This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are
twothree angles:Angle 1
Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]
Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)
This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.
Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.
I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.
The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”
People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.
(Branching off the main debates about good shoot / bad shoot).
Viral Verbal Videography
I watched this entire video: https://x.com/JoshEakle/status/2008970977699639681.
The most relevant bits to the shooting are in the first thirty seconds. Then it is almost four additional minutes of nothing in terms of actual events, but a lot in terms of both literal and figurative background noise in the culture war context.
This is four minutes of high volume emotionalization and righteous indignation. The principal videographer here literally goes through cycles of yelling "What the fuck / what the actual fuck?", "Shame! Shame!" (I mean this literally), and "Do you have a conscience?"
Another common motif is someone, definitely male, elsewhere in the background doing a primal scream of "MURDERERS!" every so often. It's impressive in its sensationality.
I don't know just what to make of this. My immediate reaction to this was one of insufferability. When a person's vocalized response to these kind of events is "what the fuck? what the actual fuck?", it betrays a kind of chronic online-ness that I used to think was somewhat apocryphal. The origin of "what the actual fuck" is a bit obscure but we know that it definitely originated in a highly online context and was almost certainly intended to be sarcastically hilarious in its usage. I can remember videos of 9/11 where people are repeating, without full awareness, "oh my god" again and again. That kind of honest emotional reaction actually still hits me hard because, well, it's coming from somewhere genuine, isn't performative, and uses a vocabulary (religious) that really is mostly reserved - when earnest - for "big" moments. Turning "what the actual fuck" into a kind of emotional war cry cheapened the whole thing from the get go.
My nucleus of a theory is that this kind of outrage is some proportion of performativity and some proportion of a kind of programmed earnestness. The principal videographer knows that in this context she is not only permitted but expected to dial the histrionics up to 11. Maybe even 22 because she is recording everything with the foreknowledge that she'll post this to social media later. It seems to be she had a kind of emotional impact and righteous indignation checklist - shock and horror ("what the (actual) fuck"), public shaming ("shame! shame!" combined with off-screen guys "murderers!" yell), and finally moral grandstanding ("do you have a conscience?").
In the social media world, it isn't so much about you being present at an event so much as recording that you were present at an event and pre-rendering what you think should be your future reactions to that event in real time. The benign version of this is simply taking a video selfie and some concert or major sporting event with something like a caption reading "is this actually happening?" Your "disbelief" is actually a kind of self-effacing professional of modesty paired with a "highest of highs" in terms of transcendental enjoyment. But, on the dark side, you have videos like the one linked at the top of this post; Immediately turning the death of a human into an opportunity to demonstrate Right Think (at the loudest possible volume).
Part of me did think, at one point, that this is all in my own Turbo Autist head. I'm just over indexing on linguistic things because of a nerdy interest in that field. But the spell was broken just seconds before the video ends when the principal videographer says, to someone off camera;
"You okay, mami?" In a drastically different tone of voice. The spell was broken. She knew she had done her duty to The Cause and captured it on video, now, it was back to hanging out with her best girlies.
She just forgot to stop recording.
I was thinking the same thing, though not as articulately. I wondered, "What would 18th century Americans say if they were present at a similar event?" "Oh my God" is a good one. But the F-bomb becoming as common as "um" has not been a good turn of events. It feels very unserious.
More options
Context Copy link
A cop fires his weapon a few yards away and our camerawoman doesn't skip a beat. She barely steps away as shots are being fired, then chases down the moment to continue filming. That's experience and preparedness. Rather than hysterics it does feel measured. She's camerawoman protestor, she has a strong grasp on what that role entails, and she plays (non-derogatory) the role well. Her self eventually catches up, processes the experience, and the performance breaks.
A dramaturg is like a meta-director for theater productions. They don't direct a play from moment to moment nor are they in charge of part of the production like lights. The dramaturg fills a senior editorial role that considers the entire production. That includes the performance, a given audience and stage, and any thematic changes that come from those considerations.
Of course a social psychologist in the 50's learned about dramaturgs and decided this job was perfect for an explanatory framework of human behavior. As far as 20th century soft science goes it's not an unhelpful way to think about performance in our age. We film things in anticipation of an audience. This camerawoman, like most women under the age of 30, is closer to a professional than most 18thc. performers that came before her. She may have considered her audience and their expectations a thousand times in the last few years. You can find other ways to think about self and performance that include in dishonest or tactical terms. I don't think you'd be wrong in doing so, but it do be like that now. With the possible exception of turbo autists.
There is some footage of the immediate aftermath filmed by a local resident with the wife sitting on his front stoop. He fills a different kind of role as a cameraman-performer. He documents the overwhelming grief and pain seen minutes after the tragedy. There is no excessive gore or anything, but I wouldn't recommend anyone watch it. On the other hand you seem like the right kind of turbo autist so I'll share. This is "ICE shoots white lady in front of his house wtf" performance. Is it any more authentic? What about the wisecrack at 2:07? He's less dramatic and it drags a little, but he gets his lines in. I'm a believer.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I kind of feel about this like I do about Ashley Babbit. It was a bad shoot, but she willfully created a situation that made a bad shoot highly likely. A tragedy, but not unlikely when you try to interfere with law enforcement activity. She was doing what she thought was right, and the officer was attempting to do his duty. Will she become a martyr? Frankly, if Minnesota thinks illegal immigrants should not be deported, then we need border controls around Minnesota.
More options
Context Copy link
It just seems to be an unlucky tragedy caused if anything bad policies and stupid positioning rather than anyone involved acting bad.
A car passes in front of her (showing the way in front was clear) right before one of the unmarked ICE vehicles stops and two unidentified masked men with guns walk to the car screaming orders at her. While this is happening and her focus is on the approaching people from the left, two others who were originally behind the car circle from the right and end up to the top right of her.
One of the masked men grabs her door and she panics, pulls back and then starts going forward to the top right with her focus still likely on the two men to her left. There's a very good chance she didn't see the guys who moved in front at all. It's inappropriate driving, but it's also understandable when in a panic considering how bad normal drivers are even when not having masked men trying to open your car.
Meanwhile the guy who moved in front that shot the gun saw a car moving towards him and panicked in his own way. What he did is also moronic and inappropriate, shooting a driver with their foot on the gas isn't going to stop the vehicle very well. If anything, it's likely to accelerate. But again, it's understandable in a panic that someone with a gun would start shooting and it doesn't seem to be an intentional murder.
It's unfortunate and the real problem seems to be in policy/training. It's not a great idea to circle around a car without making your presence known, and it's not a great idea to just have a group of masked men grabbing at car doors and panicking the person inside. Preventing these dumb situations from happening requires more than just playing the blame game. As we learned in aviation
This happens all the time with shit like this. People on the internet love to roleplay the epic things they totally would do in any given situation, but it's imaginary. Heck they even do it to criticize actual heroes so they can be "yeah I'd be even cooler and more epic if it was me". Mark Wahlberg's claim he would have stopped 9/11 is just one example of this stupidity, but you can see it everywhere. Bragging about the bullshit awesomeness in their fantasy when in reality people panic and do dumb shit in stressful situations, and you want policies and training that help to minimize the adverse consequences of this. An easy general rule being, don't just walk out in front of cars and assume that you are noticed. People get injured/die constantly from not being noticed by drivers.
Edit: Actually, turns out there is video evidence from the front of it now too https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq98aqF794?si=JPc0rc7f7RQbuIf1 the guy literally just walks in front of the car as she's already pulling away and her wheels are turned towards the right away from him.
Yeah, I don't think was this intentional from her. She was distracted and in panic by the men grabbing at her and he seems like an idiot too busy focusing on his phone to think "is it stupid to walk in front of a car?"
Something I was discussing previous on a different board, and that is a larger issue beyond this event, is that the majority of people have effectively 0 experience making important, possibley life or death decisions, when their body is absolutely flooded with adrenaline. In our prehistorical past, this prepared us for violence. This response is, in the modern day, often an evolutionary trap. My father was a career NCO in the USMC and he occasionally spoke about training people to manage, and if possible prevent, adrenal responses to the events around them. Even people that are aware of the issue, who've had training and exposure to stimuli to try to assuage it, still don't ever really know what their response is going to be when it happens. The fight/flight/freeze response really doesn't understand modern society very well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
White lives matter! United States are systemically racist against White people! No justice, no peace! Say her name - Renee Nicole Good!
Your moderation log is a mess, and you received a temp ban last time since you won't knock off the low-effort sneering and antagonism. Normally, from a more respectable user, I'd probably let this slide, but I suppose another temp ban has to do.
Please stop.
Edit: Amadan responded at the same time, so we're hashing this out. But in general, if two mods see your post at the same time and feel compelled to act on it, you dun goofed.
More options
Context Copy link
Your low-effort, sarcastic, disingenuous comments are not appreciated and contribute nothing.
You've been warned repeatedly and told consequences would escalate. Your pattern seems to be, ramp it up until you get a tempban, then disappear for months before you come back to start the cycle again.
The cycle ends now. Permabanned, pending discussion with other mods.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Props to Tenobrus on Twitter for admitting the crux.
A lot of people don’t consider ICE a legitimate law-enforcement agency. They don’t consider arresting and deporting illegal immigrants who are not otherwise criminal to be a legitimate government policy. They think that random citizens should be able to block public roadways in order to obstruct federal agents, then run away and go “NA NA NA I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU” the moment the agents try to do anything about it. That it is actually ICE who is breaching the social contract here. If anything, citizens should be able to shoot ICE agents who get in their way.
My most emotional response to seeing the event, before I thought through the evidence and implications was basically "Charlie Kirk was gunned down in far colder blood for far, far lesser provocation than this."
I do not think I will accept any arguments against the 'justification' of this shooting from any person who dismissed, justified, or celebrated Kirk's death.
Accepting that the 'optimal' number of police-involved shootings is not zero, this is an edge case. You can be critical of ICE and consider this a tragedy but also accept that this is what's going to happen when a significant protest/resistance movement is attempting to obstruct LEOs doing their job.
Problem is the demand will be "ICE out of Minnesota" when there's clearly extant reasons for their presence, and Minnesota law enforcement isn't going to step up to assist.
I mean, surely a decent 'compromise' would be "ICE refers warrants and arrest duties to Minnesota authorities, who bring in the suspects as peacefully as they can, and turns them over to ICE for actual deportation."
If their sole goal is to keep violence to a minimum and Federal authority out of their towns, this solves for the issue.
If the actual goal is to simply not allow the enforcement of immigration law, that gives up the game, don't it?
State and local law enforcement do not have the jurisdiction to enforce federal law, and many blue jurisdictions have explicit "sanctuary" laws expressly forbidding state and local law enforcement from providing any assistance whatsoever in the enforcement of immigration law. Even apart from this, the odds of Tim Walz lifting a finger to cooperate with the Trump administration are approximately the same as the odds of the Vikings winning the Superbowl this year.
The other complication is that feds can get away with ignoring local political sentiments in ways that local police cannot, because local policing depends a lot more on maintaining a relationship with the community being policed.
That is the actual, explicit goal.
More options
Context Copy link
Why would you base your acceptance of an argument based on who made it rather than on its correctness?
I am perfectly capable of forming my conclusions without their input, and I can judge that their input will have a negative epistemic value because they are not reasoning from anything like objective, neutral standards. They will not move me or anyone closer to truth or mutual agreement.
i.e. they clearly do not believe their own arguments are 'correct' either, they just want to achieve some political outcome, and as long as their side 'wins' truth, accuracy, validity of arguments, etc. etc. are not even considered.
No point in having the argument at all, other than to make their contradictions clear.
These are people who consider political violence de facto justifiable if it is advancing their political goals. They consider 'making arguments I don't like' as grounds for violence. I don't want to share a country with them.
More options
Context Copy link
If someone is not willing to hold consistent standards, that's a red flag for the validity of their argument. It's likely they have an isolated demand for rigor.
E.g. "Charlie Kirk's shooting was justified because of the things he said" vs. "Renee's shooting was not justified" is clearly holding Charlie Kirk to a much higher standard than Renee.
Sure, if you're basing your acceptance of the argument on who said it. But you also have the option of actually addressing the argument itself and seeing if it makes sense on its own terms.
I can entertain such an argument if made but I don't see any possibility of me being able to accept an argument that supports Charlie Kirk's killing but not Renee's. Noticing that someone supports CK's death but not the other is a heuristic for detecting bad arguments.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is worse than that, given that in one case the killer pulled the trigger after a LONG deliberation period, planning, and full awareness of the act they were committing.
The other, regardless of intent in the moment, did a real spur-of-the-moment thing.
If you're okay with someone committing cold blooded murder one and being let go to walk the streets, but asking to drop the entire book on the ICE guy, I can't do much to help reason you from that position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The car drives in reverse as the ICE agent walks toward her door from the front of the car. It abruptly stops in reverse with its tires faced in the exact direction to hit this ICE agent. If the last moment of “stopped with angle of hitting agent” is set to 0 seconds and 0 milliseconds, there is 1 second and 5 milliseconds before the shot is fired. Within this 1 second, the driver changes the angle of the tires as they begin to accelerate, which narrowly prevents the officer from being run over by the driver. Cold, fatigued, and stressed, the officer has all of these concerns within a single second:
• Do they have a weapon? His eyes need to be on the driver through the windshield, because ICE agents have previously been shot and weapons have previously been brandished. This is normal policing: you take out your weapon when someone belligerently refuses to listen to orders.
• Do I have my weapon out and ready? He needs to get his weapon out and aim toward the driver in case she has a weapon, which is normal police work.
• Is she going to hit me? It looks like she is, but my attention is not on the split-second angle turn of her tire, but on whether she has a weapon.
The shot appears to be fired just as the officer is hit by the side of the vehicle, though the officer probably had no idea that the driver intended to swerve out of the way in the last milliseconds so that it would simply brush against him, rather than giving him life-altering injuries which he doesn’t deserve (like paralysis). A reasonable person would infer that an accelerating driver with its tires angled toward you, and who sees you, is not going to serve away right at the exact moment to avoid life-altering injuries. If this inference is correct, then we are not discussing whether lethal force is justified over a trivial injury but over a serious injury or death.
IMHO we are left with these possibilities:
Never allow police to stand in front of a vehicle. I have no idea what the discussion on this would look like. If standing in front of a vehicle is helpful in determining whether a driver is reaching for a weapon, then this would be a complicated determination.
Tell police to do a barrel roll away as soon as they see a car beginning to move in any direction. I guess they can do that. But that interferes with safety per above. This officer could have jumped out of the way when she reversed, but did he know that she was about to accelerate toward him? This would require a change in policing strategy, so it can’t be blamed on this sole officer but the whole of society who elects lawmakers and so forth.
Require police to accept probable but not certain life-altering injuries in their line of work. This seems unreasonable and unethical.
Tell people to obey orders and not accelerate toward a human being in front of them.
Someone might say, “were I the officer I would have used my split second reaction time to get out of the way”. But for you, this event would put you in a hyper-vigilant and high adrenaline state of heightened attention. For the officer, this is simply one of the 40 hours of monotonous work that he must do every day. You can’t compare your state to his; you should compare his state to the periods of low or moderate attention that you sustain in your own occupational hours.
Let's say he thought she was going to hit him. Why does that mean he should have shot her? It didn't prevent him from being hit. It couldn't have unless he did it before she started moving, but surely you're not saying he can pre-emptively shoot her in case she starts driving towards him. The argument seems to be that, once she started driving towards him, then he was sufficiently threatened that he was justified in shooting her. But at that point, it is not at all reasonable to think shooting her can prevent her from shooting him.
So that just leaves the possibility that she has a weapon. But at no point did he have any reason to suspect that she did have a weapon. He only thought she might because anyone might. And doesn't it become much less likely that she is going to shoot him once she's driving? Now he's a moving target and she is a vehicle to operate while shooting him. It seems very unlikely. If he can shoot her in this scenario, he can shoot anyone disobeying police orders.
And why the time constraint apply here? He has one second until what, exactly? Until the car reaches him. But that is how much time he has to decide whether to shoot her to prevent her from hitting him with the car. It doesn't apply to the weapon concern. You don't just immediately shoot every non-cooperative person because you have time to determine whether he's armed.
For either concern, why is he standing in front of the car? Why is he standing in front of a moving car if he's worried she'll him? Why is he standing front of someone who might have a gun?
So the police officer solves this by creating a situation where he's likely to have to kill her because he isn't going to immediately find out whether she's armed. You said he drew his weapon because she wasn't co-operative. If she isn't co-operative, why not expect that she'll drive away? Why isn't this far more likely than that she's armed?
The trade off here just doesn't make any sense. The police officer is deciding to do something that will probably result in him killing her to gain the slightest bit of information about the probability of her having gun.
