Maybe I disagree about the nature of the case for nonviolence. Right around when you posted this, news broke that Bovino is being recalled from MN, and Trump called Walz and Frey today. It really looks like Trump could tell how bad the optics were for him, and is backing off (albeit of course without acknowledging fault, or even a change in tack). Would that have happened if protesters were violent? If yesterday had a story about an ICE agent in MN being killed? I strongly doubt it.
Our democracy was much less healthy during Jim Crow, and civil rights protesters certainly couldn't assume that cops who brutalized them would be held to account. But they still would've been a lot less successful in winning hearts and minds, I think, if they'd taken that as a reason to violently resist police brutality.
Agreed - this is what Jesse is missing. I agree with him that it's simply horrible that the Trump administration rushes out to put their own narrative out there every time a protestor is shot and always proclaims the actions of ICE are justifiable even when there is serious doubt. But the reason nonviolence worked so well in the 60s was the indelible images of firehoses and dogs being turned on unarmed and unresisting Americans. Amp that up by several factors of magnitude in an age where everyone has a video camera in their hand. OTOH, if the protestors take the summer of 2020/CHAZ approach, loot and burn and generate chaos, they're going to have an extremely hard time convincing Americans that they are just nice normal people who don't like police brutality. Because we've seen THAT before as well.
I mean, Jesse clearly agrees with you except in his headline. I find that headline to be profoundly misleading about the content of the article. I read the headline, and couldn't believe Jesse was ready to abandon non-violence, then read the article, where the point he was making was literally NOT one of "violence is legitimate / effective." That headline does violence to the article under it.
I don't think that's right. Here's how I read the overall arc of the piece:
1. The case for non-violence is that we live in a democratic system where it's better to achieve political outcomes through democratic processes and procedures. (This is why the case for violence in 2020 was weak; Chauvin was apprehended and tried for killing Floyd.)
2. But in 2026, the system is much more broken than in 2020, very plausibly, Good's and Pretti's shooters will not be tried for their killings.
3. So the argument against violent rioting that worked in 2020 doesn't work anymore.
It's true he doesn't go on to say: "so violence is a great idea!" Maybe he has other reasons for opposing violence, he's just emphasizing that one of them no longer applies, or so he thinks.
My point is that I think that was never the main reason to favor nonviolence--which you can tell by seeing that non-violence was still a good idea even in circumstances where you couldn't expect law enforcement to be held to account for wrongful killings.
Actually, I think I understand what he was saying. Also, the argument against violence in 2020 did NOT work then (see: burning buildings, something like 700 damaged). Jesse is saying it's even harder now to make the case against violence, but that he continues to believe in it himself. He's pointing out that Minneapolis is a powder keg now, and it will be very hard to dissuade the activists to remain non-violent. I still think the headline is bad, but more representative than I thought.
yeah it was a phone typo--I've edited it to better reflect my meaning. (I think I had "disagree with the nature of the case for nonviolence" which I replaced with "disagree about the nature of the case for nonviolence.)
It would be nice if a sizable number of Republicans reacted to this situation by saying: "Wait, ICE are our party's dedicated gang of murder goons now? Shit, when did that happen? That doesn't sit well with me at all!".
I'm a Republican, and I'll pretty much say what you said there. I still have a proclivity toward them, but they're losing me. I still mostly blame "protesters" that are actual interference-ers though.
Well then your perspective is closed bc those people have a constitutional right to priest which is why essentially none of them have been charged by DHS even after being arrested. And no amount of interference justified the gang execution of Pretti
I mean, he didn't say they shouldn't be allowed to protest, did he? You can believe in the right to protest while still believing some protesters to be counter-productive to their cause.
The most infuriating is to see Democrats, instead of pulling themselves together and taking distance from their own insanity that pushed so many voters in Trump's arms, just double down with DSA and passively wait until people have enough of Trump and the power falls back to them so they can resume Biden-era policies that will only feed polarization. The USA are so screwed, and so is the West.
I don’t think your article supports your headline.
First, nonviolent protests and shifting public opinion *do* seem to be driving Trump to some level of compromise, while a violent uprising justifying a crackdown or the Insurrection Act would have likely made him double down.
Second, both Good and Pretti were stretching the definition of “nonviolent protest”. Even if they didn’t deserve to die, they were physically obstructing federal agents from doing their job. That’s not a general riot, but it’s a step above marching with a sign into “committing crime in the name of civil disobedience” territory.
Absolutely should investigate and press charges if they find that what appears to have happened is in fact what did happen.
However, for the Petti case, my understanding is that the agents shot him after one of them yelled about a gun. It looks to me like at least 4 mistakes were made before this went horribly tragically wrong.
1. bringing a gun to a protest [added: see comment below about how people are often just happening to be near an ice action and start to record, wearing whatever they happen to be wearing at the time]
2. ice attacking him for helping a woman up
3. ice not telling each other that he had his hands behind his back and was thus not a threat.
4. someone in ice yelling about a gun after he was clearly not going to hurt anyone.
I don't know what the people saw who shot him point blank, and I don't understand how they could have been mistaken like that. I am not excusing their behavior but trying to see where the whole tragedy could have been stopped before that.
I think the gun he had led to a horrible misunderstanding amongst the ICE people. So I think the case for bringing a gun is....well...don't. The ICE people know they are hated and a lot of people I know on the right think Democrats are violent and are expecting ice to be attacked. There is a lot of hatred and fear out there.
This is like my friends who are black telling their kids if they are pulled over to move slowly and keep their hands in sight, say what actions they are doing, etc., even if they have done nothing nothing wrong.
So, in short, I don't think this makes the case for violence at all.
I think this makes the case for being clearly nonviolent.
You must not live here, so let me explain something that a
lot of people are getting wrong; the whole city is a “protest” right now or has the potential to turn into one at a moment’s notice. ICE activity erupts on a residential street or (in this case) a street with many popular shops and restaurants. People who are in the area notice the ICE activity and some of them decide to film and observe. Some people might hear about it from a signal chat, but often the first people on the scene are just the people who happened to already be there. They are stopping to record because—as this episode illustrates—ICE has a track record of coming in hot with maximum aggression and then lying about what they did and who started it. So, a person who hears about one of these ICE raids and decides to respond (wearing what they had on before they knew ICE was on their block) is not the same as a person who shows up armed to the big march downtown.
To the first point, you are allowed to bring a gun to a protest, according to every 2nd Amendment gun nut nonprofit in the US in the last few days.
If you aren't allowed to exercise your right because doing so will get you illegally killed by federal agents, that seems to be at the heart of the argument of the gun nuts to own guns. If you can't exercise the right, it doesn't exist.
