Jan.08

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Another Murder in Minneapolis?

On May 25, 2020, police in Minneapolis detained, choked, and killed a Black man, George Floyd. The video footage showed that the policemen involved indisputably used excessive force, and one of them, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 22½ years in prison. History doesn't repeat itself, they say, but it does rhyme. Yesterday, it definitely did some rhyming, with Minneapolis the site of a high-profile law-enforcement killing once again. On this occasion, the victim was a white woman, Renee Nicole Good, and the police force in question was ICE.

Video of the shooting was captured by (apparently) an onlooker, and is already widely available on the Internet (see here, for example). It is violent, inasmuch as someone was shot to death (though no blood is visible), so be forewarned. The video is pretty central to assessing the narrative being put forward by the Trump administration versus the one put forward by local authorities. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Good was "stalking and impeding" ICE, and that she tried to "weaponize her vehicle." Later, Donald Trump got on his sanguinary social media platform and added this:

I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!

By contrast, Minnesota DFL officeholders, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Tim Walz, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, claim this is nonsense and that the death is the fault of ICE and the Trump administration.

Again, readers should consider watching the video, which is only 30 seconds or so. It's actually so chaotic, it took us several viewings to fully make sense of it. Whether people want to watch it or not, we'll try to describe it. Good was driving an SUV, one with decorative stickers all over the rear window and hatch. You couldn't find a more "suburban mom" vehicle if you tried. At the moment the footage starts, there are two vehicles to the right of her car, one to the left, all of them 2-20 feet away. These are presumably all ICE vehicles, and Good's car was roughly at a right angle to all three of them, and thus was at a right angle to the lanes on the street.

There are five agents shown in the video, though only three of them are really relevant to the discussion. Relevant Agent #1 was standing behind the vehicle, and slightly to the right of it. Relevant Agent #3 was standing in front of the vehicle, and slightly to the left of it. If you believe the claims of Trump and Noem, either one of these agents could theoretically have been the "ramming" target. Relevant Agent #2 approaches the vehicle, apparently to apprehend Good, and tries to open the door.

At that point, someone (very possibly Good) shouts "Nooooooooo!" Meanwhile, Good backs her SUV up slightly, to avoid contact with the vehicle that is closest to her (right side, about 2 feet away). Agent #1 (behind the SUV) gets out of the way without difficulty, while Agent #2 (trying to open the door) backs off slightly. Good then endeavors to flee the agents, and Agent #3 (in front of the SUV) gets out of the way, again without difficulty, and then fires several shots into the driver's side window, at point-blank range. Good is presumably dead/dying at that point, but the momentum of the SUV carries it forward perhaps 30 feet before it crashes into (presumably civilian) cars parked on the side of the road.

And now, here is our take on the video:

1. There are many reasons someone might choose to flee ICE. The most common is surely to avoid being detained and expelled from the U.S.; Good was a citizen and there is no reason to think this was her concern. Either she just freaked out, or else she feared she was going to be arrested on charges of [wave hands]. And, of course, once the Trump administration has its hooks into you, you can never know what will happen.
   
   
2. It's not at all clear why Good was on the scene. It's possible that her presence was random and inadvertent. It is more likely she was a "civilian observer," who was monitoring ICE as a form of resistance/protest. This is what Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN) said yesterday, and she has no reason to lie.
   
   
3. Noem and Trump also claim that Good was taking an active role in resisting ICE, and that her presence was not random. That said, their rhetoric is so over the top (as it usually is), you should probably take their overall narrative with a fistful of salt.
   
   
4. With all of this said—and we would back this assessment with Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor—there is absolutely no way Good was trying to kill or assault anyone. She was very clearly trying to get away, as quickly as she could, with as little damage done as possible. Consequently, the notion that the agents' lives were in danger is not credible. Either the agent who fired the shots had a burr in his saddle due to prior confrontations (with Good or others), or he grossly overreacted due to adrenaline or something. Whatever happened, the circumstances did not come CLOSE to justifying the use of lethal force.

Needless to say, one should not expect the Trump administration to punish the officer, or even to review his actions. That is not how they roll, to say the least. Minnesota could try to charge him, and put him on trial, assuming they can identify him (as per usual, the ICE agents had their faces covered). However, this is a tricky legal hill to climb. Federal officers have fairly broad latitude for actions taken in the line of duty, but they also cannot violate the law with impunity. We may soon find out if Minnesota officials think it's worth trying to prosecute.

At very least, the killing has compelled Minnesota officials to reiterate their demands that ICE go away. On top of that, Walz has ordered the Minnesota National Guard (MNG) to prepare for deployment, to protect the citizens of Minnesota. So, tensions are high, and things could get ugly. One can envision a circumstance where Walz activates the MNG, Trump tries to nationalize them, and then it's up to the courts as to whose side the law is on. During that time, the members of the MNG could be stuck between a rock and a hard place as they try to decide whose orders to follow.

Could Good's death lead to a response like the one we saw after Floyd's death? The smart money says "probably not," if only because the post-Floyd response was something of a black swan event. That said, Good was white and a mother, and there is certainly some segment of the populace that has more sympathy for someone with that demographic profile as opposed to a homeless Black man with a criminal record. It is also worth noting that protests inspired by Good have already begun, and that a GoFundMe set up to raise money for her family raised close to $400,000 in its first day.

There is one other thing we are confident about: This is going to hurt Donald Trump and his party, politically. Even those Americans who would like to see more vigorous immigration enforcement did not have "kill a woman who is a mother and a citizen in cold blood" in mind. The "we need to be strong on immigration" segment of the voting public has been shrinking, according to polls, and the obvious reason is the harshness of the White House's policy. This killing is not going to help on that front. Meanwhile, American voters DO NOT LIKE IT when they feel that lawlessness has taken hold, and that the government is more a cause than a solution. Think about the election of 1968 (Vietnam/civil rights/Detroit Riot), for example, or the election of 1992 (Rodney King). While we might not see a George-Floyd-style response, we do not think this is going to fade from memory anytime soon. (Z)