Even if we're only concerned about the police officer's safety, why is the supposedly substantial risk he gets run over by the car worth the tiny risk that she's going to shoot him and he's going to prevent that by getting in front of her and getting a better look at her?
I think he probably did know, because he made no attempt to get out of the way. It's possible he just had bad judgment and thought the right move to being run over by a large SUV was to shoot the driver when it was already in motion, but I think it's more likely he noticed it turning and understood he had time to get out of the way. He's actually leaning to his left and the moment he fires his first shot, seemingly to maintain his line of sight so that he could shoot her.
I think the solution to this is simple. No, don't stand in front of vehicles, especially if you think they might try to run you over, and definitely don't try to shoot someone if they do try to drive towards you. Just get out of the way.
OK, but he needs to be trained for this. If his instinct is to draw his gun and he doesn't have sufficient training to know what to do once his gun is drawn, that's a serious problem. The two key decisions he made which he should have consciously avoided if he didn't think he was mentally prepared for this situation were positioning himself in front of the vehicle of a non-cooperating suspect and drawing his gun. Maybe the split second decision once in that situation is tough, but then don't put yourself in that situation.
More options
Context Copy link
Having seen the videos, I will say the following:
Shooting her was utterly ineffective at saving the agent's life, because it did not stop her car from going forward.
It appears that there was more than one agent around. My understanding is that police tactics generally involve teamwork. There is no reason that one agent should be tasked with blocking her escape path, watching out for weapons etc.
I think that you will be hard-pressed to find a demographic less likely to shoot a person than middle-aged urban white women. Also, if a cop feel that is a threat, they should already be brandishing your weapon before they see the suspect drawing his, they are not a cowboy in the Old West who needs to rely on his ability to draw faster than his opponent so that he can claim self defense.
Standing in the pathway of a suspect's car to impede their escape is plain stupid. This is the reason why for example the CBP has explicit rules which say "don't do that".
I see the events as a tragic tale of two fuckwits. Fuckwit A decided to play #LaResistance by using her car to impede ICE in an unlawful manner, then panicked when it became apparent that she would get arrested for he trouble, and in her panic recklessly endangered an ICE agent.
Fuckwit B, having previously been hit by a car driven by another suspect in the line of duty, decided it would be a great idea to again stand in the path of a suspect's car, thereby turning any escape attempt into an assault with a deadly weapon. Rather than brandishing his weapon and making his threat explicit, he waited for her to move the car forward. At that point, he drew his gun and shot her, an act which would not have saved him if she had aimed for him. By the time he fired his shots, he was already out of danger.
If one fuckwit kills another while both are engaging in fuckwittery, it is customary to charge the surviving one with manslaughter. If A had killed B by ramming him with her car, we definitely should be charging her (and her defense would try to make the point that only an idiot would stand in the path of a panicking suspect). Here, B's defense will make the valid point that only an idiot will panic and try to recklessly escape when about to be arrested for a petty crime.
What are you talking about? An officer is not supposed to just "brandish his weapon" at someone sitting in a stopped car. There are rules about that. Likewise, where do you think an officer is supposed to stand relative to a stopped car? You're not supposed to make it easier for someone to escape in case they decide to use lethal force. There are rules about that.
You're calling the guy a "fuckwit" (cringe) for following standard police protocols.
So standard police procedures are to stand in front of a car, relying on your quickdraw skills to be able to shoot the driver if she starts to accelerate towards you before get run over (which would empirically not prevent you from getting run over -- if she had aimed for him as he had aimed for her, then he would be lucky to be in a wheelchair)? Do you have any citation to back that up?
I have already quoted the CBP guidelines about "do not block the path of a vehicle with your body" elsewhere in this discussion. I see this as clear evidence that the shooters behavior is not "standard police protocols". If you want to argue that for ICE it is, please provide evidence.
Your idea seems to be that the ICE officer is a “fuckwit” for not actively aiming his gun at a woman in a stopped car. Your very strong opinion that he should not have been in front of the car is based on very ambiguous video evidence, nobody can even agree if he was in front of or to the side of her car before she turned her wheels. And now you want citations to prove that cops don’t wave their guns around at civilians and can’t walk in front of a parked car.
This is very stupid. I’m not sure there’s a nicer word. You would be better off arguing that the ICE officer should have exercised magically perfect split-second decision making. Because what you are actually suggesting is that the ICE officer shouldn’t have shot her, he should have just aimed his gun at her. Actually I don’t need a citation to know that’s not how cops work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you are, actually. For good reason. You're putting your life in the driver's hands in the hopes he doesn't call your bluff and just run you over. If the priority is officer safety, how is this a good move?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It shouldn’t matter if shooting her was ineffective at preventing the hit, because if there is even the tiniest chance that shooting mitigates serious injury, then it is rational and moral. The person receiving the unjust serious injury has every right and reason to prevent as much of it as he can; it is the aggressor who forfeits their claim to life. The chance of being stuck on the front of her car until she crashes or runs you over is slightly lower if you shoot her.
You can’t profile this woman as the average member of the general class of women, because she belongs to a very small class of people trying to illegally impede the law. I imagine those who go out of their way to impede ICE have a much higher risk of carrying a weapon.
I think that your concept of "lawbreaker woman", which includes Ulrike Meinhof, Bonnie Parker and Renee Good, does not really carve reality at its joints.
While Good was engaged in illegal activity intended to impede ICE, it is notable that her planned way of impeding them was non-violent. Anyone willing to murder a few ICE agents in the process of impeding their progress would not waste their time on non-violent resistance. Anyone planning at shooting ICE will likely not engineer a situation where their car is surrounded by ICE agents as a starting point.
I will grant you that there is a tiny probability that contrary to tribal (and gender) cultural norms, she was a gun enthusiast and a crack shot, and had also stupidly taken her pistol along 'for self defense' on her non-violent resistance, and would in a panic try to shoot her way out of getting arrested.
But realistically, the probability of her starting to shoot was still lower than for a 20yo white dude at a routine traffic stop.
It seems intuitive to me that a woman who goes out of her way to impede the law and disobey orders is going to be more likely to resist arrest violently, whether with a firearm or a blade or a car. The average woman would not do this, thus you can’t place her in the population of average woman, any more than the average Jan 6 protester is not representative of the average population of Trump voters. The small segment of the female population who would do this is radicalized, which is a small sliver of the female population, like 0.001% of them. A woman who believes that ICE is so evil that you must illegally stop them and then evade them is simply going to be more likely to commit violence against them than the general population of women. This is a filtered, or “preselected”, radical population, in a climate where the news is constantly radicalizing people and where death threats have previously been made.
The officers did not / would not know that. She could easily be luring them to the vehicle, which is common tactic in anti-police violence.
Disagree per above, and also because the violent do not behave rationally. Irrationally and violence go hand in hand.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not to address anything else in your post, but I will say that a lot of people, especially blue-tribers, claim that brandishing a weapon is an automatic escalation (see all the accusations of how Rittenhouse was provoking people by being armed).
I am sure the blue-tribers say that. Personally, I would prefer to have a gun brandished toward me or even trained at me by a cop 20 times to being shot without warning even once.
If someone is standing in front of a vehicle wants to signal "I will treat you moving forward at any angle as a deadly assault and blow your brains out", then I would very much prefer that threat to be made explicitly.
Not letting suspects know when they are one sudden movement away from getting shot will greatly reduce stress for the median case, but it will also result in unfortunate failures of communication when they try to get their papers from their glove compartment a little too fast.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
+1 for constant profiling by law enforcement. I am not being sarcastic.
Again, this falls into the trap of "why didn't the cop just have 100% perfect awareness of the entire situation, perfect emotional control, and ninja like reflexes!"
When someone fails to obey repeated police commands, police have to default to treating them as hostile. When that same person them, immediately and without hesitation, engages in dangerous behavior, lethal force is now on the table. When all of this happens within ~ 5 seconds, it's just a dice roll of who ends up injured or dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do not see how drilling officers to shoot at the driver of a car which is coming at them and is within feet of them is supposed to help them not get hit by the car.
If drivers knew they'd get shot and killed for driving into armed cops, they'd probably do it less.
People already know you can’t run over a cop. This does nothing against panic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
He could also have shot to wound (or indeed intimidate) rather than shot to kill.
Which being said, I'm very sympathetic to the "split-second fight-or-flight" circumstances and I don't think he should go to jail about it or anything, any engagement I have in this debate is at the level of "how to make sure fewer things like this happen in the future", not "here is why that particular cop is an evil monster and no reasonable person would have acted as he did".
Tasers and pepper spray (which are "shooting to wound"- you can't realistically use any firearm like this) won't go through a windshield or sheet metal.
Once she hit the gas, the gun was the only option.
More options
Context Copy link
This is a stupid Hollywood meme, like silencers (which are in the real world used to protect your hearing, but get banned because normies watching movies think they literally make guns silent). Nobody in the firearms community teaches that, for multiple reasons:
I am not talking about what is legal, easiest or fastest, I am talking about what is most ethical. Nor do I imagine that there is some magic way to shoot someone while being sure that it won't kill them - but a successful headshot is guaranteed to be fatal, while torso or limbs is only possibly so. I would consider it more ethical to trade a slightly higher chance of missing for a distinctly lower chance that you will have rashly destroyed the life a human being.
Ethics means nothing if it's not achievable in practice. It's not merely that it's easiest to hit the center of mass, it's that missing (or hitting an anatomically insignificant region) does not end the threat and at best, wastes your time and ammo, and at worst, results in your death. You should also not be so quick to dismiss the legalities because if something is supposedly ethical but illegal then no one is going to do it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is stereotypically the response of someone who knows absolutely nothing about firearms, violent encounters, the law around use of force or really anything at all relevant to a police shooting. It is so perfectly wrong that it delegitimizes anything else a person might say about the subject. It misunderstands the law, the morality around use of force, the physical capabilities of small arms and the reasonable limits of police training.
See my reply here. I am aware that this would be harder, and by no means guarantee the target's survival. It would, however, be more ethical, because human life is the most precious thing in the universe, and in my book you need a very high level of confidence that your own life in immediate peril before you are morally justified in taking someone else's. If he wasn't certain that Good was trying to run him over (and he couldn't be) then it would in some important sense have been fairer for him to resort to a means of incapacitating her that had less than 100% chances of being fatal if successfully executed. (Endangering her life to protect his own, i.e. shooting her in such a way that she may very well die, but which is not intended to kill her, comes with a much lower threshold.) The moral thing to do is not necessarily the easiest, fastest, nor most conducive to one's own safety.
I say again, though, that I'm talking about what a perfect actor "should" have done in an ideal frictionless-spherical-cows world, a world in which things like "the reasonable limits of police training" (and human fallibility in general) have no purchase. In the real world, as I said in the post you're replying to, I in no way blame the cop for having acted the way he did.
The stereotypes were correct.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is, as far as I know, generally not legal in the US. Either there is danger to life and limb justifying legal, lethal-intent force, or there is not: it's quite binary, and there's no "well, there was enough danger to justify roughing them up a little" middle ground for good reasons. Indeed, even "warning shots" are generally frowned upon.
More options
Context Copy link
Shooting to wound is not a thing.
I've seen patients come in with over 10 holes and be fine.
I've seen patients get a superficial seeming abdominal or leg wound and bleed out.
Any gunshot wound is potentially fatal, even "less than lethal" weapons like tasers are potentially lethal. That's why we use the euphemistic language.
If any self-defense or law enforcement group advocates for "shoot to maim" I'd love to see it.
More options
Context Copy link
No, he could not, and you suggesting this demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of both the mechanics and the legalities of employing firearms in self-defense.
"Shooting to wound" or "shooting to disable" is not a technique law enforcement officers are taught, because it is, to a first approximation, not a real thing. Self-defense shooting training universally focuses on firing center of mass and as rapidly as possible, because this is by far the best, safest and most effective way to shoot in a self-defense scenario. The next-best target is the head. Limbs move around a lot more than bodies and heads, hitting them is not "non-lethal" by any reasonable definition due to the arteries involved, and missed shots can easily continue on to strike bystanders behind the target.
"Firing to intimidate", "warning shots" and so on are, to my knowledge, flatly illegal in all jurisdictions. Firearms are lethal weapons, and to legitimately discharge a firearm in self-defense requires you to believe you are beyond the point of warnings. Law Enforcement Officers give warnings by shouting them, not by discharging firearms.
In this specific case, the officer firing through the windshield was presented with a target consisting of the driver's upper torso and head, at close range and on minimal timing. The doctrine-correct response is to aim for center-of-mass or the head.
If you want fewer things like this to happen in the future, the obvious way would be for Blue Tribe to stop demonizing legitimate law enforcement and those conducting it, for Blue Tribers to stop attempting to disrupt legitimate law-enforcement operations, for Blue Tribe to create general knowledge that attempting to interfere in legitimate law enforcement operations by driving an SUV into the middle of them is not a good idea, and finally for Blue Tribe to internalize that if you are being ordered out of your car by officers of the law approaching on foot, the proper response is not to put your vehicle in drive and attempt to drive away.
It is obvious that Blues here and in the public at large desperately want this to be Law Enforcement's fault, but in fact the officers made zero observable mistakes, and the "protester" did everything wrong. She participated in a mob attempting to disrupt law enforcement. She blocked the road with her vehicle. She refused to comply with lawful orders. She attempted to drive away, struck an officer in the process, and in the process of this was shot dead. Every one of those actions was a profoundly stupid choice. Make enough stupid choices in sequence, and it is easy to get dead. The solution is not to provide additional protections to people making stupid choices, it is to teach people not to make stupid choices.
This isn't as universal as you make it sound. In Germany, and to my knowledge other european countries as well, police are taught to shoot for warning, at the leg or at tires, so there exist competing schools at thought and differing laws.
As a matter of American tactical and legal doctrine though, which is relevant to the case in question, you are correct.
There may different schools of thought and laws, but there aren't different schools of biology. The leg is not a vestigial body part that can be safely and predictably punctured with ordinance. It may not be 'as' deadly as a shot to the chest or the head, but this is because of the order priority of critical organs, not because of a lack of critical bodily functions, i.e. arteries.
If someone competent tells you that they are shooting at the legs to warn rather than kill, they are lying to you. It may be policy to lie to you, it may be part of security theater to make the public feel better and that things aren't so dangerous, but it is at best a case of 'and trying to kill,' not 'instead of.'
But the disagreements are about tactis and laws, not biology.
Almost no violence is truly "safe". The judgment of different options on the risk-of-death/efficacy ratio is a matter of tradeoffs and cutoffs. "The risk of death in a shot to the leg is x" is biology. "The risk is so high compared to the likelihood of stopping a threat that there is no situation where it is justified over a center-of-mass shot" is not biology, and that's where the schools of though differ.
No one said that. (Edit to clarify: warning shots, shots at the legs and shots at tires are three different things. When I wrote "police are taught to shoot for warning, at the leg or at tires", the comma could be replaced with another "or".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Bullet to the leg easily could kill you. Major vein there.
Artery. And that's how my great-great grandfather died in a hunting accident.
More options
Context Copy link
From "Till We Have Faces" by C.S. Lewis:
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The police didn't do scientific studies to determine whether standing in front of a vehicle is useful for that purpose. They just say it, and everyone believes them. Given how the police like to game the system by giving undisprovable, bogus, explanations for why they do things (sure, they searched the car because they smelled marijuana), I don't grant much charity to the claim that standing in front of a vehicle is necessary.
I wouldn't say never stand in front of a vehicle. But I would say that if they do, they've deliberately escalated the lethality of the situation by putting themselves in harm's way and as such, the standard for them using lethal force should be made stricter. (And I don't believe that shooting the driver is likely to prevent being hit by the car anyway.) If you think the police should be able to shoot people for fleeing, make a law that says the police can shoot people for fleeing. Without such a law, the police shouldn't turn fleeing into a lethal confrontation just so they can shoot anyway.
And yes, this does apply to other people who block vehicles to put themselves in danger from the driver. The most prominent examples being, ironically, protestors who do so. Hurting such a protestor in the process of getting away from them should be treated leniently.
More options
Context Copy link
Why were ICE agents stepping in front of a moving vehicle driven by a white woman? Hang them.
More options
Context Copy link
the road also looked icy. it was extremely reckless what she was trying to do even if she didn't intend to harm the agent.
More options
Context Copy link
I predict that there's maybe four people on this forum who could dodge a thrown water bottle from 10 feet away. "Just dodge the car bro" is Marvel movie thinking.
How full is the water bottle? And it's a normal person throwing it with a predictable windup or it's just magically headed directly towards my center of mass and it's a question of reflexes to get out of the way? I feel like a childhood of playing suicide (apparently called butts up in the US of A) gives me pretty good odds.