This was not a misunderstanding the dude was subdued by a half dozen people who has just pistol whipped him and they shot him on the back of the fucking head with his hands empty. No amount of atelier to rationalize or reduces your cognitive dissonance or manage your terror at what happened is going to change those facts
this is the issue that's being overlooked. it was a terrible mistake not a crime but carrying a firearm and then getting physically involved with other people carrying firearms, puts you at risk of getting shot. in general, antagonizing people with guns, increases your risk of getting shot. whether any of this is legal, moral or ethical, is irrelevant, because getting shot means you are dead and beyond winning arguments. its just terribly horribly risky to confront and antagonize people carrying guns in tense situations, and if you arent willing to lay down your life for a cause, you shouldnt do it.
> The question here isn’t whether they were justified, but whether they warrant a thorough investigation and potential criminal charges. I firmly believe that if you showed all the available video to 100 dispassionate use-of-force experts, all 100 would quickly conclude that yes, these questions warrant serious, thorough investigations. It is plainly obvious from the videos that they are investigation-worthy.
Oh, Jesse, your take on these incidents was disappointing because you're usually very good with sussing out the facts, even if they come to conclusions you disagree with.
I don't think you have talked to many use-of-force experts on this. Or perhaps the ones you're talking to are feeding you a "well, it's sorta debatable.." kind of waffling.
Good's case was very straightforward. Anyone who's taken a basic firearm self-defense class knows the legal standard for a self-defense argument is trivially covered in the Good case.
Like sure, an investigation could be called for, but it'd be settled over the course of an afternoon. Good prosecutorial discretion would say that it's not worth trying the officer in that case. It's not even fuzzy.
I don't know about the other case though. I hear that was pretty bad. Haven't bothered to look into it myself yet though.
"Good's case was very straightforward. Anyone who's taken a basic firearm self-defense class knows the legal standard for a self-defense argument is trivially covered in the Good case."
Could you please explain? I'm not from the US, and we don't have a "Go Ahead And Shoot Them While They're Trying To Escape A Masked Thug" clause in my country's legal system.
If someone is in front of your car, there's only a very narrow set of circumstances you're allowed to step on the gas. Hers was not one of them.
In the US, an individual can use force defensively, including lethal force, if they reasonably believe they are at threat of serious bodily harm or death. Getting hit by a car counts. That's the only requirement.
Any prosecutor or anyone familiar with self-defense in the US understands this.
I find it hard to believe that US law states that you're allowed to use lethal force, on the basis of believing that you are "are at threat of serious bodily harm or death", because someone tries to drive their car away from you. Can you point me to the text in question? Because it does sound like you should be able to kill anyone who unexpectedly starts their car near you in a car park.
The first mistake you made is she was driving the vehicle at the agent. the second mistake is missing reasonableness part of the standard. If I where standing next to a vehicle that started and pulled away it would be unreasonable to shot them. If a car instead looked like it would eminently hit me then that is reason to shot.
"The first mistake you made is she was driving the vehicle at the agent."
No, she wasn't. It seems the first mistake you made was not bothering to watch the video.
What do you get out of all this, out of interest? A guy in a mask kills a woman for trying to drive away from him, and you defend this despite not watching the video, or perhaps pretending you didn't. What is this for?
I have watched the video and I know for a matter of fact her car makes contact with the agent you can see his feet skid backward from being pushed by the car.
"A law enforcement officer may not deliberately or recklessly place themselves in a position of danger and then justify deadly force as self-defense when that danger was foreseeable and avoidable."
Law enforcement is trained to never step in front of a vehicle with a driver. This is the problem with these untrained yahoos.
THANK YOU. I'm glad to see that US law isn't actually on the side of these geniuses saying "actually, if you understood self-defense law you'd know it's totally cool to shoot an innocent person who's trying to get away from a violent thug".
Kind of you to telegraph your intention to have a bad-faith argument where you wilfully misinterpret everything they say while hunting for those "GGGGOT EM!" dunks. Saves everyone the trouble.
Thanks for the content-free answer, champ. Can anyone else here explain why the shooting is trivially obviously justified under the basis of self-defence?
it is not. I can maybe understand the first shot being justified as the officer hears the car accelerate while he is mostly in front of the vehicle and in a split second decision may not realize that the car is turning away from him; hence he shoots at the driver. For simplicity, I'm ignoring the fact that he put himself in front of the vehicle as that does add an extra layer of analysis (possibly not in his favor).
However, by the time the ICE agent shoots his second shot, he is clearly out of harms way and sees that the car was indeed turning away. Any ignorance he may have had prior should be reasonably resolved as we clearly see the car turning away. hence, I find it hard to reasonably justify the 2nd shot or 3rd shot. If I want to be very generous to the ICE officer, I could argue that the car did make contact with him (this scenario is disputed), he reasonably assumed this contact was intentional and therefore he reasoned that Good was a danger to the community as she was willing to cause harm in her escape and the subsequent shots were justified to protect the community. But to me, that's a bit of a stretch as I think a reasonable person in his position should have realized that she was turning her vehicle away and even if contact were made against him, the contact reasonably looked accidental and not deliberate. And hence, the 2nd and 3rd shots appear escalatory and unjustified even if we're willing to cut him slack on the first shot.
All that being said, certain details are still disputed such as whether he was hit/touched or not. It is a travesty that there isn't a legitimate investigation being carried out by the federal government. I'm willing to side with the ICE agent if a legitimate investigation shows that he acted reasonably, but given that we only have the videos, I have to cautiously conclude from my own analysis that the shooting was unjustified. But I much more prefer a legitimate investigation by independent bodies as that's what competent, rule of law governments do (which the Trump admin is unfortunately very far from).
> However, by the time the ICE agent shoots his second shot, he is clearly out of harms way and sees that the car was indeed turning away. Any ignorance he may have had prior should be reasonably resolved as we clearly see the car turning away. hence, I find it hard to reasonably justify the 2nd shot or 3rd shot.
This isn't how self defense pleas work in the US though. And that's what I took issue with Jesse's post to begin with. A lot of people making these kinds of arguments are making ex post facto arguments based on how they intuitively imagine self defense law should be. Not how it actually is.
When we're talking on a timescale of seconds, the only analyis that matters is that first shot. While we can make all kinds of arguments after the fact, with our ability to carefully examine the footage, existing court precedent does not expect individuals to carefully reevaluate their situation on the fly, in an high stress, high adrenaline situation and adjust accordingly.
Basically, if someone started shooting for justifiable reasons, precedent doesn't ask that courts nitpick decisions made within a few seconds later. That's simply a realistic understanding of the law in this context.
Any prosecutor being honest about the issue would say that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.
Sure, if minutes later he walked over and cartel-style executed someone, that'd be a different story.
It also doesn't matter if you put yourself into that situation or not (with some very specific exceptions that don't apply here). Defendents can have been up to all kinds of unwise decisions, but their right to self defense still applies. Perhaps there's lessons we can learn about officer training, or perhaps internal displinary action. But it doesn't affect his self defense plea.
The argument that Good accelerated to run over the thug, who then "defended himself," is hypocritical and illogical.
First, Good never acted threateningly.
