“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote. But for law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, there’s more to fear than the poet’s “breeding lilacs.”
ABC News notes that the month of April has at least eight dates of significance for myriad potential bad actors. They include everything from the fiery end of the Waco siege on April 19, 1993 — which reportedly inspired the Oklahoma City bombing on the same date, two years later — to Hitler‘s April 20 birthday. Many nefarious individuals use the latter anniversary as an excuse to perpetrate acts of mayhem and destruction.
For this year, at least, we’ve already passed the anniversaries of the April 3, 2009 Binghamton mass shooting, and the April 4 assassination date of Martin Luther King, Jr., without incident.
However, Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination anniversary date looms this week: April 14.
The Virginia Tech shooting happened on April 17, 2007, while the Boston Marathon bombing occurred on April 15, 2013.
Also of significance for 2022, Ramadan, Passover and Easter all overlap this year, further setting law enforcement on edge for potential attacks.