But also, without caring that much about the underlying specifics, the cop did 'just dodge the car.' He wasn't meaningfully hit. And even if he had been hit head on and still shot and killed the driver, it didn't stop the car from accelerating and crashing into the other parked car. If anything, shooting her probably made him less safe than jumping on the hood of the car or something.
Not to mention, if you shoot me in the chest or something I'm 100% going to do my best to run you over even if that wasn't my intention before.
More options
Context Copy link
As somebody who could probably dodge the water bottle and somebody who's been hit by a few cars, I wouldn't have wanted to be that ICE agent.
More options
Context Copy link
If you have time to draw and shoot at the driver (which is supposed to stop the car fast enough to not hit you how, exactly?), why wouldn't you have time to get out of the way?
If the car is being deliberately driven at you, getting out of the way may be impossible. It doesn't appear that was the case here, but the officer wouldn't have known that at the time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As an aside: Noem labeling the victim a domestic terrorist is absolutely farcical and yet another example of the Trump administration's fundamentally authoritarian inclination.
edit:
"Yep, that sure is the language of the innocent." Comparisons to the Chicago shooting leap to mind, including the likelihood of DHS sabotaging evidence after lying about events.
It is worse that just an authoritarian inclination, Trump is full-on Simulacrum level four. A complete denial of the idea that words are pointers to concept-space and could be used to describe reality. His administration is not lying as such, because lying happens when you communicate at level 2 with the intend to being mistaken for level 1, and only the most gullible 5% would still entertain the possibility that any sound he makes might be related to physical reality.
As Zvi says:
When he says "they are eating the cats and dogs", that sounds to the untrained ear like an implicit claim that beings called "cats" exist, but it is in fact no such thing. It is just his brain running on autopilot generating plausible sounds for the purpose of getting elected president, without a coherent world view he wants to sell his viewers. Just like a LLM hallucinating citations without even realizing that there is a difference between existing citations and hallucinated ones.
Noem was simply trying to express "bad person". 'Narcoterrorist' would have been an unlikely word to appear outside an Latin American context. 'Antifa terror cell' would have been plausible. 'Domestic terrorist' is a bit bland, but get's the vibe across.
We are all philosophical zombies
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Technically, "insurrectionist" would be more appropriate, but as this term was suborned to mean "a person who protests while not being a Leftist", reclaiming it may be a more complex task. The point is she was intentionally breaking the law in order to achieve a political goal, which is pretty close to terrorism. While, strictly speaking, terrorism implies public intimidation, and the goal of the anti-ICE rioters is to impede and intimidate law enforcement, but not necessarily the general public (though antifa, which are part of these riots, are 100% classic domestic terrorists), I think insisting on these distinctions practically always is an attempt to muddy, rather than clarify, the issue. If we have a movement that employs violence in order to achieve their political goals, they are the bad guys, and whatever stigma is attached to the words "domestic terrorist" in the minds of the public, they deserve 100% of it, even if technically another term may describe some of them more precisely.
Isn't this always what happens when FBI takes over? The FBI is not exactly knows for their laissez faire ways of letting outsiders access details of their investigations. And given as both city and state government pretty much officially proclaimed they are at war with the feds, I am not sure why they would expect the feds to react with giving them extra VIP deal with information access on this case. They'd have limited access normally, and they probably will get no access at all now that they have positioned them as openly hostile.
More options
Context Copy link
My first reaction was to scoff at the hyperbole.
But on second thought, she was abrogating the state's monopoly on violence in furtherance of political goals.
Words have meanings and this is not what "terrorism" means. You would have a better case that she was guilty of insurrection - but terrorism is a specific strategy of using acts of extraordinary violence to create a climate of fear. I don't think the victim here was by any stretch of the imagination engaged in a long-term project of killing a few ICE agents pour encourager les autres. Even in the scenario where she consciously attempted to run the officer who shot her, all signs point to it having been an ordinary self-interested murder meant to enable her escape, not an attempt to make a statement.
There's no single definition of terrorism, but she was part of a direct action campaign that used violent confrontations with ICE to further their political goal to not enforce immigration laws.
Most terorrism definitions don't require killing, just violence.
This paper contains a wide range of definitions, I'll quote a few:
I suppose a major point of contention is whether the direct action of anti-ICE is committed only for its first order effects of frustrating the specific enforcement actions happening at that time, or if they think that their acts taken together will have second-order effects that advance their political goals.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This case is a bit tough for me. The shot seems clearly more justified than the Babbitt shot. It seems to me at least reasonable that the officer could have thought the woman was trying to run him over, but personally my feeling is that the woman was simply trying to flee, recklessly.
The real reason the case bothers me is that, in the course of my life, I have often dealt with police trying to block off or redirect traffic. In two such cases the police (in my opinion) did such a poor job of this that I ended up driving into some area where I was not supposed to be. In both interactions the police were very aggressive and angry with me (at least at first; I'd like to think my genuine befuddlement wins them over in the end). While the situation is not perfectly analogous, I can't shake the mild fear that one of the officers could have believed that I was driving recklessly or intentionally into the blocked-off area, and viewed my action as a "deadly threat."
Ultimately, I think the police need to be able to use force to enact the law and take a very dim view of any sort of right to flee, but I can't help but wonder if the cop who murdered Babbitt would have murdered me for being confused and in the wrong place in my car.
That one:
Now, granted, this might be a uncharitable summary, WP is unlikely to be very sympathetic to J6 rioters.
I think that the difference of Babbitt and Good was that it was apparent that the former was in the middle of a breaking and entering mission. She was not climbing through that window because she was panicking and trying to flee, she was clearly looking for trouble.
Sure, it would have been better if a squad of cops in riot gear were in that hallway so they could stop the rioters with less than lethal methods. Or if they had stopped them well outside any federal buildings, for that matter. And if you want to argue that someone intended for that fuckup to happen, I have little to argue against that.
But I thought if anyone would be sympathetic towards a stand your ground approach, it would be Republicans.
I will not argue that Good was innocent. She had likely violated traffic rules with the intent to frustrate ICE's objectives. But from the way she steered her car, as well as her demographic group, it seems very likely that what she was thinking was not "finally a chance to kill one of these Gestapo fucks" but rather "oh my god, they are arresting me, Trump will send me to an El Salvador megaprison, I am about to get disappeared".
Which is delusional when in fact she would have gotten away with a fine and community service, but it is not an intrinsically aggressive delusion -- unlike thinking that you are meant to stop the steal, for example.
I think the maximal charitable case for Babbitt (which is probably about as charitable as plenty of takes for Good, but far more charitable than I'm typically inclined to be) is "unarmed American veteran shot by the State while attempting to petition elected representatives about a political issue", which is AFAIK factually correct (if missing a bunch of context) in ways that really do make the government's J6 response sound pretty tyrannical.
That said, I'm more inclined to "tragic, if predictable, on all accounts" framing in both situations.
More options
Context Copy link
So was Renee Good - the whole reason why she was there was to block ICE from performing their duties. It's not like she was randomly stopped on the way to a grocery store and it escalated - she specifically went there to engage ICE and impede them. That is very much "looking for trouble" and while it is sadly tolerated way too much in and by itself it is already a crime. Not a deadly threat yet, of course, but definitely looking for trouble is there.
The difference is whether there was an imminent deadly threat. A tiny woman breaking a window and trying to fit through it is hardly one - Byrd could have subdued Babbitt with his right hand tied behind his back (if he weren't a massive coward of course). There's no way ICE officer could have subdued an SUV driving towards him, unless he's Jack Reacher, who as we know is a fictional character.
More options
Context Copy link
The counterpoint is that there were other armed officers nearby, and the only one who thought Babbit deserved a new hole was a known fuck-up retard who should have been off the force years ago. Guy was actually already famous for the "Capitol police officer left his gun on a urinal" story. He's actually in the news again as of a few days ago because his side gig is a government-subsidized daycare.
L.M.A.O.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I actually flipped my opinion on Babbitt some time last year. Shooting a protestor who's trying to destroy and get through a barricade after you warn them that you will shoot them if they persist is justified violence. The fact that everyone else before that SS agent folded and let the protestors through with no resistance, emboldening them, doesn't make his actions wrong.
Do you have a link to precisely what Babbit did? My impression was that she got shot as she came through a window, along with many others, unarmed and some distance from the officer who shot her. But I could be wrong. Was she trying to break through a barricade put in place to keep congressmen safe?
https://archive.org/details/nYiFQbNc65jwFYCWY?start=1994
She was climbing through a broken window in a locked door. The window was broken by other protestors after the three cops that were guarding the doors from the front chickened out and left.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't necessarily think Babbitt was a bad shoot, but I do think if the exact same sequence of events played out in Portland with an unarmed Blue triber that she would be literally a gigantic national martyr with multiple movies released of her life due to how shitty the optics were. End of the day I respect that you can draw a line in a place like the Capitol and say 'anybody who crosses this is shot', even if it's inconsistent with how the January 6 unlicensed tour group was otherwise treated, but the reaction to her killing from Democrats when, if the situation were reversed, there would be an endless howl, is silly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is exactly why I think the other protestors bear moral blame for this woman's death, and ought to be legally disincentivized from behaving as they have been. A beat cop doing traffic control doesn't have any particular reason to worry about a driver accidentally going somewhere beyond the general high level of paranoia cops are taught to use.
Compare that to an ICE agent surrounded by protestors screaming the kind of insulting accusations that might morally justify vengeful violence against agents of the state. Physical attacks on ICE agents are already high, including numerous attempts to assassinate or perform mass killings of ICE agents.
This is obviously going to put them more on edge, raise the threshold for proper professionalism, and increase the likelihood of something unfortunate happening.
Yeah, people need to listen to the audio around the events, it is STRESSFUL (even sitting at home). Raise the temperature, make the situation uncontrolled, make communication hard.....and communication is hard.
This also matters for securing the scene after the shooting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The ICE agent's actions were probably legal. But most normies will conclude at the woman should not have been shot dead. There is no dissonance between these 2.
The shooting itself is secondary. The peripheral conversations are more interesting.
First, there is a reason that countries avoid too many domestic law enforcement agencies. Civilians have context and learned behaviors for how to deal with the authoritative law enforcement agency (Cops). Civilians have zero context on how to engage with an ICE officer. Which laws do they abide by (local, state, federal) ? How do I recognize them ? What are my rights ? Am I entitled to bail ? etc. The context hole is filled in by aesthetic. ICE officers appear as masked men with guns who use excessive force to chase down people who (for the most part) haven't hurt anyone. The aesthetic is terrifying and the average civilian would understandably try to flee. MAGA itself has promoted this paramilitary like view of ICE, and people are correctly responding to it with fear.
There is rhetorical sleight of hand. ICE officers are cops in terms of discretionary power, but held accountable to none of the same standards as cops. In classic fashion, Republicans care about states rights until it's their guy in power. #TeamDoubleStandards.
Besides, why are 'tom and jerry chase' and 'headshot' the only 2 options available to an officer ? She was leaving. They could have let her go and found her later. This isn't some seasoned drug dealer that will camp out in another state. They could've just arrested her later.
Hell, the dude could have just not stepped in front of the car. It's not rocket science. In fact, it is specifically prohibited by a large number of police precincts around the country. I asked Chatgpt to find me some sources and consolidation of general best practices across police precincts and this is what it found for me.
In fact, MinneapolisPD is explicit about avoiding being in front of cars.
So yeah, the fed may get away with it. But at the very least, his actions were amateurish and caused the unnecessary death of a civilian.
Finally, the broad optics are just plain bad for Trump. The Somali scams were a slam dunk for his govt and Republicans could have built the 2026 midterm campaign on it. Instead, by killing a white mother on ground zero, the narrative has immediately shifted away from the Somalis.
It wasn't just the killing. Trump's response was despicable. The video isn't vindicating (unlike Rittenhouse) and it appears to validate many of Democrats accusations of ICE acting more like the mob than cops. Statistically speaking, increasing ICE action in Minnesota has led to an increase in the death of Americans by 1. Obama was already deporting the criminals quite effectively. Deportation of otherwise lawful civilians does not require guns, let alone deadly force.
There is no good angle for MAGA here. I'm seeing many popular right wingers (DeSantis was the most surprising) condemn the shooting. This is a big L.
DeSantis is not surprising. He's trying to thread the needle between not angering Trump while trying to get the media's approval as the "least bad Republican" for his next run.
Probably a bad move. If he wants to get elected, being the "least bad Republican" just means the Democrats calling themselves "moderates" say fewer mean things about him (or even nice ones, during the primary) and then they all vote for the Democrat anyway. If he wants to get elected he should lean into DeathSantis and try to be the "most bad Republican"; he still won't get the "moderates" but he'll have a better shot at energizing the base.
This commercial made me seriously consider voting for DeSantis; best political ad I have seen since "Casey", also featuring Ron ("Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" is overrated). But he dropped out before the Florida primary, so it was a moot point.
I don't get what the problem with letting transgender women compete in Miss America pageants is. Isn't that like letting women compete in men's sports?
Because the scoring is arbitrary and the score-keepers are readily politically captured. A transman who wins a sprint either has the time or doesn't. A transwoman who beats wins the Miss America pageant could have impressed judges with interviews, swimsuit, and evening dress... or have had judges feeling they could Prove The Chuds Wrong. Hell, even if she genuinely does win with the judges, it's quite possible or even likely, that none of the things that won the race will appeal to a social conservative audience, even if you could somehow force them to be honest with a magical spell.
((uh, most sports. A transman might have a biological advantage over cis guys in some gunnie-related sports, though the data is controversial.))
Meanwhile, the philosophy that this is just some distraction that doesn't matter runs headfirst into the 'fine, then let me win' problem. It probably does have some strategic value, and I'd argue that social conservatives should actually try to investigate what (though I don't like them on this topic well enough to do their work for them), but social conservatives can tell it does from progressive actions, without having to delve into whether it's the scholarships, ability to claim what's attractive to men at young women, ammo for the 'this is how things really are' arguments in courts and to regulatory agencies, or just a new avenue to claim anti-trans people aren't 'really' straight.
I don't think it matters, but if you want to persuade people who do, you need to at least attempt the basics of understanding what motivates them.
I think that's what my comment was doing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's also some less committed Republicans who could be driven to exhaustion by the constant "everything Trump does is unprecedented and threatens the republic if not the entire planet" background messaging of the media. Positionning yourself as the guy that will still be a Republican but won't have the media shriek constantly about is good if you feel that these people outnumber Trump-only (or Trump-approved-only) voters.
Tell me when you find that unicorn, I'd love to know!
More options
Context Copy link
Those people vote for Democrats now.
More options
Context Copy link
My experience of more than 50 years of consuming Democratic party-aligned news media makes me mark this as an extraordinary claim.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think that guy exists. But one can position themselves as him until he gets elected and the media shrieks at him constantly anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's plenty of dissonance, but it's resolved simply by noting which side the majority of the mainstream media is on.
There may be reasons they shouldn't, but in fact they do. The rest of this paragraph was irrelevant; this woman knew who ICE was and furthermore, ordinary cops go after nonviolent criminals all the time.
This is also a false claim, although you're probably overestimating the standards ordinary cops are held to.
At the time the cop pulled his gun, she was driving her SUV right at him. You're implying that if he had the option to get out of the way of a person who was fleeing, apparently homicidal and in control of a truck, he should have done it rather than take action to stop her right there and then. I do not believe this is a standard police are ever held to ordinarily.
Preventing people from fleeing, including by placing themselves in their path, is in fact part of a police officer's job.
You can't trust the robot.
Optics are within his opponent's control.
Trump blames the dead woman, saying she was trying to run over the officer. But even The Guardian, in attacking Trump, admits the officer was actually hit, as some of the videos show. That's pretty vindicating.
Could be worse, they could have killed a black guy.
That's not statistical anything.
Unless of course those otherwise lawful citizens decide they don't want to be deported. But this wasn't a deportation anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
She appears to have traveled a considerable distance for the specific purpose of disrupting ICE actions, and was described by at least one bystander as a leader and organizer of the disruption. There is no reason at all to think she would have just left and stopped obstructing if she was not stopped. It is obviously much more likely that she would have just circled around and got right back at it.
"God, I can't believe you idiots didn't let us murder you! It's your fault that we'll relentlessly lie about it!"
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Apologies if missed elsewhere, I have read through a fair number of the comments on this thread.
One tangential thought I have that I didn’t see posted, is that in the Rube Goldberg machine of tragedy that unfolded, Trump’s own culture-warring belligerence has played a part. Throat clearing, I think others have made a compelling case that the shooting was justified, and I think it’s idiotic to drive around looking to pick up an obstruction charge using your SUV.