Second, there is no footage showing that he even grazed the thug.
Third, in what fantasy world can a person avoid being run over by a vehicle supposedly heading toward him by shooting at it instead of getting out of the way?
The footage clearly shows the thug, who had been circling the truck, suddenly stopping and drawing his weapon. If he was supposedly afraid of being run over, what he should have done was not stop, but rather hurry out of the way. He didn't do that because he knew the vehicle couldn't hit him. What the thug wanted was to assert his authority by preventing Good from leaving at all costs.
In the Good case all it takes for the ice agent to have a valid self defense claim is that he had a reasonable fear for your life. Goods car either clips him or he is forced to push against the car to get out of the way. we know this because in at least one video you can see his feet skid backwards. In ether case It is easily conceivable that he could be mortally wounded by the car by say falling underneath the wheels or becoming trapped to the car in someway.
The argument that Good accelerated to run over the thug, who then "defended himself," is hypocritical and illogical.
First, Good never acted threateningly.
Second, there is no footage showing that he even grazed the thug.
Third, in what fantasy world can a person avoid being run over by a vehicle supposedly heading toward him by shooting at it instead of getting out of the way?
The footage clearly shows the thug, who had been circling the truck, suddenly stopping and drawing his weapon. If he was supposedly afraid of being run over, what he should have done was not stop, but rather hurry out of the way. He didn't do that because he knew the vehicle couldn't hit him. What the thug wanted was to assert his authority by preventing Good from leaving at all costs.
For points one and two She drives her vehicle at the officer and it makes contact with the officer. We know that because in at least on angle of the video you can see his feet skid backward from the car pushing him. For point three the roads are icy enough that goods tire slip the first time she tries to accelerate. if the officer tried to move and fell on the ice he would have been in more danger.
The investigation is less a legal one of a wrongful shooting (though obviously that should be done, even if it's trivially going to show that it would be impossible to show he was not reasonably afraid for his life); to me, the investigation is one of policy and training. The man should be fire or disciplined, assuming he was ever trained to not do extremely stupid things like walking directly in front of subject's car.
“[C]ould you tell an anguished Minneapolis activist that they have a path toward justice within the system? Could you tell them that honestly, with a straight face?”
Could you say that to a marcher in Selma? Or a salt striker in India?
Do you honestly believe we are even close to those circumstances?
So no, it’s not normal times, not at all, but to give permission to those who want an excuse for redemptive violence (no better at their core than MAGA) *at the very moment that martyrdom is breaking through the fog* is just bizarre.
The welfare fraud case is just another example of Trump fucking things up by being a bumbling idiot.
Jospeh Thompson, US Attorney, broke the case of the welfare fraud and was prosecuting it. It was kind of red meat for Trump's base, but also 100% legitimate and proper use of government power. Any administration ought to have rigorously prosecuted this.
Trump likely moved on Minnesota to piggy-back off this news and/or amplify it.
Then after Good was shot, US Attorneys were ordered to start investigating her widow.
Because of that, Thompson resigned.
The case is still there but the person most familiar with the case and knows how to prosecute it, and seems to be a competent professional instead of whatever bootlicker said the right words to get a promotion, is gone. It might fall apart.
Is it your opinion that is it illigitmet for ice to be in an area because there are to few illegals? That seems like a preposterous standard if you flip the script. You wouldn't say it's illigitmate for police to investigate a murder or a rape merely because do few happen in an area. If we are talking about mere reasonableness I think investigating a sanctuary state witch is embroidered in massive fraud fraud is reason enough.
This is such a bad point laid bare by the part about murder and rape. So, so dumb. You understand Singal's point. Trump targeting Minneapolis is person in nature and if the goal was to effectively remove as many illegals as possible, focusing on Minnesota is painfully dumb. Again, you understand this. You're just intellectually dishonest.
My point is as long as there are illegals in Minnesota it's legitimate for ice to be there. No amount of Jesse mindreading trump delegitimizes ice being there.
Your use of the word 'legitimate' is doing a shit ton of work here, eh? There are illegals in every state. Surely you would concede that this wouldn't mean that any level of ICE activity in any state would be *smart* right? Taking it to its logical conclusion, if every ICE agent went to Wyoming tomorrow because of some stupid political reason, would it be reasonable to critique that?
Your hang up on the word 'legitimate' is interesting. And telling. You obviously don't think that Singal believes ICE isn't *allowed* to be in MN. You're hung up on it because you know that it's legitimately stupid and personal.
You are rationalizing. You should think harder about why that is. It's likely because you know on a deep level you've been fooled. Conned. You are the mark. It's okay, though, you can stop being an idiot at any time.
Personally, I think these guys are rationalizing because they know it sounds bad to say "I really enjoyed watching that innocent woman get killed, because the man who killed her is On My Side".
I live in Maine, which is also being targeted by an ICE surge despite having one of the smallest immigrant populations in the US. The administration seems to be targeting Maine because the secretary of state refused to hand over voter information to the feds--or at least, they claim they'll stop if she does. We also have a relatively significant Somali-born population in Lewiston, one of the three urban areas in the state. But they're also active in Portland. They could have picked Maine because the population is so spread out it's harder to muster the kind of protests we've seen in Minneapolis. And lots of Mainers think we've been targeted because our governor stood up to him in person.
At any rate, I'm worried about the bluster I'm seeing online from gun-owning progressives/liberals, which may sound like a contradiction but this is a place that has 'em. There's a lot of talk about how if the feds break into your house, you're entitled to shoot them, and a lot of talk about bringing guns to protests, even though carrying did not help Pretti. I'm hoping this is just blowing off steam because if anyone takes it seriously things could get really bad really fast.
"In theory this extremely Trumpian bending of federal law-enforcement to his will wouldn’t preclude a state investigation, but Minnesota investigators said that “the U.S. attorney’s office has prevented it from taking part in the investigation,” according to PBS."
Crocodile tears. Sanctuary states openly prohibit cooperating with federal law enforcement either. Shoe's on the other foot, so I'm not terribly sympathetic. The Right is now using the Left's playbook against them. You don't want to cooperate? We can play that game too.
I honestly think the "resistance," is making Trump stronger (though not more popular). They're feeding him. Go ahead and protest in the town square, but don't interfere where bullets could be flying. Use your voice, but keep away from law enforcement cleaning up the immigration situation we all are left with.
It's far messier than I'd like--but it's messy not in Red states--it's messy in Blue states, and the Blues are feeding Trump the shizzat he just gobbles up.
Let's start our reconciliation by all admitting that the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years are the root cause of this. The current cleanup isn't pretty, and I'll agree with you on that.
I highly doubt he was a domestic terrorist. Don't know him, but I haven't seen any evidence that would suggest that. I also don't know who shot him, and presume he's not a cold blooded killer, either.
And you believe the cause of this "not a cold blooded killer" shooting the man and the subsequent description of the man as a "domestic terrorist" by administration officials is "the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years"? And you believe agreement on that point to be a requirement for our reconciliation?
