Everyone knows by now that an ICE agent shot Renee Good in the head, and she died at the scene. No one is being honest about what happened; everyone has an opinion, and no one seems to care about the truth. To even understand the truth, a major unknown must be understood:
What happened immediately before the 4:25 minute video begins?
Why does this matter? Because we need to understand why ICE agents exited their truck and confronted Ms. Good.
JD Vance and Kristi Noem (and I guess Trump) have already irresponsibly called this an act of terrorism and said that the woman “weaponized her vehicle.” Did she? Watch the beginning of the video. The government claims she was blocking ICE from driving down the street. Was she? Are you sure? Watch the beginning of the video again.
You can clearly see at the start of the horizontal video that Ms. Good starts to drive away and pumps the brakes when she sees what looks like a Ford Explorer coming toward her. After she brakes, Ms. Good signals to the driver of the Explorer with her hand, in typical Minnesota Nice fashion, to go by her first. Immediately after this interaction, we see the ICE truck for the first time. Ms. Good then is clearly seen waving to the ICE truck to go ahead of her.
The agents get out of the truck; they are masked and in battle fatigues. They approach her vehicle aggressively. One agent appears to tell her to move, while the other tells her to get out of the car, as they both approach. Admittedly, it’s unclear whether the one officer signaled for her to move. Either way, Ms. Good can be heard telling the agents that they can go around her – exactly like the car before them did.
Shortly after that, she tries to leave, possibly brushes up against the officer in front of the vehicle, who then opens fire, killing her.
Everyone is caught up on whether the car made contact with the agent. It doesn’t matter. Department policy forbids officers from standing in front of vehicles for this very reason. The agent would have violated nearly every department’s policy in the country. Furthermore, DOJ policy forbids officers from firing into cars simply because they are fleeing officers. Finally, self-defense must be proportional and done to prevent the harm that is occurring or will imminently occur. Shooting this woman, even if the agent was about to get run over, would not stop the car from hitting him. It would actually ensure that the vehicle would hit him. I suggest you read the rulings in Barnes v. Felix or Graham v. Connor to get a better understanding of the law in this area.
I have no illusions, however, that this officer will be convicted even in an objective proceeding. I could even see where this officer would not be charged if we weren’t in these hyper-partisan times. But the real question is why ICE agents are aggressively trying to detain a U.S. citizen and under what authority? And these agents were not in traditional law enforcement gear nor does it even appear that they had badges. To illustrate the point, TSA agents for example, have certain authority over us when we are in an airport. Can a TSA agent detain me on the street, however? The same limitations apply to ICE agents who work in immigration enforcement.
Unfortunately, ICE, through the President’s directives, have been unrelenting in their use of unconstitutional and unlawful tactics to detain alleged illegal immigrants (and in some cases, American citizens). They’ve been caught lying numerous times, often under oath. The spokespeople for the various departments have been lying constantly, getting caught, and never correcting the record. The DOJ has had cases dismissed at an unprecedented rate for errors and outright lies. And probably the worst aspect, Kristi Noem’s declaration that Ms. Good was a domestic terrorist who tried to kill the agent was both unprofessional and 1984 level scary. And that’s not the first time that DHS has called someone a domestic terrorist only later for the Court to dismiss all charges.
ICE’s bad behavior is intentional and has led to a complete distrust toward the federal government. As a result, unfortunately, sad moments such as these occur, and then the food fight between the two sides begins. How on Earth are those who do not support Trump supposed to feel when a citizen is gunned down by a government agent and the propaganda machine immediately begins without a semblance of credibility or objectivity?
Again, I don’t think the agent would be convicted (although some readers have reached out and said they disagree). The agent reacted in the moment to a situation that provided him with almost no time to think beforehand. But those officers never should have approached the vehicle, and millions of Americans would have reacted in fear in the exact same way that Ms. Good did in that moment. The same fear that the agent felt immediately before discharging his firearm is almost surely the same fear that Ms. Good felt when the masked agents exited the car and approached her. Yet his fear was treated as justification to shoot, while hers—confronted by armed, masked men advancing on her—was not treated as justification to drive away.
This is all just so gross. The lies. The propaganda. The choosing of sides. If the perceived affiliations of the deceased were different, or if we had a different President, I believe the left and the right would just flip to the other side of the argument. Remember Ashli Babbitt? The right wing to this day, still laments her death, but I cannot see how one could argue that Babbitt’s death by law enforcement was unjustified whereas this death was.
We’re in a scary place right now. People are all too willing to discard the truth so they can get some clout and feels online with their people. The second this woman was shot, lines were drawn. Her background was under serious scrutiny. The terrorist labels were immediate. She was a leftist. A lesbian. An agitator. A far-left activist. Ms. Good was trained to create havoc. She had traveled from out of state to cause problems. But that’s not who Renee was. She was a mother of three kids. A Christan. Not a protestor. In fact, her ex-husband on the record said that she was nearby not because she was protesting – but because she had just dropped off her six-year-old daughter at school.
Where does this go, and where/when/how does it end?
If you’re still reading, I implore you to rewatch the beginning of the 4:25 second video again. I think you’ll be surprised at the details that very few people are discussing. Because when the government decides the narrative before the facts are even known, truth becomes optional — and that should terrify every one of us.
The Reasonable Man Standard 