Local news has confirmed ICE we’re looking for a Somali suspect, and this big push of ICE agents being deployed to Minnesota is downstream of Nick Shirley’s viral video that has the Trumo admin fired up.
But! This is all less than intelligent because Minnesota’s problems with the Somali community are numerous, but simultaneously, aren’t to do with illegal immigration. A majority of Minnesotans from the Somali diaspora are natural born U.S. Citizens, and the best stats I can find are that 87% of foreign born are also U.S. Citizens. This shouldn’t be unexpected; the civil war that led to the 1991 collapse of Siad Barre's regime is decades old news, and various charities and international aid organizations helped resettle refugees from the resulting crisis.
Also, Somalia is dirt poor and an ocean away. There’s no significant number of Somalis crossing the southern border and throwing up bogus asylum claims to secure economic migration under a false pretense and being released into the States to await an immigration court date in several months.
Of the 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota, upwards of 94% are U.S. Citizens, with varying immigration statuses among the remaining. Conversely, as of 2023 estimates there were an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the States.
Does the Trump administration have the right to send ICE where it wants to pursue any illegal immigrant? Of course. Is sending 3,000 agents into Minnesota to target Somalis an intelligent use of iCE? Not even if sending a message to the community so some members self-deport is the goal, no. There simply aren’t many illegal immigrants among the Somali community, especially when placed in context with the scale of the problem.
And now there’s a big partisan media shitstorm roiling.
What Minnesota needed to deal with its Somali problems, and was already getting, was feds running down fraudsters. Not a showy, aggressive ICE push.
In general I would agree. But, given what we've learned about the scale of fraud and corruption in the Somsli community, I think it's fair to do some investigating into whether any of those citizenship were obtained legally. Usually asylum doesn't automatically lead to citizenship even if you've been here a while.
Also, ICE seems to be expanding past ots original scope, and is now basically a full national police force. Not sure how I feel about that, but that's the state we're in.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of those citizens are, in fact, legal. Faking your way through naturalization is a lot harder than writing the wrong number on a welfare application.
But it’s beside the point! Roadblocks and manhunts aren’t “investigating” citizenship status. Those 3000 agents aren’t doing paperwork at City Hall. They’re showing the flag.
More options
Context Copy link
There have been 70+ individuals indicted and narry a single non-citizen. I can’t disprove a negative that 100-percent of the fraudsters aren’t non-citizens, but I’ve yet to see any evidence they are. And again, at the barest of minimums upwards of 96% of Minnesotan Somali’s are citizens.
More options
Context Copy link
What do you mean here? Do they prosecute non-immigration offenses? Any documented examples of that?
well, in this case, they shot a protestor!
they have riot gear and training to deal with large violent protests. They can do it much better than what most local police forces have.
I am not sure how this is connected to the claim above. Yes, the person they shot may have been a part of the protest. But how that changes anything? They did not come out targeting this particular person. They came out doing their thing (immigration enforcement) and the "protestor" attacked them and caused them to fear for their lives, at which point they exercised their universal right to self-defense (which would apply even if they were private citizens) and shot the attacker.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but they don't have much choice - the local police is explicitly instructed not to protect them from the attacks (at best), so they have to protect themselves. That does not make them "a national police force" - no more than me defending myself from being attacked on the street makes me part of "national police force". Ideally, of course, local police would do their job and protect them - but that's not going to happen because it is under the control of leftists government which is not intent to let federal immigration laws be enforced if they can help it. That still does not make ICE "a national police force" - their goal is still enforcing the immigration law.
I think this more recent shooting in Portland does a better job illustrating what I meant about ICE expanding its role: https://katu.com/news/local/ice-shoots-two-people-in-portlandoregon
This wasn't just some random deportation. ICE works along side Customs and Border Protection, under the larger organization of the Department of Homeland Security. In this case, they were going after members of a transnational Venezuelan gang, which last year murdered two NYPD cops. So, yes, they do prosecute illegal immigration, but they highly prioritize people who are also breaking the law in other ways, and they're equipped to deal with the most violent types of criminals.
At the same time, they're very aware of what a political hotbutton this is. If they just wanted to arrest someone, they could simply show up in plainclothes or regular police uniforms. Instead they choose to show up in force, in very prominent ICE gear, and fend off the endless waves of violent protestors.
Anyway I do agree that they're not simply "a national police force," that was a poor choice of words on my part. My point is simply that they have powers that go beyond simply deporting people for breaking immigration laws.
Gasp! So they are doing exactly what they promised to do - prioritize enforcement over the most violent lawbreakers? And that's somehow a bad thing?
I mean, my position is - if you are here illegally, you must get out, voluntarily or involuntarily. I can be persuaded otherwise in the case of minors who had no choice when they were brought in, but for adults every single illegal should be, ideally, deported. The reality is, of course, it is not possible to deport 15 million people in any reasonable time with any reasonable procedure. Priorities should be made. You are describing the case where ICE is prioritizing violent gang members. That's not ICE "expanding" their role, it's ICE contracting their role - from deporting every single illegal - which is theoretically their role, but practically is not possible - to deporting only the most dangerous ones. The fact that people are complaining about it only supports my assumption that the goal of those complaints is nothing but prevent any law enforcement from happening altogether - it does not matter what and how happens, there always will be something that is wrong and must be stopped, the only acceptable solution for the complainers is to not have ICE do anything at all. Sorry, I did not vote for that.
If they show up without gear, the left would scream "oh, they were not clearly marked, we thought they were just bandits, and that's why we tried to ram them with cars and attack them!". If they show up with clear markings and gear, the left would scream "how dare they to intimidate us with their uniforms and their gear, clearly they are at fault when we tried to ram them with cars and attack them!". Heads I win, tails you lose.
In reality, sometimes the police needs to be clandestine - when there is a risk that the criminals may hide or run away otherwise. Sometimes, there is a case for undercover work. But in most cases, when the arrest is made, the police does clearly identify itself and must do so. Law enforcement is not something that should be hidden and happen in shadows - it is the right thing to do, and must be done publicly and openly.
Powers like what?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't want the somalian fraud to stop. Anything that makes people hate somalians more is a good thing and as long as they're stealing from the enemy it's a good thing.
This is pure culture warring. If you want to make an earnest argument for accelerationism, do so, but this is just "Ha ha more flames!"
More options
Context Copy link
Even if all the money stolen were local money and not from federal budget (which is my taxes), I don't think its a good thing. It's not a good thing because it finances the left's NGO networks and political campaigns, via kickbacks, and provides people like Ilhan Omar with ironclad voting blocks - which also pulls the whole political frame way to the left.
More options
Context Copy link
The subset of Mottizens willing to sacrifice our metro area to the cause of their accelerationism are surely already known.
On the contrary, I would like intelligent, and better-focused government action to resolve known problems.
More options
Context Copy link
NO! People will actually turn out to LOVE Somalians because of this. They will be taking money from the socialized commons (which includes substantial federal funds by the way) and bringing it to the specific places where Somali fraudsters live. I would bet that the local Cadillac dealerships in Minneapolis can’t get enough of the Somalis.
Mostly joking but that might be apt. Given the influence of Northern European culture, a Cadillac is a bit garish by Minnesotan standards. We’ve a disproportionate number of Fortune 500 companies in the Twin Cities metro and a good standard of living. You can spend all the money you wish on a Volvo, BMW or Mercedes provided your model of choice is in a muted color and has four doors. But a Cadillac is ugly new-money.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
“If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country”
When you stand against immigration enforcement you stand against the future of the entire civilization we share. You are saying that you want your descendants and mine to live in a dirtier, poorer, more squalid, more corrupt, more unequal, more violent country, forever.
That is treason no less severe than selling nuclear secrets to Russia or Iran, and perhaps moreso. Trump’s loss in 2020 was sealed the second he started showing sympathy to the Floyd rioters. He shouldn’t make that mistake again, and I’m glad that so far the administration is making a strong stand.
If you obstruct ICE in any capacity, why should I care what happens to you, when by your very action you are saying you don’t care about what happens to me?
So you are saying that by exempting enforcement against undocumented/illegal migrants working in the hotel, gastronomy and agricultural sectors, Trump is in fact ruining the future of the US?
Yes, or at least he is failing to take the action he should and so allowing that ruin to happen. He should listen to Miller instead of the agricultural lobby.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What a childish argument.
Why should I care that Charlie Kirk was shot? Trump? Should I care when the Sandistas drag your rich family from their Manhattan penthouse, given that I suspect I'd take a dim view of how you acquired your wealth if I knew the details? Should I cheer for cops to shoot people violating COVID lockdowns because they obviously don't care about what happens to me?
Have you met your quota of 8 white/Jewish babies? Do you support my policy of sterilizing the genetic undesirables? Have you donated to my paramilitary group going door to door administering rapid-SNP tests and euthanizing people with below-average IQ PGS? No? By failing to out-reproduce the blacks and latinos and borderlander dysgenic trash you're dooming my descendants to squalor! Why should I care what happens to you?
Have some empathy and respect for your country(wo)men because the alternative is worse. Even if you're acutely self-interested and lack any altruistic impulses whatsoever, the alternative is worse for you as well.
The groypers/tankies/islamists would kill/expel/rape/torture/imprison me anyway, so I’m unclear as to why I owe them any empathy.
And I’m not defending her death. In fact, you can go back to 2020 when I was a comparative moderate (when compared to some regulars) on Floyd because I believed (and still do believe) that on balance, Chauvin’s hold was unreasonable - even if I don’t think he should have gone to jail, certainly not for the length of time he did, for it.
But the episode taught me one thing. If you give the left an inch, they take a mile. If you agree that a single cop did something dumb, you get the police defunded, a wave of ridiculous and damaging woke in the private and public sector, and the greatest crime wave in decades. So while I don’t defend this, I know the only thing for it is to say “OK, what about it?”, to give not one inch.
Pretty small subsets of society, but sure, you can have a pass on people whose platform is explicitly kill/torture Jews. The woman who got shot in the head was presumably none of those things, although I doubt she had warm feelings for Palestine.
And if you give the right an inch, they take Venezuela. Compromise is for suckers, smart people hit defect, right?
But regardless, you learned the wrong lesson. Defund the police didn't happen because you gave an inch to extreme leftists, it happened because broad segments of the population across the political spectrum were disgusted by what happened to Floyd. COVID lockdowns didn't happen because you ceded ground to some tiny fraction of hypochondriacs; they were supported by the majority of Americans, particularly early on in the pandemic.
You can be as callous as you like when you're in power, but a majority of Americans disapprove of ICE. And when they're back in power and you trumpet the latest MS13 murder, what's to stop them from smiling and saying 'why should I care?'
There was a moment at the end of the Biden administration where I thought there was relatively broad bipartisan agreement that something needed to be done about immigration. The left knew it was a losing issue, all the talking heads on the center left agreed something needed to be done, etc. The right (well, Trump really) chose to score political points instead and unilaterally take a bunch of actions that will be reversed three years from now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
ICE isn't enforcing immigration and borders tho.
More options
Context Copy link
Amen.
May his holiness behead every twink who stands in his way. The crusaders will prevail. Constantinople will be red white and blue. It is the American way.
/uj dude, you okay ?
More options
Context Copy link
Very dramatic and I don't even disagree, but I hope the tone police sends a warning squad to crack down on you with the full force of the forum rules!
I notice you haven't reported her post.
What, specifically, do you think was against the rules?
ETA: To expand on this, @2rafa's comment was belligerent (in a general, undirected way) and arguably "mean." She wasn't attacking anyone personally (except maybe the woman who was killed) nor explicitly saying anyone should die. The implicit message is definitely that the woman deserved to die, but people say "Such-and-such is antisocial behavior and people who do it deserve what's coming to them" quite often. IMO it was heated (and did draw some reports) but then, so was @Chrisprattalpharaptr's response (which also drew reports).
Generally speaking, this comment thread is turning into kind of a trainwreck because everyone is rushing out their most belligerent hot takes.
Humor is hard, OK? I know I shouldn't even try. I didn't report it because I don't see it as breaking the rules. The main issue I have with it is that it is being overdramatic. Not even wrong, just jumping a little too speedily from an unwise woman getting herself shot to the fate of civilization. I shouldn't have posted.
More options
Context Copy link
It was extremely uncharitable. Obviously, hardly anyone who opposes the deportation of illegal immigrants thinks it will lead to "a dirtier, poorer, more squalid, more corrupt, more unequal, more violent country, forever."
She's arguing that it doesn't matter what happens to anyone who supports illegal immigrants based on a totally fabricated assessment of their beliefs. It's needlessly inflammatory and false. It's untrue, unkind, and unnecessary.
More options
Context Copy link
Jeez, how many people can report a comment in 45 minutes? Are they just sitting there refreshing the new comment feed?
Refreshing the new-comment feed is a perfectly normal way to browse this forum.
More options
Context Copy link
You'd be surprised how many Motte Karens there are.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you don't have laws, you also don't have a country. Yet there are degrees of severity and arbitrariness in creating/enforcing laws, and some of those degrees are, in fact, worth to be obstructed. Giving carte blanche to anti-immigration doesn't sound any more obviously a good thing to me than giving carte blanche to police. Certainly not when operating within borders.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Had the ICE officer not moved left, the path the vehicle took definitely would have hit him.
https://imgur.com/a/1k6ljs9
If you watch the video, he's moving from the right to the left, so he was in the way of the vehicle in the seconds before the car started moving.
Here's what I can see happened from the different videos.
ICE Officer A (the officer that fired the shot) is filming the vehicle of the woman and moves in from the right side of the vehicle to the front of the vehicle. ICE Officer B approaches the vehicle from the left saying "get out of the car" multiple times and as soon as he reaches the car attempts to open the door.
Going frame by frame, the wheels start to move before the officer's hand tries to open the door, but not before the officer raises his hand at towards her.
The car reverses a bit and stops. While this is happening, ICE officer A is in front of the vehicle moving from the right to the left. It's possible the woman's attention is solely focused on ICE Officer B and may not even be aware ICE officer A is in front of her, possibly inattentional blindness.
The instant the car attempts to move forward Ice Officer A pulls out the card and shoots. The time between when the wheel starts to move forward and when he tries to pull the gun out is about 8 frames (going frame by frame on the linked youtube video for angle 2), and since the video is playing at 30 frames per seconds, that is about 266 milliseconds.
So based on what I can see this is what I conclude.
The woman was there to be disruptive to ICE. As soon as ICE shows up and confronts her, she panics and tries to run away. I don't think she was intending to run someone over and it's possible the ICE Officer standing in front of her vehicle wasn't registering in her mind, or the path the ICE officer took walking from right to left in front of her vehicle made her think he would keep moving left out of the way of the vehicle. Perhaps she thought a path was opening up and in a moment of panic was looking for a way to get out as soon as possible. (Which by the way, is an extremely stupid thing to do. Even if you are in the right and an officer is harassing you, trying to run away is one of the worst responses you can do other than physically attacking the officer. In this situation, even if unintentionally, attempting to run away also cause the possibility of physical harm to an officer. The behavior of the type of people to run and resist police might be interesting to dig further into but likely has already been discussed heavily here in the Motte already and this is already going too far off-topic from the point I want to make so I shall abstain from commenting further for now.)
Regardless, when she decides to try to move the vehicle forward, he is very clearly standing in a spot where the vehicle would hit him. 266 milliseconds from when the car starts to move forward to when he starts to pull the gun out is well within standard human reaction time. There's about 36-38 frames from when he begins to pull the gun out to when smoke appears from the gun. I think it is within possibility that the moment he detected the car driving towards him the ICE officer felt his life threatened and used his gun as a response, and not that he was waiting for an opportunity to shoot someone. If he had been pulling the gun out sooner, I think the arguments that he was looking for an opportunity to shoot someone would be stronger, but here that is not the case.
I don't think a lot of people understand how dangerous vehicles are due to being around cars all the time. Due to their size, even at a small speed it can do significant damage to the human body. For example, if you had a 4500 lb SUV accelerate from 0 to 5 mph in 1 second that's approximately 10,000 N of force. For comparison, a punch from an elite level boxer would be around 5000 N of force. From what I saw in the video, I don't think the vehicle would've killed the officer if it hit him, but it could've done significant physical damage if he didn't move out of the way. If a guy was running towards an officer trying to punch him and got shot, it would be very hard to defend that. A vehicle accelerating to even 5mph when it would hit someone possesses way more power behind it. Intentional or not, that was the level of physical force that could've hit that officer. Driving a car is an insane privilege with great potential for damage that I think a lot of people simply don't respect.
EDIT: There is a 4th angle video that makes it clearer what happened.