I'm not sure. What did you mean by "Let's start our reconciliation..."? And how is that reconciliation, whatever it is intended to reconcile, aided by both sides having to admit a man getting shot by a "not a cold blooded killer" and the subsequent description of the man as a "domestic terrorist" by administration officials is was caused by "the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years"?
I think there is a crucial difference between a path toward justice in "the system" mentioned in the second to last question, and "this system, right now." There is no straight-forward path in this system, right now. But it's not about this system, it's about the system going forward.
Fascism/totalitarianism doesn't emerge in a vacuum. The typical historical path is through a brutal civil war, or lower-grade civil conflict where the fascist/totalitarians are able to point at the other side and saying "see, they caused this with their own insanity, our violence will keep you safe from them." Non-violent protest is substantially better at producing an outcome where a future system will be able to achieve justice, and stop fascists from pointing and saying "but they're worse." The Trump regime clearly wants violence, and a re-run of the worst 2020 excesses, to implement this time-honored playbook, and non-violent protest is the best/only way to deprive the regime of that. Nonviolent protest (including civil disobedience) is not only the moral choice, it is the strategic choice.
Two things can simultaneously be true: that the execution of Alex Pretti was straight-up murder, and that Alex would likely still be alive today if he hadn't chosen to concealed-carry a firearm that day. It was a mistake for him to believe a gun would keep him safer. Not because Alex did something wrong when there, but because the shouting of "gun, gun, gun" while an agent disarmed him gave another agent to pretext to shoot him in the back, despite having line of sight to the gun being removed. It was legal for Alex to carry, it was legal for him to film, it was legal for him to try to help a woman who was violently shoved to the ground back on her feet, it was legal for him to stand there with his hands up, it was legal for him while blinded by pepper spray to try to keep his head from being smashed into the ground. He never tried to draw his weapon, and it was only revealed as agents pummeled him into the ground.
As a final note, anybody arguing that the Renee Good shooting was justified should be banned from gun ownership, as they would fail any competently taught self-defense class and their bar for "self-defense" is well below any reasonable standard of murder. The agent who killed Good violated every relevant rule of engagement, and all of us face more real danger every time we step into a crowded parking lot than that agent did then and there. Anybody who would be legitimately "in fear of their life" in that situation not only doesn't have the psychological wherewithal to be a law-enforcement agent of any kind, but to function in any society in which cars exist. And anybody arguing that the Alex Pretti execution was justified should be denaturalized and deported if SCOTUS sides with the Trump admin and rules that the 14th Amendment doesn't say what the 14th Amendment says. (Yes, this paragraph is hyperbole. Unlike the Trump administration I'm not in favor of thought policing, despite how tempting the "tread on them harder, daddy" crowd makes it.)
For myself, I don't bother with asking if the shooting of Renee Good was legally justified, because it doesn't matter. I doubt there is a prosector in the land who will ever charge the agent who killed her, because in this nation the standard the shooter has to meet is so low. DAs, judges, juries, the public...each gives way too much latitude to law enforcement when it comes to using deadly force. Sadly, I suspect that nothing that happened to Good will change any of that.
However, I think an equally important question is why was the situation allowed to happen in the first place. Why are ICE agents masked? Why did that particular agent step in front of a vehicle that was on? Why was that agent filming Good on his smartphone? All of these questions suggest to me that this entire operation was ill-conceived and poorly executed, and that, to me, is the issue to engage.
Political leaders are *supposed* to calm more crises than they create, and to ensure that situations involving deadly force never arise, or at the very least are avoided as much as possible. Trump and his GOP lickspittles not only allowed that unfortunate turn of events to happen; they encouraged it. They provoked a situation in which deadly force could kinda-sorta be justified. THAT, to my mind, is the big issue.
I agree with the concern, but we’ve been in a situation where people have no legitimate recourse from malevolent actions by government officials for quite some time. See, for example, Matt Drange’s reporting on teachers who rape kids for decades, being allowed to quietly resign and retain their teaching licenses to move on to a new school with new kids to rape when the rape finally becomes impossible to ignore.
People read stories about situations like this, say “gee, that’s awful,” and turn to the sports section. So it will go with police shootings.
Here’s a video of school staff ignoring a disabled kid screaming in pain from a shattered femur for hours. You think the fat guy in the red shirt and khakis did any time in prison? I don’t.
Or, in an example closer to your wheelhouse, what should the system do about prison officials who knowingly put violent male rapists in cells with women just because the violent male rapist claims he’s transgender? Is the system doing that?
The videos clearly show that the officer, who had been circling the vehicle, stopped doing so when it was no longer directly in front of it, and therefore, the vehicle could no longer have been hit. At that moment, he drew his weapon and then, as Good tried to move away, shot her to stop her.
Everyone blames ICE agents but what about their supervision? In the Army, the motto was that the commander is responsible for everything his/her soldiers do. It's unfair to place all the blame on low level ICE agents. Secondly, I asked a local police officer about why shoot someone 5-10 times. He said that the rule among police is now shoot until the threat no longer is a threat, which is pretty subjective. Even dead bodies twitch, do you still shoot them? I had figured that you shoot until the threat can no longer harm you, which should only be one bullet perhaps. But the officer protested and said that some people can take several bullets and still be resisting you. It doesn't feel right to me to be a good rule of engagement. Besides police should have bullet proof vests for protection unlike most civilians I would hope. When Robert E. Lee tried to round up John Brown he ordered his soldiers to go in without bullets in order to avoid any civilian casualties from stray bullets. That attitude seems to have changed into more of a protect your own force at all costs.
Given a matrix of good guy/bad guy vs. shot/not shot, you want bad guy shot and good guy not shot. the remaining cells are good guy shot and bad guy not shot. In the grand scheme of risk, this approach seems to increase the chances of good guy/shot vs. bad guy not shot. I guess it's a value judgment.
Maybe I disagree about the nature of the case for nonviolence. Right around when you posted this, news broke that Bovino is being recalled from MN, and Trump called Walz and Frey today. It really looks like Trump could tell how bad the optics were for him, and is backing off (albeit of course without acknowledging fault, or even a change in tack). Would that have happened if protesters were violent? If yesterday had a story about an ICE agent in MN being killed? I strongly doubt it.
Our democracy was much less healthy during Jim Crow, and civil rights protesters certainly couldn't assume that cops who brutalized them would be held to account. But they still would've been a lot less successful in winning hearts and minds, I think, if they'd taken that as a reason to violently resist police brutality.
Agreed - this is what Jesse is missing. I agree with him that it's simply horrible that the Trump administration rushes out to put their own narrative out there every time a protestor is shot and always proclaims the actions of ICE are justifiable even when there is serious doubt. But the reason nonviolence worked so well in the 60s was the indelible images of firehoses and dogs being turned on unarmed and unresisting Americans. Amp that up by several factors of magnitude in an age where everyone has a video camera in their hand. OTOH, if the protestors take the summer of 2020/CHAZ approach, loot and burn and generate chaos, they're going to have an extremely hard time convincing Americans that they are just nice normal people who don't like police brutality. Because we've seen THAT before as well.
