A Streetscape of Threat

The other day I came out of La Colombe in Fishtown with my fancy coffee drink and tried to cross the street to get back to work. It was really hard—not because of the piles of frozen gray snow or the endless stream of traffic. It was impossible because there were three—THREE—black oversized SUVs parked in front of the coffee shop. Once I ascertained that there were no FBI raids underway, I moved down the street to an SUV-free stretch and made my way across.

I haven't been able to stop seeing these giant black SUVs since. Suddenly it feels like they're everywhere.

So I looked it up. Sales of full-size luxury SUVs jumped 34% in 2024. Large SUVs and pickup trucks now make up 75% of total U.S. vehicle sales—a record high. Full-size SUVs have nearly doubled their market share since 2013. 

If you're a normal person who owns one of these giants, I'm not coming after you personally. There is, however, a real association happening that we need to talk about. Who often drives these vehicles? People trying to project an image of authority and power. These trucks say "I am here, you will make way for me." ICE uses trucks like this for a reason.

I drive an SUV myself. I understand the feeling of safety you get from being higher and bigger in traffic. I wouldn’t describe my vehicle as small, but compared to these mammoths, it's downright petite. It doesn’t prevent me from seeing kids and old people in the street. A sedan driver can see a child 10 feet in front of them. The drivers of full-size SUVs or trucks often can't see anything closer than 15 feet due to the hood height. There is real data showing that pedestrian injuries and fatalities have climbed alongside the proliferation of these vehicles.

There's a huge distinction between feeling safer and actually posing more of a threat to people. Or there should be. Unfortunately, the culture we're living in now seems to be losing that distinction. It's been described as a vehicular arms race—getting a bigger car in order to keep up with all the other people getting bigger cars. Here in the narrow streets of Fishtown, what's the point in escalating when pedestrians are your main opponents? They're not much of a threat even to Honda Civics.

Here's what's really troubling me: ICE is an actual threat in cities right now. Philly isn't Minneapolis. Yet. ICE is here and they are stopping people. I heard a story from one of my seniors—she said a relative who wasn't an immigrant had an encounter with ICE recently. A little old lady with health issues got pulled over by one of these big, black SUVs. They took her driver's license and made her call her boss to prove she was who she said she was. They sent her on her way, but what was the point of terrorizing her like that? Or of terrorizing ANY of the people they're going after?

There are visual clues that let you know this potential threat is nearby. Obviously it's worse for immigrants and black and brown people. We're seeing, though, that no one is immune to their scare tactics. The biggest visual clue? Big, black SUVs.

It's sad that I'm getting triggered by what is more likely to be a mom on her way to Whole Foods. These cars are nonetheless chosen by ICE specifically for their intimidation factor. Even if consumers are buying them just because they look cool or make them feel safer, the cumulative effect is a landscape that, right now, is harder and harder to distinguish from one designed to intimidate. That's worth paying attention to, regardless of anyone's intentions.

Like I said, I drive an SUV. I'm not against looking and being powerful in the world. Individual drivers aren't the villains here. What's worth paying attention to is something more diffuse and harder to name: when the visual language of state enforcement becomes indistinguishable from a consumer status symbol, the intimidation it represents stops registering as a threat and just becomes the landscape. Background noise. That normalization—that slow erosion of our ability to distinguish between a government vehicle and a trip to Whole Foods—is its own kind of red flag.

I don't have an answer. I just know I can't cross the street in Fishtown anymore without doing a threat assessment first. I don't think I'm alone in that. We are all absorbing more threat and trauma than we realize, in ways we can't always name. Sometimes it's a big, black SUV. Sometimes it's just the air we're breathing right now.