Officer A went to the car in front of the woman's car with the door open (perhaps to grab something or check something on the system), then he turns around and starts moving towards the woman's car, but he is NOT in front of the car. When she begins moving backwards, that positions the car to be angled towards him. Officer A stops his walk. The charitable take for the officer is that this triggers his memory of being run over previously, and he enters a fight response, causing him to pull out his firearm and shoot. It's important to note that the decision for the women to reverse and for the officer to shoot happens in a matter of seconds.
I think this makes it clear several things
The woman did not purposefully attempt to run over an officer when she made her decision to back the vehicle up. It's very likely her attention was focused on Officer B that grabbed her vehicle's door and in fact Officer A was clearly not in front of the vehicle when she begins backing up.
Officer A did not deliberately position himself in front of the car to block the vehicle from moving. It just so happened that the vehicle began moving backward while he was moving towards the car. If we go frame by frame and look at where he stopped moving relative to the direction the car was facing before it began backing up, he would not have been in the path of the car had it moved straight forward instead of backing up first. So my initial assessment that he was walking right from left in front of the vehicle was completely wrong.
What pisses me off is that on Twitter and Youtube and Discord the culture war warriors are arguing over the demonstratable facts of the case rather than the interpretation of the events. Everyone has the same access to the videos I do and linking the exact same video I watched and yet they seem to have missed key details entirely and then forming their entire opinion and analysis based on it. The "analysis" videos are even worse, I saw one circle the random pedestrian (not the officer) and add an arrow to officer B (but no highlighting of Officer A) and now people on Twitter are sharing that video as proof that the Officer A was not in front of the car. Or the screenshot of the officer shooting at the car but not the frame before showing that the car would've hit the officer. Are the people liking and sharing this dishonest evaluation, not watching the video? Are they mentally blocking any information that would provide evidence towards the conclusion they don't like, and only looking for the conclusion they would like?
This is nothing new, of course. There were people that believed Rittenhouse shot a black person even though the video evidence was available even before the trials. But you cannot even have a proper conversation when the core facts of the situation is in dispute and one side refuses to acknowledge the reality of what happened. You can have an argument about who is in fault here (is shooting the right response or a reasonable response, do you deserve to be shot if you're running away in a vehicle and in the process put someone in harm's way), you cannot have an argument with someone that believes that the officer was trying to block the vehicle with his body or that the vehicle was never pointing towards the officer because the fundamental assumptions of their argument is completely false.
Yep.
Although it's rough to watch, you can check out videos of things like "trailer hitch fails" to see just how dangerous a "slow moving" SUV / truck can be. Knees folding like car tables, multiple surgeries type of things.
More options
Context Copy link
I think your analysis of the mechanics is fair, but doesn’t solve the issue.
The driver seems to be trying to leave, not run down an officer. He’s crossing in front of the car and nearly out of the way, and yet as soon as the car shifts to forward he has his gun out and is shooting.
If a car begins accelerating towards you and your split second reaction is to go for your gun, I’m questioning your motives. The fact that a car is dangerous isn’t relevant, because it’s not clear he was fearing for his life!
Suppose for a minute an officer is directing traffic. He looks over, and sees a driver, texting, heading in his direction. To shoot in that scenario, instead of moving out of the way, would be deranged. The only reason it’s being defended here, as I see it, is because the driver is disobeying ICE orders.
The ICE agent was very clearly standing in a spot where the vehicle could not move forward without hitting him. You yourself agree with this assessment ("I think your analysis of the mechanics is fair, but doesn’t solve the issue."). How can you possibly determine the intention of her actions by what her actions were ? In both cases the results of either action would be exactly the same, she can't leave without hitting him. Trying to run down the officer looks exactly like trying to escape when the officer is a foot in front of your car!
She follows them around, gets ahead of them, parks in the street, waits for them to get out, waits until a guy is right in front of her, then hits the gas. That doesn't seem at all like she was trying to leave.
"Ah yes, you can see the woman has pure motives, she was just trying to leave, I can tell my a frame by frame analysis of her tire movements. But ICE agent, he reached for his gun while he was a foot in front of accelerated into him, that's suspicious!"
The dangerousness of a car hitting a person is irrelevant to that persons fear for their life? Really?
Unfortunately this is where we get to both repeat different versions of the narrative at each other, even in the face of multiple video angles.
She reversed initially, basically doing a shallow 3-point turn, as he was crossing in front of the car. It seems almost certain to me that she was not trying to run over the agent, she likely didn’t know he was there. Not only that, but the agent was out of the way, or trivially able to move out of the way. (He was not significantly struck by the vehicle, although the exact mechanics are messy because he stumbles a bit on the side.) Why pull a gun there?
To say she “waits until a guy is right in front of her, then hits the gas” is to imply she was actively trying to kill him, instead of being careless. It’s also just not accurate!
I think there’s an extremely strong case that it was clear she was not attempting to kill the agent, and that he would have known that, and that his reaction was comically incompetent. I would speculate he was frustrated, aggressive, and panicked, and turned what was at worst reckless endangerment into an execution.
Even granting we are reading different narratives, I just don't see a difference between "I intentionally tried to run this guy over" and "I was trying to escape law enforcement and in my escape I was so negligent in my driving that I hit a man directly in front of my windshield"
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I basically agree with your analysis. Regardless of her intent, she was at a minimum engaged in reckless driving.
Possibly if she'd been driving at Kyle Rittenhouse, he would have handled the situation better but it looks to me like the officer's behavior was within the standards of what is reasonable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's now an unedited video with context:
https://x.com/JoshEakle/status/2008970977699639681
The other ones kind of gave a different impression; I still think it's, like -- a pretty defensible shoot, but not as good as (say) Rittenhouse.
The guy did in fact dodge the car; some of the other ones make it look like she hit him a bit with the hood. This doesn't seem significant to me, and the first shot he fired was golden (pretty polished draw BTW), but it sure looks/sounds to me like he cranked a couple rounds in the open side window as she's going by, which was probably not a great decision.
I'm now having Binger flashbacks in which he rolls the tape back and forth pointing at blurry items onscreen with a laser pointer and trying to look imposing -- alas, I think the Feds have jurisdiction on this one?
EDIT: Actually that's the same as the youtube version of Angle 2 in @zoink 's post -- I kind of get the impression that the driver may not have even noticed the guy in front until she started forward, which is always a mistake, especially when the guy in your path is an armed cop. Always check that your way is clear before shifting into drive, people!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq98aqF794
This video makes it clear that she almost certainly had no idea he was there until she started moving. He started off inside the white car. Then he leaves and quickly marches over to her car. While he's walking over, she starts backing up. So he wasn't there when she started backing up. She was almost certainly looking backwards or looking at her back-up camera and had no idea he had stopped in front of her car just as she was finishing backing up.
Then she immediately starts to go forward. She would have seen him for the first time when she was first putting her foot on the gas, probably in a bit of panic, with the other officer at her window grabbing the car.
That's why she starts off moving in his direction. A second ago, she thought that was a safe escape route. Given how she was rushing, she could only turn hard to the right. One second later and she's shot three times.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree, but Rittenhouse struck me as being close to superhuman in terms of his split-second judgment and reactions.
It's too bad he's been burned for life and never got a chance to go in the military or police.
Vast majority of military and police members are never gonna have a real livefire incident, and lots of weird edgecases happen.
My dad almost got Court Martialed for breaking ROE 50 years ago for reasons that were partially not his fault but also just kind of messy fog of war.
You seem to have begun telling a story, and then forgot to tell the actual story.
Long story short
My dad was a military electrician driving around the Independent Southern part of a European country famous for its north-south religious divide, as a member of the military forces of their Eastern neighbor. Said Eastern Neighbor had somewhat-condoned listening posts inside the Southern country, and my dad was essentially maintaining those driving around in an unmarked van.
One night he stops in at one concealed in a rural barn and stays for the night, then wakes up at 2AM since he needs to go to the toilet. He leaves the barn and goes into the nearby woods to shit, and in the meantime a small group of locals come up on the guys inside the barn and have them at gunpoint. My dad sneaks back from the woods, grabs the nearest weapon (which was the hunting rifle of the commanding officer of the listening post and filled with hollow point rounds) and then opens fire on the locals after they open fire on the guys inside the barn. He ends up being the only survivor, and once the military police descended on the situation it turned into a huge clusterfuck.
My dad was accused of opening fire/shooting the locals in the back (despite the fact that they clearly fired on the guys inside the post since they're also dead), and of breaking the Geneva Convention due to using hollowpoint rounds (since he'd literally just grabbed the nearest weapon which wasn't his/loaded by him) plus there's a ton of ugly diplomacy around the location and status of this particular incident since it's not inside the country in which this particular police action was supposed to be taking place. He then spends a month or two getting grilled, before eventually being discharged on goodish terms and the court martial not sticking but there was an attempt.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah. I agree with this. First shot is well-within, 2nd/3rd are a bit trickier. I don't think that the woman necessarily intended to run him down but he was in a reasonable position of self defense. Main focus in my mind is how stupid and random it was for her to be in that spot in the first place, and finding it amusing how stuff like Ashli Babbitt's totally cleared as a fine shoot when IMO it was way less cut and dry than this one.
Agreed. Possibly ICE agents are trained that once they open fire they must keep shooting until the threat is eliminated.
If he had fired exactly once then virtually every single person being critical of the ICE agent would be treating it as positive proof that he didn't really fear for his life and this was just a deliberate murder.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This genre of statement is the epitome of "pretending not to understand, making discourse impossible." Nobody, anywhere, has ever argued that fleeing police or resisting arrest deserve a summary execution, but a lot of anti-police types love to pretend that this is the argument being made, ignoring the fact that in practically every single police killing, with extremely few exceptions, the suspect is doing something that threatens the officer's life, and that behavior is what justifies, not a summary execution, but an act of self-defense.
When the police decide to arrest you, they are now allowed to use whatever amount of force is necessary (but not more) to get you in handcuffs and into custody. You get to decide how much force that is! I repeat, how much force is required to bring you into custody is completely up to you! You can choose to turn around, put your hands behind your back, and have no force used against you at all! It astounds me, and I am completely unable to understand why, so many people apparently believe that choosing to require more force to bring you into custody is a legitimate choice that should be given more accommodation in society.
I agree, but that's kind of the point. To engage in a kind of shared lie / groupthink which makes the in-group morally superior while the outgroup supports evil.
More options
Context Copy link
I think lots of left-leaning folks want to imagine themselves as brave civil-rights protesters, standing up against the KKK and Bull Connor.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is a slight overreach. Let's take the time I ran from police IRL.
A week prior, I'd tried to kill myself with a knife. I got chucked in the looney bin, because that's what you do when someone's interrupted in a suicide attempt. I stopped being suicidal within days, but this meant I had another problem i.e. the fact that the looney bin had terrible security, and one of the other patients kept talking about how he was going to murder all the staff. I complained about the awful security, got brushed off, and successfully escaped all the way back to the house where I lived. 24 hours later, the police showed up, intending to return me; I ran, but was unable to outrun them and gave up. (After they hauled me all the way back - which was over 100km - I got released after 2 hours, because I pointed out to the psychiatrist that if I were still suicidal I'd had plenty of opportunity in the 24 hours I'd been loose; you'd think they'd have realised that without having to drag me all the way back there, but apparently boxes needed to be ticked or something.)
So, okay. Take that situation and make me a better runner, so that I could outrun the police. Is it warranted for the police to shoot me?
I'd say no, because there's literally nothing plausibly gained by doing so. I hadn't committed any crimes, or posed any threat to anyone besides myself - and shooting me would of course have put my life in much greater jeopardy than letting me escape. Assuming I was considered a suicide risk (leaving aside the reasonableness of that determination), I'd say the outcomes should be preferred in the order capture > escape > death, not capture > death > escape.
I think this extends up into some of the more minor crimes. If someone parks in a 2-hour parking zone for 3 hours, and drives away in a normal, non-dangerous fashion when an on-foot policeman approaches, I think it's not good for the policeman to pull out a gun and shoot him. Parking violations are not very serious, and the expense in money and lives of shooting the criminal (notably including innocents, because shooting the driver of a moving vehicle typically results in a crash) far exceeds the benefit of preventing him from possibly escaping justice, or even the deterrence value of getting X amount of other people to not park longer than permitted.
Certainly, for serious crimes like murder or even robbery, there's enough of a problem with a successful escape that the outcome preference should be capture > death > escape. And of course, the death or serious injury of a policeman or innocent ranks below any of these. But yeah, I'd call this sentence a bit stronger than warranted.
EDIT: Realised this was non-obvious, so: I was running into a public forest, hence "follow in car until exhausted" wouldn't have worked.
"We should look to interactions with the mentally unwell as a gauge for our evaluation of police conduct" is a hell of an argument.
And then an explicit recommendation against due process. Huh.
No one is making this argument. Not even implicitly. This is strawman and conflation dialed up to 10.
No? I said that capture (for trial) is better than death, and it's usually feasible.
StableOutlook made a very sweeping statement that we seem to agree was not literally true in all cases. I pulled him up on it. You don't want me to point out where there need to be asterisks, add the asterisks, or even an IOU for asterisks like "(mostly)", yourself.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, and zero people are arguing for this, and zero law enforcement organizations allow this. This is peak strawman.
This lady in Minneapolis wasn't shot for trying to escape. She got shot because she struck a police officer with her car. This is assault with a deadly weapon. Every single person in all 50 states is permitted to use lethal force to resist an assault with a deadly weapon. Including people who aren't police officers. Pretending that she was shot for merely escaping is also peak strawman.
I did no such thing. You made a broad statement that covered much-less-defensible cases, and I pulled you up on overbreadth (which I even called "slight"), while clarifying that serious injury of a policeman warrants deadly force.
/u/StableOutshoot said:
I don't see anything overbroad or less defensible here. Being charitable, I'm guessing you have a legitimate confusion as to what "necessary" means. The answer is that, per Tennessee v. Garner, they are not allowed to use deadly force against a fleeing suspect unless the suspect is a deadly threat to others. If they were to shoot a nonviolent suspect who posed no threat (like they did to Garner), that force would be considered unnecessary.
Do you still think /u/StableOutshoot's statement is an overreach?
No, I was just reading the word "whatever" literally. If you would escape if not shot dead, "whatever amount of force is necessary [...] to get you in handcuffs and into custody" is by construction "shoot you, and then handcuff the corpse".
I was reading that sentence as speaking normatively, as it was responding to a pair of normative statements*; you seem to be reading it descriptively. Normatively, it's objectionably bloodthirsty, which is why (as you say) it's descriptively false in most (all?) of the Western world (for the record, I'm Australian).
The word "whatever" is a very strong word, and frequently produces overbroad statements if used without qualification (a relevant qualification in this case would have been "sublethal"). It appears that @StableOutshoot did not intend to say what he said, and he has implicitly retracted it, resolving the issue.
*Notably, one of these was "fleeing police shouldn't be a death sentence"; hence, the escape scenario was already under discussion and I assumed he meant to address it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And the whole thing seems to have a snowball effect almost where misreporting of previous arrest encounters means that perpetrators are more stressed, less willing to just comply with the process and therefore lash out more... which directly leads to thornier situations.
In this case both parties are likely highly anxious to begin with, and it would not be a massive leap to think that the driver thought she was about to be taken to 'Alligator Alcatraz' or wherever for years of spontaneous unspecified detainment, on the basis of consistent distortion of what actually goes on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Did that happen in this case? All three angles are ambiguous, but it looks like he was off to the passenger side, she backed up and lined up with him, then she drove forwards and almost avoided him.
EDIT: nevermind. Fourth angle shows it better.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq98aqF794
This video is very helpful. He walked in front of the car while she was backing up and then stopped in front of the car just as she was backing up. She didn't line up with him. He suddenly stopped in front of her car. She probably didn't even know she was there because she would have been looking behind her, and then when she started to move forward, probably noticed him for the first time in a spot that was clear less than a second before. She then made a quick turn after initially starting off in her direction.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Classic noncentral fallacy. When you say "fleeing the police", the audience imagines an unarmed person running away, not a person trying to run over a policeman with a giant hunk of metal. Sure, fleeing the police alone should not result in deadly force, as it is not imminent danger to the policeman. "Fleeing" in form of ramming the policeman with the vehicle should elicit immediate deadly response, as it is a deadly threat. If you can not flee without threatening deadly harm to the policeman - well, you are fucked, do not flee, or try and eat the bullet. It doesn't even have to be the police - if you try to murder anybody with a vehicle, they have obvious right to self defense. The victim being the police just aggravates it, because the criminal must have known attacking the police is a crime - any sane adult does - and did it anyway.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq98aqF794
I think this video makes it pretty clear she was not trying to run him over.