I mean, Jesse clearly agrees with you except in his headline. I find that headline to be profoundly misleading about the content of the article. I read the headline, and couldn't believe Jesse was ready to abandon non-violence, then read the article, where the point he was making was literally NOT one of "violence is legitimate / effective." That headline does violence to the article under it.
I don't think that's right. Here's how I read the overall arc of the piece:
1. The case for non-violence is that we live in a democratic system where it's better to achieve political outcomes through democratic processes and procedures. (This is why the case for violence in 2020 was weak; Chauvin was apprehended and tried for killing Floyd.)
2. But in 2026, the system is much more broken than in 2020, very plausibly, Good's and Pretti's shooters will not be tried for their killings.
3. So the argument against violent rioting that worked in 2020 doesn't work anymore.
It's true he doesn't go on to say: "so violence is a great idea!" Maybe he has other reasons for opposing violence, he's just emphasizing that one of them no longer applies, or so he thinks.
My point is that I think that was never the main reason to favor nonviolence--which you can tell by seeing that non-violence was still a good idea even in circumstances where you couldn't expect law enforcement to be held to account for wrongful killings.
Actually, I think I understand what he was saying. Also, the argument against violence in 2020 did NOT work then (see: burning buildings, something like 700 damaged). Jesse is saying it's even harder now to make the case against violence, but that he continues to believe in it himself. He's pointing out that Minneapolis is a powder keg now, and it will be very hard to dissuade the activists to remain non-violent. I still think the headline is bad, but more representative than I thought.
Did you mean to write that you disagree about the basis for violence? Because you seem to agree that nonviolence is the way to go.
yeah it was a phone typo--I've edited it to better reflect my meaning. (I think I had "disagree with the nature of the case for nonviolence" which I replaced with "disagree about the nature of the case for nonviolence.)
It would be nice if a sizable number of Republicans reacted to this situation by saying: "Wait, ICE are our party's dedicated gang of murder goons now? Shit, when did that happen? That doesn't sit well with me at all!".
We'll see, I guess.
I'm a Republican, and I'll pretty much say what you said there. I still have a proclivity toward them, but they're losing me. I still mostly blame "protesters" that are actual interference-ers though.
Well then your perspective is closed bc those people have a constitutional right to priest which is why essentially none of them have been charged by DHS even after being arrested. And no amount of interference justified the gang execution of Pretti
If you want to win through non-violence you will need to persuade people like JayDub.
I mean, he didn't say they shouldn't be allowed to protest, did he? You can believe in the right to protest while still believing some protesters to be counter-productive to their cause.
I've seen some say this.
The most infuriating is to see Democrats, instead of pulling themselves together and taking distance from their own insanity that pushed so many voters in Trump's arms, just double down with DSA and passively wait until people have enough of Trump and the power falls back to them so they can resume Biden-era policies that will only feed polarization. The USA are so screwed, and so is the West.
I don’t think your article supports your headline.
First, nonviolent protests and shifting public opinion *do* seem to be driving Trump to some level of compromise, while a violent uprising justifying a crackdown or the Insurrection Act would have likely made him double down.
Second, both Good and Pretti were stretching the definition of “nonviolent protest”. Even if they didn’t deserve to die, they were physically obstructing federal agents from doing their job. That’s not a general riot, but it’s a step above marching with a sign into “committing crime in the name of civil disobedience” territory.
Didn't he swear up and down that he was definitely going to invoke the Insurrection Act? I'm still waiting for him to follow through on that.
Absolutely should investigate and press charges if they find that what appears to have happened is in fact what did happen.
However, for the Petti case, my understanding is that the agents shot him after one of them yelled about a gun. It looks to me like at least 4 mistakes were made before this went horribly tragically wrong.
1. bringing a gun to a protest [added: see comment below about how people are often just happening to be near an ice action and start to record, wearing whatever they happen to be wearing at the time]
2. ice attacking him for helping a woman up
3. ice not telling each other that he had his hands behind his back and was thus not a threat.
4. someone in ice yelling about a gun after he was clearly not going to hurt anyone.
I don't know what the people saw who shot him point blank, and I don't understand how they could have been mistaken like that. I am not excusing their behavior but trying to see where the whole tragedy could have been stopped before that.
I think the gun he had led to a horrible misunderstanding amongst the ICE people. So I think the case for bringing a gun is....well...don't. The ICE people know they are hated and a lot of people I know on the right think Democrats are violent and are expecting ice to be attacked. There is a lot of hatred and fear out there.
This is like my friends who are black telling their kids if they are pulled over to move slowly and keep their hands in sight, say what actions they are doing, etc., even if they have done nothing nothing wrong.
So, in short, I don't think this makes the case for violence at all.
I think this makes the case for being clearly nonviolent.
You must not live here, so let me explain something that a
lot of people are getting wrong; the whole city is a “protest” right now or has the potential to turn into one at a moment’s notice. ICE activity erupts on a residential street or (in this case) a street with many popular shops and restaurants. People who are in the area notice the ICE activity and some of them decide to film and observe. Some people might hear about it from a signal chat, but often the first people on the scene are just the people who happened to already be there. They are stopping to record because—as this episode illustrates—ICE has a track record of coming in hot with maximum aggression and then lying about what they did and who started it. So, a person who hears about one of these ICE raids and decides to respond (wearing what they had on before they knew ICE was on their block) is not the same as a person who shows up armed to the big march downtown.
Helpful to know. Thank you.
To the first point, you are allowed to bring a gun to a protest, according to every 2nd Amendment gun nut nonprofit in the US in the last few days.
If you aren't allowed to exercise your right because doing so will get you illegally killed by federal agents, that seems to be at the heart of the argument of the gun nuts to own guns. If you can't exercise the right, it doesn't exist.
You are allowed to bring a gun to a protest if that is what the law says. (I have no idea.)
You are allowed to walk around the streets of most cities wearing lots of knives, too.
You are allowed to wear a shirt saying "I hate ice and want them all dead," too, as far as I know.
These increase the risk of misunderstandings and in a tense situation, that is not what you want.
They were not "allowed" to kill him, as far as I know.
This was not a misunderstanding the dude was subdued by a half dozen people who has just pistol whipped him and they shot him on the back of the fucking head with his hands empty. No amount of atelier to rationalize or reduces your cognitive dissonance or manage your terror at what happened is going to change those facts
this is the issue that's being overlooked. it was a terrible mistake not a crime but carrying a firearm and then getting physically involved with other people carrying firearms, puts you at risk of getting shot. in general, antagonizing people with guns, increases your risk of getting shot. whether any of this is legal, moral or ethical, is irrelevant, because getting shot means you are dead and beyond winning arguments. its just terribly horribly risky to confront and antagonize people carrying guns in tense situations, and if you arent willing to lay down your life for a cause, you shouldnt do it.
common sense is self defense.
