I tend, more often than not, to come down on the side of the authorities in incidents such as these. Law enforcement involved shootings which, at first glance, appear unjust often turn out to be far more ‘grey’ on closer examination.
This is not one of those incidents.
There are several videos of this incident, from several angles. All of them plainly show that the ICE agent was in no danger. Moreover, his behaviour clearly demonstrated that he knew he was in no danger. Anyone who’s ever been nearly run over knows that the first thing you do is jump out of the way. It’s instinct. Immediate. You don’t need to think about it. You just do it. He didn’t. Instead, he stood his ground, then pulled out his gun, then aimed it, then fired, then stepped out of the way. And then he fired two more times. Why didn’t he just step out of the way in the first place?
Easy. He’s trigger-happy. Simple as that. Everyone knows that some people are trigger-happy. He’s one of those people. That’s all there is to it. This wasn’t a case of “She moved the car, so now I have to shoot her”. This was, “She moved the car, so now I get to shoot her”. He murdered her because she pissed him off. He should rot in jail for the rest of his life.
This is a totally non-justifiable kill but I think the people who continue to insist that she was not told to “get out of her car” but to “get out of there” when there is a video with very clear audio that is unambiguously ordering her to get out of the car and then her driving forward when one officer reached for her door handle are really hurting their own credibility in the larger argument. There is no reason for folks to push the other narrative because its provably false.
I don’t see any outcome where the officer is charged with a crime here unfortunately.
I’ve heard this as well- and it certainly seems to fit what we’re seeing in the video.
And this brings up one of my chief complaints about law enforcement in general: we, as a society, demand that untrained civilians in these situations remain calm and follow instructions exactly.
But we also fully expect trained professionals to panic and escalate the situation.
In the ideal world that doesn’t exist, the answer is yes without qualifications. The administration deserves no benefit of the doubt.
In the world where I live – under a hybrid regime where elections are still important – I think about how persuadable voters may look at it. I think they find No Kings a reasonable message. I think that they will not have much sympathy for someone who disobeyed a police order to get out of their car – especially if it seems they then hit an officer, even in the teeny tiniest way, while backing up. So I lean towards criticizing the orders and training given ICE officers more than saying the shooter is a murderer.
This is the ninth time ICE shot into a car since September. It’s a pattern due to how ICE is ordered to work, not one trigger-happy officer. So no, the administration does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. But the individual officer, maybe.
I think there are a lot of law-enforcement officers in this country with the exact same mindset. And because there are never any penalties for this behavior, there is no incentive whatsoever for them to change.
Indeed, the system seems to be selecting for these types of people—particularly in the case of ICE, if you watch their recruitment videos.
On this point, official Department of Justice policy (document 1-16.200, item A-2, last updated in 2022) on use of force might be of interest:
Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle. Firearms may not be discharged from a moving vehicle except in exigent circumstances. In these situations, an officer must have an articulable reason for this use of deadly force.
(emphasis added)
This plus the various videos seem like reasonable grounds for both criminal and civil action against ICE.
I saw the video. She was trying to flee, but it appeared she was NOT trying to run over the police officer. I checked and found this:
“Police officers may not use deadly force against a fleeing suspect who is unarmed and poses no immediate threat. The use of deadly force is only constitutionally permissible when an officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant, imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
We live about a mile or more from the scene of the shooting, and our building is also on a primary emergency vehicle roadway. There were a lot of sirens down that street this morning and the first thing I thought was that the crowd had become a mob. Apparently not so, but it shows just how jumpy everyone is right now. I hope they can continue to keep their cool, as this city doesn’t need another George Floyd eruption to give Trump an excuse to send in the Guard. Walz did the right thing by putting the Guard on alert without actually putting them on the streets.
Trump was confronted by reporters about his inaccurate rhetoric about the woman “running over” an ICE agent, and when he had an aide show the video he had to backpedal, muttering about how horrible it was. Barbie Cosplay was in full liar mode as well.
If you watch the video the silver ice suv to the right of her has the door fully open it is possible she was aware of that before decided to leave as they tried to remove her from her seat!
It’s easy to hear Officer “Get outta’ the fucking car” on the video that I’ve viewed, but I can’t be sure he’s the only LEO talking. I hear other voices that seem to be coming from one or more of the other LEOs, but I can’t make them out.
Can anybody else?
I have a hunch that – even if they were unintelligible to Ms. Good – she may certainly have been aware of more than one person talking to, or commanding her.
But we’re back to something I’ve said in other forums, in regard to situations with some similarity to this one:
As always, I expect more from highly trained, well-compensated, well-equipped Agents of the State than I do from a person that the least among us calls an “animal” or other disparaging, dehumanizing term (eg, “Domestic Terrorist”)
The FBI has taken over the investigation and locked state investigators out of the evidence. What a fucking joke. The White House is actively covering up a murder.