It does nothing of the sort. And after this one: https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-new-video-shows-moment-ice-agent-was-rammed-by-renee-good-from-officers-pov it is pretty clear they were intent on confronting ICE officers - they clearly said so - and were not fleeing anything. You do not tell people "come at us!" when you are fleeing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's worth noting that even if she did not intend to kill or harm the officer, at a minimum (1) she was driving recklessly; and (2) attempting to flee the authorities. I don't know what the law is in Minnesota, but I think that in most jurisdictions if you are fleeing the authorities, drive recklessly in doing so, and kill someone in the process, you are guilty of murder, or at least some kind of aggravated homicide.
And, on top of that, the whole event was following at least two crimes already committed by her - intentionally impeding a law enforcement action (that's why she was there at the first place) and refusing to follow a legal order of a law enforcement officer.
Yeah, and that raises a whole other issue. As a democratic republic, we have a system in place to decide on our public policies. People vote for elected representatives and an executive who respectively make and enforce the law. In this case, congress has decided that it should be illegal for non-citizens to enter into (or stay in) the United States without a proper visa. And the president has decided to make a priority of enforcing the law.
Having lost at the ballot box, these activists have decided to play the role of the sore loser, breaking laws that are reasonable and fair and obstructing the enforcement of other laws that are reasonable and fair. Which isn't to say that what they are doing is per se immoral, just that society should not be overly accommodating of these sore loser types.
Interestingly, Leftists showed that they were aware of this principle when they repeatedly (and falsely) accused Kyle Rittenhouse of violating gun laws to show up at protest in Wisconsin with a semi-automatic rifle. And to the extent they have a point: A person who decides to take the law into his own hands and shows up aggravates an already tense situation had better be on his very best behavior. Which Kyle Rittenhouse was, but this Good woman was not.
I already see here leftists comparing Good to the American revolutionaries attacking the redcoats, so it looks like they do not see themselves bound by any social contract or agreements when they are on the losing site. If they win the elections, then it's "remember our democracy, you should submit to the will of people!" but if they lose, it's "we do not have to follow a bunch of Hitlers, we are the resistance!".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
From the videos, it seems implausible that the officer would have died if he had not shot her, though. It seems like the appropriate response is just to send her plates to the cops and arrest her for fleeing/reckless.
That may be, but from the officer's perspective, making a decision in about a quarter of a second, it may have reasonably seemed as though this woman posed a grave danger to him; to his fellow officers; and/or to the public at large.
I would say it depends on the officer's assessment of the level of danger she posed.
But we have the ability to assess the officer's assessment. In my view, something is going quite wrong if the officer assesses a currently unmoving car that he is standing not centered in front of as a potentially fatal threat.
Are you saying that he opened fire before the car started moving?
No, I am saying that has was positioned such that in the event the car did start moving, he could have easily moved out of the way, as indeed he did.
So you are saying that after the car started moving the officer knew that he could easily get out of the way?
More options
Context Copy link
How "easily" is that, when he still got hit? And that was with the ice on the road making the wheels spin in place for a while.
Also, are you sure you're not moving the goalposts? You said he assessed a "currently unmoving car" as a threat, when he didn't do anything until the car started moving.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is that the police can convert actual fleeing into threats to the police through their own actions, and then use the threat to justify killing the suspect. Police love to game the system.
She was an innocent insurrectionist who didn't do anything! Corrupt cops planted that SUV!
I just warned you, and I also banned @satanistgoblin for similar low-effort sarcastic sneering.
Your record is not as bad as his, but it's getting there. You at least have AAQCs as a mitigating factor, but I still think you need to go take a breather for a day. This case seems to be getting everyone amped up. Come back less emotional.
Ironically, that was one of the least heated posts I made in that 24hr span. My mood was tongue-in-cheek joking. "Cops planted that SUV" sounds like a Gun Rack line. Ah well, text and tone, name a less iconic duo.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Should the Bostonians have considered not throwing snowballs at the redcoats? Probably, but I would still cheer them on if I were there in person. The world sometimes need excessively brave and stupid people.
So, you are saying Renee Good is actually participating in a revolution against the government of the United States, with the purpose to violently overthrow it and establish a new one? I don't think the rest of the Left is going to agree to say it in the open, but if so, ok. Then I am not sure why you expect anything but a violent response - how do you think a violent revolution works? Either you seize the power or you get hanged (or shot), that's how the revolution works.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, they can't. They can remove the option of fleeing-without-conflict, but that's all. She chose to drive at the officer when she could've chosen to stop.
Are you going to claim that the police can convert a normal walk to the grocery store into assault on an officer through their own actions as well?
Just because they can't convert every situation into assault on an officer doesn't mean that they can't do it at all.
That wasn't my claim. I'm saying there's none, ever. Either the suspect chose to assault the officer by their own free will (constrained by the situation, of course), or there was nothing a reasonable person could have done and it wasn't a justified shooting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They can -- if you're fleeing they can literally run into your path and blame you (criminally) if you can't avoid them. That isn't, however, what happened here.
Have you ever heard of a situation where a driver was:
That seems completely backwards both for the elements of the offenses and the levels of proof required. Needless to say, I've never heard of it happening, and I'm having a hard time imagining it outside of cartoonish logic.
Yeah, Maryland cops used to step in front of vehicles to stop them for speeding. Some drivers got nailed for hitting them. I think they stopped the practice some years ago, for obvious reasons.
What's preventing good drivers from avoiding charges? As far as I can tell, the drivers can simply drive well and not get charged with anything.
I'm not seeing it. If you're going to blame the police for creating a speed trap that constrains how people can drive, then you might as well blame construction workers for creating a work zone for the same reason.
Good drivers can't drive the speed limit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean if you hit somebody with a car you are always gonna be at least in jeopardy for "failure to yield to pedestrians" or something -- if that someone is a cop it's probably more like "failure to stop when directed by an officer or whatnot" -- 50 Felonies a Day may be an exaggeration, but 50 Traffic Violations a day really isn't.
Then don't do that. Or if it's unavoidable, argue the point and easily win in court.
Um, yeah -- like, definitely you shouldn't run into people with your car! Don't do that, 100% agreed.
"Unavoidable" is a tricky thing in a car though -- if you didn't have time to avoid something in the road, maybe it's because you were driving too fast for road conditions; there are a lot of potential traffic laws you can break.
More options
Context Copy link
No win in court is easy for a civilian.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You more or less staked out my position, and the important point is that most situations involving self defense are hard to apply boilerplate to. Often each one is unique to itself. We saw this with Rittenhouse as well, his incredible trigger discipline rubbed some people as evidence that he was a madman, others recognized it as a display of calmness in chaos and good training. I am typically inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the person claiming self defense, not just police, but also to someone who's in the opposite situation, that of being a driver being surrounded by a mob of people. It is very difficult to re-create from video the real world tensions and feelings that were being generated. Was the lady actually trying to kill him? Probably only she, the officer, and maybe his partner have any real insight, and one of those 3 is dead.
There are of course corner cases. This is not one of them. If you have a police officer standing in front of your vehicle, you do not drive forward. In fact, you do not drive anywhere at all when the police officer is near your vehicle, until they clearly tell you you can go. But most of all, you do not drive forward when the said forward is occupied by the body of the police officer. Nothing unclear here. Just as nothing unclear was in Rittenhouse's case - the thugs clearly were about to inflict grave bodily harm (look up Andy Ngo if you want to see what happens when the victim is not armed), so self-defense is justified.
It does not matter. The concept of self-defense does not require psychic powers. You don't need to know what the attacker really thinks - you only need to know their actions would cause a reasonable person to fear for their life and bodily integrity. Having a car driving over you is certainly one of these things that would, whatever the driver might be thinking about at that moment.
I don't think anyone is disputing that she did something wrong. The problem is that the police officer a) created the dangerous situation by walking in front of her car while she was backing up then stopping right as she was about to start driving forward and b) pointlessly stood there and pulled out his gun, shooting her instead of getting out of the way. Self-defence has to at least be plausibly necessary to protect your life. And you can't claim self-defence if you're unnecessarily walking in front of moving vehicles in the middle of the road.
No he did not. Walking in front of you car does not represent any danger to you. And she should not be driving anywhere while the police instructs her to stop. You are fishing for excuses to justify the situation which she entered voluntarily, with clear intent to impede police work, and escalated voluntarily, operating heavy vehicle in immediate vicinity of people - while her "wife" is filming, so that was clearly intended to stir up some shit and get some propaganda pictures maybe. OK, she got what she wanted. And it's entirely, absolutely, 100% her fault - at any moment of it, starting from 12:01am that day and ending the moment she was shot, she could stop and exit the situation, and she would be alive and well. She constantly made the choices that drove her towards the ending that happened.
Do you really expect somebody to buy this? It's such a low-effort BS it's embarrassing. No, it wasn't a situation of a policeman just jumping into traffic on a random street. She knew why the officers were there, there were no "moving vehicles" except her and she drove there specifically and purposely to engage the officers. The police does not owe her - a criminal - the duty to run away from her. And in the situation she was in - vehicle stopped with people surrounding it - while she was in no immediate danger - moving the vehicle in a way that endangers the people is initiation of violence, thus justifying the response. That would be true even if she was not a criminal, intentionally confronting the police officers on duty, which she was.
Then why was he so afraid for his life that he shot and killed her?
That being true doesn't give the police the right to kill her. The police cannot kill you for disobeying them.
I did not justify anything that she did. It's possible for the police to encounter someone who is doing something unjustifiable and still not have the right to kill them.
Let's say that she had run over the police officer and we were arguing over whether that were justified. You could say the exact same thing about the police officers actions. He went against his training and did something stupid and walked in front of a moving vehicle and didn't get out of the way when it started moving towards him. Would that justify her actions just because he did something wrong?
No, it's possible for two people to both be doing things they shouldn't be doing and to both contribute to the outcome.
You need to watch the video taken from the front. He walked in front of the car while she was backing up. People don't look forward when they back up, so it's unlikely she saw him. Then he stopped in front of her just as she was about to start driving forward.
Even if she isn't allowed to drive away, the police officer legally cannot deliberately place himself in the path of her vehicle and then claim self-defence.
This is an absurdly loose definition of violence, but even initiation of actual violence doesn't justify killing someone in self-defence if it doesn't amount to an imminent threat of severe bodily harm, and driving wrecklessly does not rise to that level.
If the police encountered someone speeding on the highway, do you think they'd be justified in shooting the driver just beause they had "initiated violence" by endangering others?
Are you being purposely obtuse here? You know why - because she tried to run him over with her car. It's on video. It's had been mentioned in this discussion dosens of times. How anybody engaging in good faith in this discussion could not know that?
No, it can not. It can kill you for trying to kill them. And that's what happened. You are being purposely obtuse again by making it sound like only one second of the whole event happened and other events, immediately preceding and following it, did not, while you perfectly know they did.
It is possible, in theory. In this case, however, trying to kill a police officer with her car does justify the response. We are discussing a specific event, and you keep purposely ignoring the actual circumstances of the event, while making theoretical statements.
I think by this point it is clear you are not interested in discussing the particular event, but interested in extracting something like "since there could be a theoretical situation where police shooting would be wrong, the police can be wrong, therefore you just admitted the shooting is not justified!". I do not have any interest in this kind of discussion. When you are interested to discuss facts you may continue with somebody else.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't see why it matters that this person was supposedly a "police officer." I disagree with calling ICE employees police officers, but even if he was, that doesn't give him special privileges. If you surround someone's car aggressively, it's understandable for them to react in a self-preserving manner. Even if the arrest is justified, no human can be blamed for not wanting to be detained. Almost every video I've seen of someone being arrested, they resist at least a little bit at first. Nobody likes to be in captivity.
In the matters of self-defense, it does not matter much, the rules of imminent danger are for everybody (though police officers probably will get more leeway in court afterwards). It matters in the context - obstructing police officer is a crime. Refusing lawful orders of a police officer is a crime. Nothing in it justifies deadly force - since our legal system does not have summary in-situ execution as a criminal punishment - but it at least justifies an arrest. If the person being arrested resists with deadly force - then using deadly force in response becomes justified too.
I'll remember it for the next time the leftist rioters block the streets, I am sure you would unconditionally support running them over. However, self-preserving manner in case of encountering police officers - and here's where it is relevant - is stopping the car, shutting the engine down and following the orders of the police. If you need further instructions, there's a good video from an esteemed self-preservation expert named Chris Rock, who explains the details, look it up. Trying to run over police officers is not a good recipe for self-preservation.
A human can - and will be - blamed, and shot - for trying to achieve their desires by means of murdering other humans. Not "wanting" to be arrested is fine, trying to avoid being arrested by attacking a police officer with deadly force is very bad for your future life expectancy.
Stop watching videos of people being stupid. It is not good for you, as instead of intended effect - pointing at them, laughing and saying "that would teach me to never do that!" - you seem to arrive at the opposite conclusion - "resisting arrest is what everybody should do". Don't do that, it is bad for you. Even if you do not get shot, you certainly will not get any sympathy from the police and the court for that. Unless, of course, it is politically convenient for Democrats, then you'll get plenty. But it could be posthumously, so I do not recommend that at all.
If you don't do the crime, you don't do the time. If you do not want to be arrested, do not mess with police officers on duty.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My takes:
Almost certainly going to be called legally justified. She was accelerating her car towards him at close range; from his perspective (which is the one that matters for legal purposes) it was a clear deadly threat, plus he's a cop so he gets extra leeway for shooting people. If he was a civilian it'd be less clear cut, but I'm 95% sure it gets called legal and that's the call I'd make if i was on the jury, cop or not.
In retrospect an unnecessary shoot, you can tell by watching her wheels she wasn't trying to hit him though she did glance him. He could have probably jumped out of the way, but it'd be risky if she was trying to hit him. I don't think it's reasonable to expect cops to engage in that kind of self-risk to avoid shooting people, but I think cops should aspire to as a matter of personal virtue.
As almost always, she gets major culpability here for A)being in this situation in the first place B)not just complying C)Trying to flee in a way that could obviously be read as a deadly threat. DHS says she was attacking agents/their vehicles beforehand, idk if true but i'd bet it is; it's vanishingly unlikely this happens without her deliberately engaging against the agents. I'm not saying she deserved to die; I'm saying that she had numerous obvious off ramps from this situation she didn't take and therefore is significantly responsible for her own death. Sort of like a motorcyclist who's doing 100mph on a city street a tshirt and shorts who then has a car do an illegal U-turn in front of them, hits it, and dies: they might not be technically at fault for the specific accident but they're at fault for being in a situation where it could happen.
I think that the blue media and politicians are also majorly at fault here. They have been encouraging people to interfere with ICE, and encouraging people to interfere with law enforcement will almost inevitably get people hurt and killed. She got memed into this and died for it.
Approximately nobody is going to interpret this except through a maximally partisan lense. Our cold civil war gets a little hotter.
The car was already moving when decided to walk in front of it, stop and then pull out his gun. His decision to shoot her not only had no chance of actually protecting himself from being run over, it made increased the risk to himself because he could have just kept walking been out of the way. She almost certainly either didn't know he was there when she started driving forward or expected him to keep walking to her left and not suddenly stop in front of her just as she was about to take off.
This makes it all the more absurd that he decided to stand in front her car to try to stop her from leaving.
Has the just-released cell phone video of the interaction changed your mind about any of this?
It clearly contradicts what you said, e.g. "The car was already moving when decided to walk in front of it, stop and then pull out his gun."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is well said. I find it quite rare for people to make this distinction between what should be legal and what should be matters of personal virtue. I'd wager all the culture war battles talked about here could be profitably thought about through this lens.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not claiming to know exactly what legal standard applies in this case, but normally, when there's a threat, you have a duty to flee. You do not have the right to kill someone unless necessary to protect yourself from serious injury or death. The cop easily got out of the way and was just barely in the way to begin with. He was standing in front of the corner of the car. The car was not going fast enough to seriously injury him and the wheels were turned. She did not go straight forward. She was clearly trying to get away, not run him over. The cop fired a second time from the side when he was well clear of the car and there was no risk to anyone.
Given that the cop deliberately created a dangerous situation by standing in front of the car, I do think it is entirely reasonable for him to bear the responsibility of accurately determining the risk of the situation he put himself in.
She may bear responsibility for putting herself in that situation, but it's just a fact that death is far too severe a consequence for what is a fairly minor offence. The police should not be creating situations with people they know aren't likely to be cooperative where they're likely to do something the police are going to interpret as a sufficiently serious threat that they will respond to it with deadly force.
It does some seem like American police can get away with almost anything. They get a shocking level of deference. It seems like one of those cases where the cop was just looking for an excuse to kill someone.