> The question here isn’t whether they were justified, but whether they warrant a thorough investigation and potential criminal charges. I firmly believe that if you showed all the available video to 100 dispassionate use-of-force experts, all 100 would quickly conclude that yes, these questions warrant serious, thorough investigations. It is plainly obvious from the videos that they are investigation-worthy.
Oh, Jesse, your take on these incidents was disappointing because you're usually very good with sussing out the facts, even if they come to conclusions you disagree with.
I don't think you have talked to many use-of-force experts on this. Or perhaps the ones you're talking to are feeding you a "well, it's sorta debatable.." kind of waffling.
Good's case was very straightforward. Anyone who's taken a basic firearm self-defense class knows the legal standard for a self-defense argument is trivially covered in the Good case.
Like sure, an investigation could be called for, but it'd be settled over the course of an afternoon. Good prosecutorial discretion would say that it's not worth trying the officer in that case. It's not even fuzzy.
I don't know about the other case though. I hear that was pretty bad. Haven't bothered to look into it myself yet though.
"Good's case was very straightforward. Anyone who's taken a basic firearm self-defense class knows the legal standard for a self-defense argument is trivially covered in the Good case."
Could you please explain? I'm not from the US, and we don't have a "Go Ahead And Shoot Them While They're Trying To Escape A Masked Thug" clause in my country's legal system.
If someone is in front of your car, there's only a very narrow set of circumstances you're allowed to step on the gas. Hers was not one of them.
In the US, an individual can use force defensively, including lethal force, if they reasonably believe they are at threat of serious bodily harm or death. Getting hit by a car counts. That's the only requirement.
Any prosecutor or anyone familiar with self-defense in the US understands this.
I find it hard to believe that US law states that you're allowed to use lethal force, on the basis of believing that you are "are at threat of serious bodily harm or death", because someone tries to drive their car away from you. Can you point me to the text in question? Because it does sound like you should be able to kill anyone who unexpectedly starts their car near you in a car park.
The first mistake you made is she was driving the vehicle at the agent. the second mistake is missing reasonableness part of the standard. If I where standing next to a vehicle that started and pulled away it would be unreasonable to shot them. If a car instead looked like it would eminently hit me then that is reason to shot.
"The first mistake you made is she was driving the vehicle at the agent."
No, she wasn't. It seems the first mistake you made was not bothering to watch the video.
What do you get out of all this, out of interest? A guy in a mask kills a woman for trying to drive away from him, and you defend this despite not watching the video, or perhaps pretending you didn't. What is this for?
I have watched the video and I know for a matter of fact her car makes contact with the agent you can see his feet skid backward from being pushed by the car.
Kirby vs Duva
"A law enforcement officer may not deliberately or recklessly place themselves in a position of danger and then justify deadly force as self-defense when that danger was foreseeable and avoidable."
Law enforcement is trained to never step in front of a vehicle with a driver. This is the problem with these untrained yahoos.
THANK YOU. I'm glad to see that US law isn't actually on the side of these geniuses saying "actually, if you understood self-defense law you'd know it's totally cool to shoot an innocent person who's trying to get away from a violent thug".
While this case does have potential “persuasive authority” and could be considered by a court, it is not the same thing as law or “binding precedent”.
There is not a legal requirement for law enforcement to remove themselves from the path of a vehicle before using lethal force.
That said, it’s terrible policing and got this woman killed.
Kind of you to telegraph your intention to have a bad-faith argument where you wilfully misinterpret everything they say while hunting for those "GGGGOT EM!" dunks. Saves everyone the trouble.
Thanks for the content-free answer, champ. Can anyone else here explain why the shooting is trivially obviously justified under the basis of self-defence?
it is not. I can maybe understand the first shot being justified as the officer hears the car accelerate while he is mostly in front of the vehicle and in a split second decision may not realize that the car is turning away from him; hence he shoots at the driver. For simplicity, I'm ignoring the fact that he put himself in front of the vehicle as that does add an extra layer of analysis (possibly not in his favor).
However, by the time the ICE agent shoots his second shot, he is clearly out of harms way and sees that the car was indeed turning away. Any ignorance he may have had prior should be reasonably resolved as we clearly see the car turning away. hence, I find it hard to reasonably justify the 2nd shot or 3rd shot. If I want to be very generous to the ICE officer, I could argue that the car did make contact with him (this scenario is disputed), he reasonably assumed this contact was intentional and therefore he reasoned that Good was a danger to the community as she was willing to cause harm in her escape and the subsequent shots were justified to protect the community. But to me, that's a bit of a stretch as I think a reasonable person in his position should have realized that she was turning her vehicle away and even if contact were made against him, the contact reasonably looked accidental and not deliberate. And hence, the 2nd and 3rd shots appear escalatory and unjustified even if we're willing to cut him slack on the first shot.
All that being said, certain details are still disputed such as whether he was hit/touched or not. It is a travesty that there isn't a legitimate investigation being carried out by the federal government. I'm willing to side with the ICE agent if a legitimate investigation shows that he acted reasonably, but given that we only have the videos, I have to cautiously conclude from my own analysis that the shooting was unjustified. But I much more prefer a legitimate investigation by independent bodies as that's what competent, rule of law governments do (which the Trump admin is unfortunately very far from).
> However, by the time the ICE agent shoots his second shot, he is clearly out of harms way and sees that the car was indeed turning away. Any ignorance he may have had prior should be reasonably resolved as we clearly see the car turning away. hence, I find it hard to reasonably justify the 2nd shot or 3rd shot.
This isn't how self defense pleas work in the US though. And that's what I took issue with Jesse's post to begin with. A lot of people making these kinds of arguments are making ex post facto arguments based on how they intuitively imagine self defense law should be. Not how it actually is.
When we're talking on a timescale of seconds, the only analyis that matters is that first shot. While we can make all kinds of arguments after the fact, with our ability to carefully examine the footage, existing court precedent does not expect individuals to carefully reevaluate their situation on the fly, in an high stress, high adrenaline situation and adjust accordingly.
Basically, if someone started shooting for justifiable reasons, precedent doesn't ask that courts nitpick decisions made within a few seconds later. That's simply a realistic understanding of the law in this context.
Any prosecutor being honest about the issue would say that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.
Sure, if minutes later he walked over and cartel-style executed someone, that'd be a different story.
It also doesn't matter if you put yourself into that situation or not (with some very specific exceptions that don't apply here). Defendents can have been up to all kinds of unwise decisions, but their right to self defense still applies. Perhaps there's lessons we can learn about officer training, or perhaps internal displinary action. But it doesn't affect his self defense plea.
The argument that Good accelerated to run over the thug, who then "defended himself," is hypocritical and illogical.
First, Good never acted threateningly.
