types of folks through investigation and seizing the bikes while they are not on the road. I know they have had some success, I don’t know how much.
Finally the area where the incident occurred (Interstate I95) is the primary jurisdiction of the MD Stat Police (Forestville Barracks). Not commonly known is how damned few MSP Troopers are in the field on any given shift. On Sunday there were probably 6 troopers covering the south half of PG at most.
It’s a tough thing to deal with for sure.
The bike riders may or may not be terrorists, but the actions may be construed as domestic terrorism.
So once activities are categorized as such, under section 806 of the PATRIOT act, assets of said persons may be subject to forfeiture. I’m sure there are other creative ways.
There is no shame in using tools that are available. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Yes this would be a stretch. If it happened, and prosecutors and police tried this method, I would have no sympathy for the bikers.
Just one thing: Now that they’ve done their stunt & gotten their publicity, its on the web and in papers. Terrorists read the papers & they watch bad TV too. (Some people say 9-11 was partially conceived as an idea from re-runs of a crappy 70s TV movie called “An Evening In Byzantium”)
“Jawad…! Look at this! The Americans… they can’t stop this! They use cellphones and social media to form flash mobs that can paralyze the Capital and all the Military Infrastructure. The Americans… they can do Nothing! No technology exits to isolate flash mobs or hunt down or track these people. Hani! What can we strap to a motorcycle…?”
The agencies in the area need to find some of these bikers to make an example of.
They also need to work on a technology to track large numbers of identical transmissions from any one cell phone (maybe flagging as suspicious any event where large numbers of identical transmissions are sent from multiple cellphones in a 3-tower radius in a short span of time)
so they can threat-assess and trace the suspicious activity back to its source.
You make a good point. But you need to be loudest in condemning the behavior. Just liek there are lots of good bicyclists, but too many jerks who ride son the side walk or block traffic on purpose. The good bicyclists condone that behavior by not condemning it loudly.
How long did this last?
Seems like one cop entering the interstate with lights and sirens going would have dispersed the crowd pretty quickly. He wouldn’t need to chase or arrest anyone, just appear, and everyone would split.
A couple of A10 Warthogs followed by a fleet of snowplows to push the remains to the shoulder should take care of it.
And yes, to the inevitable poster… I am proposing mass slaughter of people for moving violations with no sarcasm at all implied.
That is a horrid proposal!
It would chew up the pavement too much.
And do it again another day.
I don’t drive Beltways or intercity highways, buy am sure this kind of foolishness disrupts traffic and lives for more than the 10 minutes or so that these idiots took over the highway. It’s a pretty delicate system.
While it may not be the intention of the ‘Domestic terrorism’ law. There are certainly parts of it that could be applied to these assholes.
And what about that guy trying to protect his family in New York that was pulled out of his car and beaten by the same kind of group. Getting stuck in a group like this is certainly a type of terrorism.
This is a Horrible proposal! The A-10 is much too fast to be effective.
Cobra gunships with the M197 electric cannon offer a much more surgical solution and a more cost efficient one as well. It also can land and be refueled/rearmed at almost any strip mall parking lot if necessary.
How did you shift from motorcycles to bicycles?
Furthermore: No. That is an excuse for protecting acts of bigotry against smaller groups.
No, actually, individual people (regardless of their hobbies or activities) have absolutely no responsibility for the behaviors of other people. Insisting that they do is unfair and places a burden of “correct” behavior on people who weren’t even involved in the misbehavior in the first place.
This is like encouraging black mothers to tell their sons not to wear hoodies or play with squirt guns. It entirely misses the point, is insulting as hell, and overlooks systemic prejudice towards the behavior in question (and therefore, prejudice towards the morality and relative “personhood” of the persons engaged in those behaviors).
If that’s what you were going for, then by all means continue on asking certain people to show obvious signs of denouncing other people’s behavior, but it’s not a good look.
no I don’t. groups “policing themselves” works up to a point, but there are some people (usually 16- to 21-year-old dickbag guys) who won’t listen to anyone who tries to tell them what to do.
I’m content to let them either fall into the hands of the law, or maim/kill themselves by their own stupidity.
Tell the cops they are armed and black, then stand back. Or apply the domestic terrorism laws referenced above. Then throw them in jail and let them rot. Assholes the lot of them.