The common attitude seems to be that if there is even the slightest risk to a police officer, the officer has the right to kill the person posing that risk. Many people, including me, think that killing someone should only be done when absolutely necessary, such as when severe injury or death is likely, not just a remote possibility, and that the police cannot both be unnecessarily contributing to the creation of a situation that is dangerous to them and be reacting to that danger with deadly force.
The cop had no reason to stand in front of that vehicle unless he was absolutely sure she would not run him over, and he should not have shot her unless he thought it was very likely that she would run him over. He should not be allowed to kill her for his lack of judgment, even if her own bad behaviour also contributed. Summary execution should not be the sentence for obstruction of justice unless absolutely necessary. The police are far too cavalier about ending people's lives.
One final point, shooting her accomplished absolutely nothing. After she was shot, the vehicle continued until it hit a parked car. If ending her life didn't even accomplish the goal of protecting the officer, what possible justification could there be?
This depends on the state. But even in states like Minnesota where you have a duty to retreat
It typically does not apply to police officers in the course of their duty
Fleeing has to be safely possible. Not likely to be the case when a car is aimed at you and accelerating towards you.
I don't know the law, but there must be some limits on what the police can do to put themselves into dangerous situations. For example, a police officer cannot leap into the path of a vehicle driving down the road and shoot the law-abiding driver. The only reason I can think of that the duty to flee would not apply to a police officer is that they must remain present to ensure the safety of others. Police are not supposed to stand in front of cars to try to stop them. I would be surprised if that didn't somehow undermine the self-defence argument. No part of what he did contributed to anyone's safety. Everyone would have been better off with him not in front of the vehicle. Shooting her didn't even help to stop the car. Had he remained in front of the car, he still would been hit.
Fleeing was safely possible. We know this because he safely fled, even after delaying his attempt to do so until the very last second, even leaning over the hood to ensure he got a good shot of her face. I can see how he might not have realized in the split second between the car moving and when he fired, but the car was not aimed at him nor accelerating towards him. It began aimed at him and turned away from him. He was clear of the car when he took his first shot.
This hasn't yet gotten a definitive answer from the courts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If the cop believed she was trying to run him over, then there is a risk it becomes iterative (ie she might reverse and try again)
More options
Context Copy link
"I don't know the legal standard that applies, so I'm going to introduce an entirely different standard (that also may or may not apply) premised on typical assumptions towards an atypical context" is certainly a take.
This is much less so, since it entirely depends on who 'you' are, and in what contexts. Just to take one, governments reserve the right to kill people who challenge their monopoly on legal violence, whether that challenger personally threatens a representative or not. And this does not go into the rights to kill people who are threatening other people, whether members of the public or other agents of the government, let alone matters of perception of threat.
Perception, in turn, is what many of the legal rights to kill in self-defense hinge on. Particularly the perception of 'you', the person who feels in danger, and not 'you', the person who does not.
Why do you believe* the cop 'easily' got out of the way, as opposed to 'nimbly' when a slight difference of balance or attention would have not gotten out of the way?
Moreover, why do you believe 'easily' matters at all? If you are conceeding the officer was in the way of an accelerating vehicle, it does not matter if the were 'barely' or not. Being in the way is a binary state- you either are, or you are not, and if so then it validates perception of threat.
*Aside from the framing bias effect of the slow-motion video formats going around, which is a format that is typically used to exagerate to the audience how much time was on hand to process events, and use that implication as an anchoring bias to shape future considerations?
Getting run over by a car can potentially seriously injur someone regardless of what part of the car does so. In turn, the wheels were turning multiple directions in the event, including in directions that would- by your own admission- put the officer in the way.
Why do you believe she was 'clearly' not trying to run him over, from his perspective?
Remember, perception matters in self defense and use of force. Even if 'you' would have clearly felt she was not trying to run 'you' over if you were in his position, that would merely mean it would be unjustified murder for 'you' to have shot her. It would not change that if 'he' perceived differently, it would merely be a justified self defense.
'I wouldn't have felt afraid for my life if I were in their position' is irrelevant even if true. Reasonable person standards for perception don't enable a veto even by a reasonable person, because reasonable people can disagree.
Why do you believe there was no perceived risk to anyone to people who just perceived risk to themselves?
You're missing the point. I'm trying to make it clear that I am not making a legal argument. I am arguing about what he should have done regardless of the law. I'm aware that the law gives undue deference to police officers in many situations and so I can make an argument about what should have happened that can be true even if what the cop did was legally defensible.
Obviously, that's why I prefaced my argument in the way that I did. It's useful to take as a starting point what an ordinary person would be required to do. I'm sure Minnesota law gives more leeway to police officers in this situation. They have certain responsibilities others don't. But it's useful to make explicit what those differences are to see if they apply in this situation, legally or morally. I don't think any of those responsibilities or any leeway the law might reasonably give the police should excuse what happened in this case.
Because he pushed things to the absolute limit, planting his feet while she backed up, drawing his gun when she started driving towards him, and then finally dodging the car at the very last moment as she reached him. He had ample room to manoeuvre and his decision to use it all shows how well he knew that.
The level of threat matters. His fellow police officers could snap at any second and shoot him in the head. Does that mean he should kill them all at the first opportunity? His wife could have a psychotic break and kill him in his sleep. Does he need to kill her first?
The probablity of something happening matters a great deal. The fact that he could easily get out of the way means that the threat was very low. He had the option to move out of the way. He did move out of the way before firing despite waiting before doing so.
I had only seen the video at full speed when I wrote the comment above. If he didn't have enough time to process things, he shouldn't have put himself in that situation. Many people are pointing out that this has happened a number of times to police officers already. If he is putting himself in front of the car to stop it, he must have some preconceived idea of how to handle this kind of situation. I think he had lots of time to make his decisions. It's also the nature of the job to make such quick decisions. Incompetence is not an excuse.
He was not at risk of being run over, and even if he had been, if it's so dangerous, what was he doing in front of the car in the first place?
I'm not sure where I admitted that. The wheels turned to the right immediately when she started forward.
Because she was making a sharp right turn.
Yes, but the perception has to be reasonable, and as a police officer who decided to stand in front of a vehicle to try to stop it, creating an uncertain and dangerous situation where he didn't know what the level of threat was, his ability to rely on that perception is severly undermined.
I'm not claiming a veto. I'm arguing what I think is reasonable.
I didn't say there was no perceived risk. I said there was no actual risk. I don't know why he would have thought there was at that point. If he perceived any risk, it would not have been reasonable and cannot be relied upon for a self-defence claim.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't the job of a cop creating dangerous situations? Their purpose is legalized kidnapping of persons suspected of a crime or of impeding public order.
I find this sentiment naive and disturbing in how widespread it is and how often it gets invoked by people complaining about police shootings. Enforcing any law, no matter how minor, will eventually end in a death if the person committing the crime is committed enough to not complying.
I read a joke once that every war is started by the defender; if they'd just rolled over and let the attacker take what they want, then there wouldn't have been a war (in case it wasn't clear, I'm agreeing with you).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Federal law enforcement don't have any duty to flee that I am familiar with, and in many circumstances law abiding Americans at large have no duty to retreat even if they are not serving in a law enforcement capacity. Furthermore, if there's a threat then serious injury or death is what is being threatened (unless it's like cyberbullying or something).
None of the above means that the shoot in question was necessarily a good one. But starting from wrong presuppositions about this sort of thing will make judging whether or not it was a good shoot harder.
I suspected that police might not have the same requirements as others, but there is a general principle still at work here which is that the police officer had other options available to him. He could easily and did easily got out of the way. He continued to shoot her after he was out of the way. This is a judgment call, but I really don't think it's reasonable for him to think she was trying to run him over in the first place. But even if she was, of his own safety is what he is worried about, getting out of the way is far more effective and better for all involved than standing his ground, pulling out his gun, firing at her and then stepping out of the way once she starts moving.
This is an absolutely bizarre thing to say given that she did, in fact, hit him.
It's hard to tell how much contact there was from the videos. But it looks like he leaned towards the car as she drove away and it brushed against him. He seemed perfectly fine afteward. That's not even him being run over, let alone her trying to do so. She turned her wheels pretty sharply to the right as soon as she started driving away, all while another officer was trying to open her door while her window was open. If she didn't execute this perfectly, she had a good excuse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps, but on the other hand if you thought someone was in the process of trying to kill you with a car you might be disinclined to give them them additional opportunities to do so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is that this is gamed into, “you’re allowed to flee the scene and be noncompliant with the police as long as you are reckless about it.
This can’t be the standard. It’s why folks start shouting “I can’t breathe!” as soon as a cop begins to apprehend them. They’ve been led to believe that they can summon incantations that supercede and neutralize the officers authority. If police cannot use force, they do not have the ability to control a scene and this will be abused the fuck. In fact this situation is almost certainly a result of her thinking that she had this very plot armor.
“If you try to flee, you will probably die” is probably a mindset that would result in less casualties
Could be, but the message that a whole segment of the population has absorbed is "if you are in the general vicinity of cops, you will probably die" (or at least "you will probably get beat up, and possibly die"), which doubles back to a status quo where taking your chances with escape is the lesser evil. That's why they flee in the first place.
And this is an insane and delusional lie. The people who push this lie have blood on their hands. Believing this lie is retarded and delusional, not brave and reasonable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's the price we pay by not giving the police the power to kill everyone who doesn't do what they say. You could say the same thing about someone who tries to flee in a way that is clearly not a threat in any way. The police do not have the legal right to kill people for disobedience.
It's not a big problem anyway because the police have the ability it catch criminals without threatening their lives.
This assertion would be big news to every police officer I know.
More options
Context Copy link
We can actually stop that pretty easily without paying the price of your method, which is a massive spike in murder, recklessness and violent crime.
Also, crazy that this needs to be specified, but "driving a car into a person" is not a standard example of "clearly not a threat in any way". People actually get hurt when they are hit by cars.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Police do not have a “duty to flee”.
Secondly: she turned the tires of her car TOWARDS the cop and if not for the ice that prevented her from getting traction, would have run right over him. He was actively being attacked. The analog here would be; she pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger, but it jammed.
Police should have more duties than the general public, not fewer. That's what we're paying them for. The threshold for a cop shooting someone in self-defense should be higher than a normal citizen.
How do you imagine this would work exactly? So a normal citizen sees a guy charging at him with a knife, then pulls out his gun and shoots the attacker. A cop... can't do that? What does the cop do instead? Just run away? Do you think this would lead to an ordered, civilized society?
Ideally yes, I would expect the cop to put in more effort to defend himself non-lethally. Cops are supposed to be professionals at this, so I expect more from them than a random person walking down the street. That's what we're paying them for.
How exactly do you expect the cop to defend himself non-lethally? Tasers and 40mm shotguns fail all the time to stop people who are charging at a cop. Do you expect him to just run away?
Well obviously some situations would require lethal force. All I said originally is that the standards should be higher for professionals than for random people minding their own business. I don't like the idea that police can provoke a somewhat violent response from a suspect and then use that as justification to use deadly force.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The cop was standing in front of the left side of the vehicle. She turned her wheels sharply to the right to go to his right.
The gun analogy is absurd. Guns are for killing people. Someone pointing a gun at you has a clear intention of killing you. Someone driving in your general direction is almost certainly not trying to injure you. You just happen to be possibly in their way.
Sure, but you left out the part where she was non-compliant and refusing to stop the car. She was not just some ordinary driver commuting from work.
That doesn't change the fact that she was clearly not trying to injure him. He should have known that she likely had no idea he was there when she started moving forward. He had just stopped there less than a second before while she was backing up.
Then when she started moving forward, he drew his gun, but she was well into her turn by the time he fired. His body was mostly out of the way and would have been completely out of the way had he not leaned forward and to the left to get onto the roof of the car. Even then, he was way off to the side. He got out of the way at the end with just a rotating motion, proving that his life was not at risk at that point. She also wasn't going that fast.
If he really thought she was trying to kill him, why did he stop in front of the car and why wouldn't she have just gone straight? Why would she have turned away?
"Not trying to injure him" and "had no idea he was there" does not comport. If I'm in the driver's seat of a car and there is a pedestrian in my blind spot, and I move the car such that I would hit them, but I don't know that they are there, do you think it matters that I wasn't trying to injure them? I think an analogous situation is if I am firing a gun with my eyes closed, or pointing the gun in a direction I can't see.
Why is he to blame for information he didn't know (that she didn't want to injure him), while she doesn't take any blame for information she didn't know (that he was standing there)? Especially when she was clearly being commanded to get out of the car.
As for the rest of your analysis, we are talking about a time frame of 1 second and humans are not expected to make perfect split-second decisions in such a short amount of time. See my reply here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Watch this video:
https://x.com/sarahiscensored/status/2009022817019572408
At the 0:06 mark, her wheels are pointed to the LEFT at the officer, and you see them spin out on the ice, because she hit the gas.
Just watch the video. It’s understandable to be mistaken with so much info flying around, but this fact is pretty cut and dry.
I've mostly been watching the full speed videos, so this is quite interesting. But I think it strengthens my argument. As the car backs up, he reaches for his gun, the second the wheel starts spinning, he begins to draw his weapon he also steps slight to his right and plants his foot. By the time his foot hits the ground, the car has started to move towards him and he points his gun at her. The car also starts turning its wheels to the right as soon as it starts moving forward.
Then he takes a second, bigger step to the right and it's hard to see what's going on because now the view is blocked by the other officer, but it looks like he's trying to keep his torso in the original position in order to keep his aim. So now he's leaning hard to his left with just his right foot outstretched to prepare to dodge the car. At some point around this time he also starts leaning over the hood. It also looks like his centre of mass is just at the left edge of the car, and only because he's leaning to his left to keep it there.
At this point, the car is turning sharply and is moments away from being totally clear of him. He pushes away with his left foot, clearing the car completely with the exception of his upper torso which just barely leaning on the hood the hood of the car as it turns sharply away. He's a moment away from losing sight of the windshield when he pulls the trigger and takes his first shot. There is a photo of the car's windshield that shows the bullet hole way off to the driver's side, meaning he had to have take the shot from the side of the car, not from the front. And from the video it does look like he had just cleared the car when he fired.
Then he's standing next to the driver's side door as the car is now driving away from him and he takes two more shots through the open driver's side window.
I really cannot see how anyone can defend the second and third shots because the car is clearly driving away from him at that point and he is no longer even in front of the car.
The first shot is debateable. The car is in front of him, but just barely, and by that point, it's clearly in the middle of turning away from. He avoids with a small twisting motion pulling his left leg out of the way. He had already begun to move out of the way and was only still in front of the car because he was leaning to the left to get a clear shot of the driver. But this all happened very quickly. Just before this, the car was aimed at him and it might not have been clear what it was about to do.
Still, I think he had lots of time to move out of the way. Pulling out his gun and shooting her was pointless and accomplished nothing but killing her. It did not protect him from the car. He could have used that time to get out of the way, but he focused on drawing his weapon and trying to get a shot. He also shouldn't have been standing there in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
Indeed, if she hadn’t hit the ice, she would have hit the ICE. So to speak.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't get it. It looks like the wheels turn to the right before she starts moving forward. Clearly trying to avoid the ICE agent. Or is the first part of the clip reversed or something?
In Minnesota in January the roads are covered with ice, which is very slippery. Watch the wheels of the car when the tires are turned to the left, the tires move, but the car stays stationary. That's because she is on ice. She is trying to move the car forward, but failing because she isn't getting enough traction between the tires and the ice.
Presumably they salt them so that they are not normally covered in ice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of disingenuousness around this. Yes, cars move. There is literally no way to move a car other than to "accelerate" it. The car in question went from stationary, to moving - it might have even hit 7 mph. A stationary car will also "accelerate" "at you" if you stand in front of it when it starts.
The point is that if you're a cop and someone starts driving their car at you at close range while you're trying to arrest them it's very reasonable to assume they might be trying to run you over, and that is a textbook deadly threat that warrants deadly force in response.
Yes, and you should not do these things when there is a cop (or anybody else) standing right in front of your car because you could kill them.
I find this attempt to lawyer the fine points of what happened to ultimately justify it wrong headed. It was wrong before it started, this situation should have never happened in the first place and desperately trying to rules lawyer down to the second obfuscates that. There are so many dangerous incompetences and failures of legitimate governances and good police work from the start, that are not remotely justified. That said:
No. Again, you try to hide from the fact that a car went to stationary to pulling out (after ICE decided to randomly start assaulting the woman). That's not fast, and it's in fact it's texbook running away from a high pressure situation (which ICE caused) because you're scared. If he didn't sidestep, he was at risk of maybe getting his foot run over and breaking it or getting a bruise on his side. If you reeeealy stretch maybe she could have actually killed him by getting him pinned over the wheel and drive over him repeatedly. I do think if a parked car started in front of you and started pulling out your adrenaline would spike (this is probably key), but I don't think it's all that super dangerous or hard to sidestep, which is what he did.