Second, there is no footage showing that he even grazed the thug.
Third, in what fantasy world can a person avoid being run over by a vehicle supposedly heading toward him by shooting at it instead of getting out of the way?
The footage clearly shows the thug, who had been circling the truck, suddenly stopping and drawing his weapon. If he was supposedly afraid of being run over, what he should have done was not stop, but rather hurry out of the way. He didn't do that because he knew the vehicle couldn't hit him. What the thug wanted was to assert his authority by preventing Good from leaving at all costs.
In the Good case all it takes for the ice agent to have a valid self defense claim is that he had a reasonable fear for your life. Goods car either clips him or he is forced to push against the car to get out of the way. we know this because in at least one video you can see his feet skid backwards. In ether case It is easily conceivable that he could be mortally wounded by the car by say falling underneath the wheels or becoming trapped to the car in someway.
Is there any police standard where if you have your gun drawn in one hand, the other one shouldn't have your iphone filming people?
The argument that Good accelerated to run over the thug, who then "defended himself," is hypocritical and illogical.
First, Good never acted threateningly.
Second, there is no footage showing that he even grazed the thug.
Third, in what fantasy world can a person avoid being run over by a vehicle supposedly heading toward him by shooting at it instead of getting out of the way?
The footage clearly shows the thug, who had been circling the truck, suddenly stopping and drawing his weapon. If he was supposedly afraid of being run over, what he should have done was not stop, but rather hurry out of the way. He didn't do that because he knew the vehicle couldn't hit him. What the thug wanted was to assert his authority by preventing Good from leaving at all costs.
For points one and two She drives her vehicle at the officer and it makes contact with the officer. We know that because in at least on angle of the video you can see his feet skid backward from the car pushing him. For point three the roads are icy enough that goods tire slip the first time she tries to accelerate. if the officer tried to move and fell on the ice he would have been in more danger.
The investigation is less a legal one of a wrongful shooting (though obviously that should be done, even if it's trivially going to show that it would be impossible to show he was not reasonably afraid for his life); to me, the investigation is one of policy and training. The man should be fire or disciplined, assuming he was ever trained to not do extremely stupid things like walking directly in front of subject's car.
“[C]ould you tell an anguished Minneapolis activist that they have a path toward justice within the system? Could you tell them that honestly, with a straight face?”
Could you say that to a marcher in Selma? Or a salt striker in India?
Do you honestly believe we are even close to those circumstances?
So no, it’s not normal times, not at all, but to give permission to those who want an excuse for redemptive violence (no better at their core than MAGA) *at the very moment that martyrdom is breaking through the fog* is just bizarre.
The welfare fraud case is just another example of Trump fucking things up by being a bumbling idiot.
Jospeh Thompson, US Attorney, broke the case of the welfare fraud and was prosecuting it. It was kind of red meat for Trump's base, but also 100% legitimate and proper use of government power. Any administration ought to have rigorously prosecuted this.
Trump likely moved on Minnesota to piggy-back off this news and/or amplify it.
Then after Good was shot, US Attorneys were ordered to start investigating her widow.
Because of that, Thompson resigned.
The case is still there but the person most familiar with the case and knows how to prosecute it, and seems to be a competent professional instead of whatever bootlicker said the right words to get a promotion, is gone. It might fall apart.
Is it your opinion that is it illigitmet for ice to be in an area because there are to few illegals? That seems like a preposterous standard if you flip the script. You wouldn't say it's illigitmate for police to investigate a murder or a rape merely because do few happen in an area. If we are talking about mere reasonableness I think investigating a sanctuary state witch is embroidered in massive fraud fraud is reason enough.
This is such a bad point laid bare by the part about murder and rape. So, so dumb. You understand Singal's point. Trump targeting Minneapolis is person in nature and if the goal was to effectively remove as many illegals as possible, focusing on Minnesota is painfully dumb. Again, you understand this. You're just intellectually dishonest.
My point is as long as there are illegals in Minnesota it's legitimate for ice to be there. No amount of Jesse mindreading trump delegitimizes ice being there.
Your use of the word 'legitimate' is doing a shit ton of work here, eh? There are illegals in every state. Surely you would concede that this wouldn't mean that any level of ICE activity in any state would be *smart* right? Taking it to its logical conclusion, if every ICE agent went to Wyoming tomorrow because of some stupid political reason, would it be reasonable to critique that?
Yeah sure It would be dumb but not per say illegitimate.
Your hang up on the word 'legitimate' is interesting. And telling. You obviously don't think that Singal believes ICE isn't *allowed* to be in MN. You're hung up on it because you know that it's legitimately stupid and personal.
You are rationalizing. You should think harder about why that is. It's likely because you know on a deep level you've been fooled. Conned. You are the mark. It's okay, though, you can stop being an idiot at any time.
Personally, I think these guys are rationalizing because they know it sounds bad to say "I really enjoyed watching that innocent woman get killed, because the man who killed her is On My Side".
"Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour" - carl jung
I live in Maine, which is also being targeted by an ICE surge despite having one of the smallest immigrant populations in the US. The administration seems to be targeting Maine because the secretary of state refused to hand over voter information to the feds--or at least, they claim they'll stop if she does. We also have a relatively significant Somali-born population in Lewiston, one of the three urban areas in the state. But they're also active in Portland. They could have picked Maine because the population is so spread out it's harder to muster the kind of protests we've seen in Minneapolis. And lots of Mainers think we've been targeted because our governor stood up to him in person.
At any rate, I'm worried about the bluster I'm seeing online from gun-owning progressives/liberals, which may sound like a contradiction but this is a place that has 'em. There's a lot of talk about how if the feds break into your house, you're entitled to shoot them, and a lot of talk about bringing guns to protests, even though carrying did not help Pretti. I'm hoping this is just blowing off steam because if anyone takes it seriously things could get really bad really fast.
"In theory this extremely Trumpian bending of federal law-enforcement to his will wouldn’t preclude a state investigation, but Minnesota investigators said that “the U.S. attorney’s office has prevented it from taking part in the investigation,” according to PBS."
Crocodile tears. Sanctuary states openly prohibit cooperating with federal law enforcement either. Shoe's on the other foot, so I'm not terribly sympathetic. The Right is now using the Left's playbook against them. You don't want to cooperate? We can play that game too.
I honestly think the "resistance," is making Trump stronger (though not more popular). They're feeding him. Go ahead and protest in the town square, but don't interfere where bullets could be flying. Use your voice, but keep away from law enforcement cleaning up the immigration situation we all are left with.
It's far messier than I'd like--but it's messy not in Red states--it's messy in Blue states, and the Blues are feeding Trump the shizzat he just gobbles up.
Let's start our reconciliation by all admitting that the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years are the root cause of this. The current cleanup isn't pretty, and I'll agree with you on that.
This is depraved.
You don't know what 'crocodile tears' mean.
"Cry me a river" might have been what I was thinking. (A river full of crocodiles?)
Would it be possible to start our reconciliation by admitting the man ICE executed was not a domestic terrorist?
I highly doubt he was a domestic terrorist. Don't know him, but I haven't seen any evidence that would suggest that. I also don't know who shot him, and presume he's not a cold blooded killer, either.
And you believe the cause of this "not a cold blooded killer" shooting the man and the subsequent description of the man as a "domestic terrorist" by administration officials is "the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years"? And you believe agreement on that point to be a requirement for our reconciliation?
What are we trying to reconcile, from your perspective? I think we need to define that for a productive conversation.
I'm not sure. What did you mean by "Let's start our reconciliation..."? And how is that reconciliation, whatever it is intended to reconcile, aided by both sides having to admit a man getting shot by a "not a cold blooded killer" and the subsequent description of the man as a "domestic terrorist" by administration officials is was caused by "the porous border policies that were enabled over the last four years"?
I think this approach is a good one--cooperation between law enforcement agencies: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2026/01/um-president-of-united-states-called-me.html#more
I think there is a crucial difference between a path toward justice in "the system" mentioned in the second to last question, and "this system, right now." There is no straight-forward path in this system, right now. But it's not about this system, it's about the system going forward.
Fascism/totalitarianism doesn't emerge in a vacuum. The typical historical path is through a brutal civil war, or lower-grade civil conflict where the fascist/totalitarians are able to point at the other side and saying "see, they caused this with their own insanity, our violence will keep you safe from them." Non-violent protest is substantially better at producing an outcome where a future system will be able to achieve justice, and stop fascists from pointing and saying "but they're worse." The Trump regime clearly wants violence, and a re-run of the worst 2020 excesses, to implement this time-honored playbook, and non-violent protest is the best/only way to deprive the regime of that. Nonviolent protest (including civil disobedience) is not only the moral choice, it is the strategic choice.
Two things can simultaneously be true: that the execution of Alex Pretti was straight-up murder, and that Alex would likely still be alive today if he hadn't chosen to concealed-carry a firearm that day. It was a mistake for him to believe a gun would keep him safer. Not because Alex did something wrong when there, but because the shouting of "gun, gun, gun" while an agent disarmed him gave another agent to pretext to shoot him in the back, despite having line of sight to the gun being removed. It was legal for Alex to carry, it was legal for him to film, it was legal for him to try to help a woman who was violently shoved to the ground back on her feet, it was legal for him to stand there with his hands up, it was legal for him while blinded by pepper spray to try to keep his head from being smashed into the ground. He never tried to draw his weapon, and it was only revealed as agents pummeled him into the ground.
As a final note, anybody arguing that the Renee Good shooting was justified should be banned from gun ownership, as they would fail any competently taught self-defense class and their bar for "self-defense" is well below any reasonable standard of murder. The agent who killed Good violated every relevant rule of engagement, and all of us face more real danger every time we step into a crowded parking lot than that agent did then and there. Anybody who would be legitimately "in fear of their life" in that situation not only doesn't have the psychological wherewithal to be a law-enforcement agent of any kind, but to function in any society in which cars exist. And anybody arguing that the Alex Pretti execution was justified should be denaturalized and deported if SCOTUS sides with the Trump admin and rules that the 14th Amendment doesn't say what the 14th Amendment says. (Yes, this paragraph is hyperbole. Unlike the Trump administration I'm not in favor of thought policing, despite how tempting the "tread on them harder, daddy" crowd makes it.)
For myself, I don't bother with asking if the shooting of Renee Good was legally justified, because it doesn't matter. I doubt there is a prosector in the land who will ever charge the agent who killed her, because in this nation the standard the shooter has to meet is so low. DAs, judges, juries, the public...each gives way too much latitude to law enforcement when it comes to using deadly force. Sadly, I suspect that nothing that happened to Good will change any of that.
However, I think an equally important question is why was the situation allowed to happen in the first place. Why are ICE agents masked? Why did that particular agent step in front of a vehicle that was on? Why was that agent filming Good on his smartphone? All of these questions suggest to me that this entire operation was ill-conceived and poorly executed, and that, to me, is the issue to engage.
Political leaders are *supposed* to calm more crises than they create, and to ensure that situations involving deadly force never arise, or at the very least are avoided as much as possible. Trump and his GOP lickspittles not only allowed that unfortunate turn of events to happen; they encouraged it. They provoked a situation in which deadly force could kinda-sorta be justified. THAT, to my mind, is the big issue.
I agree with the concern, but we’ve been in a situation where people have no legitimate recourse from malevolent actions by government officials for quite some time. See, for example, Matt Drange’s reporting on teachers who rape kids for decades, being allowed to quietly resign and retain their teaching licenses to move on to a new school with new kids to rape when the rape finally becomes impossible to ignore.
People read stories about situations like this, say “gee, that’s awful,” and turn to the sports section. So it will go with police shootings.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sexual-abuse-schools-inappropriate-student-teacher-relationship-predators-2023-12
Here’s a video of school staff ignoring a disabled kid screaming in pain from a shattered femur for hours. You think the fat guy in the red shirt and khakis did any time in prison? I don’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JZ3AjulUHE
And here’s a makeshift cell for imprisoning disabled kids in New York. Number of criminal charges for kidnapping? Zero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCi5JB-SKlM
Or, in an example closer to your wheelhouse, what should the system do about prison officials who knowingly put violent male rapists in cells with women just because the violent male rapist claims he’s transgender? Is the system doing that?
The videos clearly show that the officer, who had been circling the vehicle, stopped doing so when it was no longer directly in front of it, and therefore, the vehicle could no longer have been hit. At that moment, he drew his weapon and then, as Good tried to move away, shot her to stop her.
Everyone blames ICE agents but what about their supervision? In the Army, the motto was that the commander is responsible for everything his/her soldiers do. It's unfair to place all the blame on low level ICE agents. Secondly, I asked a local police officer about why shoot someone 5-10 times. He said that the rule among police is now shoot until the threat no longer is a threat, which is pretty subjective. Even dead bodies twitch, do you still shoot them? I had figured that you shoot until the threat can no longer harm you, which should only be one bullet perhaps. But the officer protested and said that some people can take several bullets and still be resisting you. It doesn't feel right to me to be a good rule of engagement. Besides police should have bullet proof vests for protection unlike most civilians I would hope. When Robert E. Lee tried to round up John Brown he ordered his soldiers to go in without bullets in order to avoid any civilian casualties from stray bullets. That attitude seems to have changed into more of a protect your own force at all costs.
You don't have time to examine the threat between shots. The brain can't even process things faster than 150 milliseconds in the best case.
Given a matrix of good guy/bad guy vs. shot/not shot, you want bad guy shot and good guy not shot. the remaining cells are good guy shot and bad guy not shot. In the grand scheme of risk, this approach seems to increase the chances of good guy/shot vs. bad guy not shot. I guess it's a value judgment.