And no, it does not "warrant deadly force." Why would shooting a car help, if you thought it was coming right for you? It might work, but it might make the situation worse. Unless the car is far away from you and you can dodge it easily anyway, look a movie showdown, shooting a car to kill is objectively the wrong thing to do. You shoot someone in a car you don't want to get away or to have vengeance on, not to control and stop a car. The best you can say is that the ICE agent was stupid and didn't think in the split second. But it's not the right response for self defense pragmatically, let alone morally justified.
""""Cops"""" should not be able to create I-get-to-murder-for-free situations for anyone they don't like in a car, where they get to declare a car a "lethal weapon" in a non falsifiable blanket statement. A car is actually rarely a deadly weapon. And there should be expectation and standards of behavior and bravery for cops. Being hyped, jumpy, or feeling subjectively scared is not the same as being actually dangerously threatened (which is different than being threatened unilaterally in a situation you can do nothing about and didn't cause). People that can't handle that or tell the difference shouldn't have been allowed to touch a gun or be given the imperium of the state monopoly on violence, especially against citizens.
The law doesn't hold use of force to the standard of "it has to actually stop the threat." A good guy drawing his gun on a bad guy has no guarantee of being able to stop the bad guy, but we still recognize that the good guy has the legal and moral right to draw his gun. Is it a bad idea tactically? Maybe (e.g. drawing from the drop), but that doesn't mean the good guy loses the claim to self-defense if he does end up doing it.
Regarding who caused what, when the ICE agent stands near her car, he's standing off to the side and it's not at all clear that he's initially in the path of the vehicle were it to start moving forward. Only when she starts moving the car and turns the wheels does he end up being in the way. Again, this all happened in the span of a second so it's hard to see how he exactly was the instigator of the situation. The best thing for her to have done would have been to sit still and not move the car at all, because suspects do not have the right to flee from police.
Why the excessive levels of quotation? ICE are legitimate law enforcement with the authorities and abilities of any law enforcement agency.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think your points 3 and 4 need to be the most important part here, but nobody is going to pay any attention to them (in the broader political conversation).
The media, social media, and legislative environment are pushing people into uncontrolled interactions with the police that make "bad" and "accidental" interactions nearly inevitable.
Uncontrolled interaction with potentially violent individuals (accidental or otherwise) is an incredibly hard task to manage safely, add death threats, actual assassination attempts, and nearby braying crowds and it becomes essentially impossible to do the job without bad shit happening. It's only a matter of time, and time ran out.
If you don't want people to get shot by ICE stop encouraging your voting base/viewers to do shit that's going to get them shot by ICE.
"Is law enforcement justified in whatever violent action they took" is a different question than "did you encourage these people to do shit that got people killed."
I am tired of commentariat and the general political conversation ignoring this part of the equation.
Showing up to police action and making the scene uncontrolled and dramatically increasing the likelihood of bad outcomes is not ethical protesting and is ineffective protesting unless you accidentally martyr someone in the "right" way.
All of this also applies to inner city policing and the other hot button topics.
It’s also turned me into a fascists. If we are still a Democracy and one side wins on dealing with migration as a key election issue then I expect the other side to live with that election. If they instead attempt to obstruct the police action that was voted on with street thugs then why should I continue to back our Democracy. If it’s a street fight then I’ll back our brown shirts. It doesn’t seem like we are a nation of laws anymore.
I already think we have too many checks and balances in our system. And it’s causing a lot of voter frustration with getting things done on both sides. In a Democracy elections must have consequences. The lefts adoption of street violence when they lose is unacceptable. So yes I voted for ICE deportations. Majority of Americans did too.
If the left doesn’t want this then they can post on twitter and try to change minds. Then try to vote in a new government. I care less about the specifics of this case but the broader field of play where obstructing the police is an acceptable political tactic now.
More options
Context Copy link
One of the things that really stood out to me about BLM is that the focus was ostensibly on preventing police killings of black people, but absolutely nobody involved in the movement was saying "We want you to live, so stop resisting arrest. If you comply with the cops they will not shoot you." That advice alone would prevent 99.99% of all police shootings, but that was absolutely not part of the BLM messaging, and that's one of the things that made me realize BLM wasn't about what was on the tin.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is exactly the kind of situation I was afraid of when ICE started running amok in states where they aren't wanted. I don't see how it can be a "narrative" when we point out that the thing happened that we warned would happen. Giving a paramilitary organization the power to make people disappear without due process was always a recipe for disaster. These ICE agents now appear to be so power-drunk that they are shooting unarmed white women, something normal cops very rarely do.
From what I can see in the video, the ICE agent chose to put himself in front of the SUV to block the woman from leaving. Then she called his bluff and began driving anyway. At that point, shooting her made no difference in his ability to survive the situation. Even if she were killed instantly by a headshot, the car would still have the same amount of momentum when it hit the officer. If anything, he could have gotten out of the way faster if he weren't dealing with his gun. I don't see any justification here.
If a police officer is trying to arrest you, then trying to run away is not "calling his bluff", it is "resisting arrest".
What the legal status of an ICE agent vis-à-vis law enforcement is, I don't know. It may be that they are not the same as cops and don't have the right to arrest anyone.
But you don't get to turn up at a protest, yell at people doing their jobs, then try to get away after drawing attention to yourself and make yourself a target for arrest, and claim "I was only trying to leave peacefully!"
They have the right, by statute, to arrest anyone committing a Federal offense in their presence. Blocking them from doing their duty is a Federal offense, and they had at least reasonable suspicion (which would be the appropriate legal standard to temporarily detain her, though an actual arrest would take more) she was doing that.
What federal offence was she committing?
Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees?
Do we actually know that? What specifically was she accused of doing?
What do you mean "do we actually know that"? She's dead, so I doubt they'll be pressing any charges, and I can't read minds over video, so I don't know what was going through their head when they decided to arrest her.
You asked what federal offense was she committing, and I gave you a link to a specific law that the situation seems to fall under under. Do you disagree? If not, how the hell was that an insufficient answer?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thankfully, someone made a helpful FAQ:
There is a ton of misinformation going around right now - that ICE has no real authority, that they can't touch a US Citizen, etc etc. It's all lies, and these lies possibly contributed to this woman's death. People are acting reckless with ICE because they don't think ICE can react the same way police can. They can and will.
More options
Context Copy link
These histrionics are embarrassing.
A more neutral and truthful way to describe was ICE does is "arrest and deport illegal immigrants in accordance with existing law." They're not a paramilitary organization, they don't "disappear" people, and deportees get all the due process they are afforded by US law.
There have been many cases of illegal immigrants deported without a hearing to CECOT. They were not just deported to El Salvador and then once out of U.S. jurisdiction, imprisoned by the El Salvador government. The U.S. government arranged for them to be imprisoned there, in many cases without them even being citizens or residents of El Salvador.
It's hard to see how that does not violate the due process they are afforded by U.S. law. I don't think U.S. law allows people to be imprisoned without being charged and to be sentenced without
There have also been cases of legal immigrants held in detention camps for weeks without charge, without being given the opportunity to contact anyone, and without their families being told what happened to them. This has happened to tourists from Western countries.
This is a violation of habeas corpus and it violates the 14th amendment's due process clause.
Any links to these cases?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/venezuelan-brother-deported-el-salvador-family-looking-rcna202279
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration-jasmine-mooney
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They sometimes deport legal immigrants not in accordance with the law though.
Do they? How often? Based on what I see, it happens virtually never and leftists are just straight up lying about it for dramatic effect.
I don't know how often. But I've read about it a few times in the news.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/supreme-court-kilmar-abrego-garcia-1.7507521
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/venezuelan-brother-deported-el-salvador-family-looking-rcna202279
There are more, but these are the two I remember best.
Neither of the cases you posted involved legal immigrants.
The first one had a court order preventing his deportation. The second one was invited into the country to attend an immigration hearing.
Neither was a legal immigrant.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure, I'll grant the premise. In that case you might say "deporting people in contravention of the law." They still aren't "disappearing" people.
If they arrest someone and don't bring them before a judge upon request as they are legally required to do and don't allow them to contact anyone on the outside and don't tell their family members where they are when asked, that is disappearing people, even if they eventually show up again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It clearly wasn’t a bluff. As I said to another poster, “you’re allowed to obstruct and then flee as long as you’re reckless about it” is not a stable status quo. “Resisting arrest and ignoring the authority of detaining officers will get you shot”, is.
Complying with the police is how you stay alive and fleeing the scene / believing your car is “base” that you are allowed to plow forward is how you get shot. I can’t comprehend how it could be any other way. It’s the very belief that you are allowed to flee that is creating these outcomes.
I mean, I don't really agree with either person's decision-making here. I wouldn't have stepped in front of a running car as means of "stopping" it. I also wouldn't have tried to drive away if I were being arrested. And if I was standing in front of a moving car, I would prioritize jumping out of the way rather than shooting the driver, given how newtonian mechanics work.
So I agree that this woman's poor decisions got her shot, but that doesn't necessarily mean the officer is innocent. At best, he made a blunder that put himself in a position where he "needed" to use deadly force. But I think even that is debatable, because shooting the driver really has nothing to do with why he survived. He survived because he got out of the way of the car. He essentially shot the driver to stop her from escaping, which is questionable.
More options
Context Copy link
Not immediately executing someone for doing something is not the same as allowing them to do it.
How it could be any other way is that the police don't stand in front of vehicles to try to stop them from driving away and if they drive away against police orders, they can use a number of other safe techniques for pursuing and arresting them. Standing in front of cars and shooting the drivers is way down the list of preferred options for stopping vehicles and was easily avoidable in this situation.
Okay. Let’s say they let her go and then go arrest her later at her house. Can they use force to arrest her there? What if she resists? What if she runs away? Is force / obstruction never permitted?
If it is permitted, then we need to explain why it was impermissible here
I didn't say force was impermissible here. I said killing her was impermissible. He wasn't trying to use force to arrest her. He shot her in order to kill her.
On what grounds do you assert this? He shot to stop the threat. Once the threat was over, he stopped shooting. If he for example had waited a bit and then fired (unjustified) shots later, it would be a clear indicator of murderous intent, but that's not what happened. Once deadly force is authorized, you are allowed to keep using it until the threat has passed. Whatever consequences result from your use of force is not something to care about in the moment (although police are trained to render first aid once the suspect is in custody).
That might have been the intent, but it was unreasonable because it could not have stopped the threat.
No, he didn't. He fired two shots from the side of the car when he was completely clear of its path and it was moving away from him.
But it never was authorized and he continued after the threat was passed.
Reasonableness applies to whether it was reasonable to believe that she was a deadly threat at that particular moment, and it is applied to whether the response was proportional (e.g. you cannot shoot someone who merely pepper-sprayed you), but at no point has it ever been applied to whether it could have stopped the threat. Even in a gun-on-gun situation it is not guaranteed that a gun will stop the threat. See my other reply here.
As for the rest, we are talking about a time frame of 1 second and humans are not expected to make perfect split-second decisions in such a short time frame. See my other reply here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, that effectively makes being in a car a get out of jail free card, especially if they haven't identified you yet, if the car is stolen, or the plates aren't visible etc. People learning to not be retards who try and run from cops (and who fight it in court if it's legitimately a wrongful arrest or whatever) is the only option that will lead to a stable society.
The car wasn't stolen and the plates weren't hidden. But even if they had been, why wouldn't it better for the police to simply pursue the car, stop it, pull her out, and arrest her normally? This is done all the time. What about that causes society to be unstable? It's not a get out of jail free card. It's just dealing with the situation in a way that is unnecessarily harmful to the suspect.
Because car chases put the general public in danger. I'd much rather cops just blast people like this then let them put the public at risk.
Then they shouldn't do a car chase. They have many options. I think this is absurd trade off to make. The probability of someone getting hurt if they just arrest in a her a normal way is absolutely miniscule compared to the guaranteed harm of shooting her to death. Sure, if you put a sufficiently low value on the lives of people who are committing minor crimes, you can justify any level of police brutality, but that's not a reasonable basis on which to make an argument.
They were trying to arrest her in a normal way, she chose to flee instead. I really don't know how else to explain this to you. If we implemented your (and apparently many leftists') ideals for policing, the clearance rate for all crimes would drop somewhere between 90 to 99%. I'm not exaggerating here.
I'd be willing to let that happen, in exchange for citizens being allowed to blow away criminals without fear of prosecution. But I doubt that's a deal the left would be willing to make. So no, I'm not going to stand by and let the left undermine essential rules and tools for being able to maintain public order.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I like the idea of anarchotyranny in which distance running is the preferred method of determining guilt. Eliud Kipchoge would be the CEO of every company in a dicey situation and simply outrun white collar prosecution.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Getting in front of the car with a gun is obviously not safe, but nor is a potential high-speed chase or armed standoff at the suspect's destination, both of which often happen in scenarios where the guy gets away (obviously, the last one is much less likely from a liberal woman activist, but happens often enough with regular criminals). To forestall the inevitable, I'm reading your post as making a general point about police work, and I think that training and mindset are relevant to this because it's a matter of split-second decisions, and police work is not generally about dealing with nice liberal women, it's generally about dealing with questionably-sane and questionably-armed people with nothing to lose.
If the choice is between a potential armed standoff where someone might be killed (and almost certainly won't be) and definitely killing her, definitely killing her seems like the much worse choice. It has the added benefit of not forcing a split-second decision. Remember, we're talking about someone who it appears didn't do anything other than block a lane of traffic. Would an armed standoff have been worth doing to arrest her? I don't see why they can't charge her and just wait until there is a safe opportunity to arrest her. It doesn't have to be immediate. It doesn't have to be that day or that week. Nothing about this was so serious and urgent that anyone's life had to be put at risk. This wasn't a live shooter, it was a middle-aged woman blocking a lane on a quiet residential street.
OK, I see the second sentence wasn't clear enough for you. In these high-pressure situations, you should expect officers to be running off their training and previous experience, and their training is about minimizing risks to themselves and the public across a wide set of situations, many of which are more serious threats than some lady in a car (in fact, the officer had previously been hit and dragged by a suspect in a vehicle). I'll also note that, generally, and though it's off-frame in the shooting videos, a protest in the middle of a residential street generally makes it less "quiet" at the time.
Shooting her didn't minimize the risk to themselves and to the public. It increased it dramatically (evidenced by the fact that it resulted in someone's death). Police, including ICE, are specifically trained not to do this.
I didn't know there was any protest going on. I didn't see that in any of the videos. But that just strengthens my point which is that she was not really blocking traffic, making her offence less serious.
This is all a bit moot now that we have bodycam footage showing that the officer was walking across the front of the car to get to the other side, and the driver looked straight at the officer while accelerating. I assume that "don't ever walk across the front of a car in case they suddenly try to run you over/knock you out of the way" isn't something we can realistically ask of police.
What does this even mean? Police are trained not to shoot people? Yes, they're trained not to shoot people outside of particular circumstances where that person is posing a danger to others, which she was. Your previous argument was that the officer unnecessarily put her in a position to cause that danger.
The protest (news reporting on this seems terrible, but seems like a spontaneous thing in response to an ICE arrest) was down the road and she was blocking one of the routes out. It's not "blocking traffic" like some highway sit-in, it's trying to block the officers' route out of the protest. Standing in front of the car or not, they had every right and reason to either get her to move or to detain her on the spot.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Words have meanings. ICE is not a paramilitary, they're a law enforcement organization, regardless of whether you approve of the laws they enforce or the ways they enforce them. They are also not "making people disappear without due process." They are sending people back to their home countries. There is nothing illegal or evil about doing this, there is barely a square inch on the entire planet where you will not be deported if you do not have a citizenship or a valid visa. America is the only major country on the planet where people think that basic immigration enforcement is evil.
What you are describing is called "attempted murder of a police officer" and it's kind of a big deal. People are allowed to try to prevent their own murder. Whether or not you, in hindsight, from the comfort of your keyboard, are able to see a way that the outcome could have been different, does not make it less legally justified because the law in its wisdom does not require the victims of crimes to be omniscient when they are deciding how to defend themselves.
This strikes me as a motte and bailey - what does "basic immigration enforcement" mean? I don't object to deporting people. I object to grabbing them off the streets without warning. It's the difference between serving an eviction notice to a tenant-turned-squatter, and physically throwing them out without even letting them grab their stuff. The latter is inhumane behavior even in cases where a normal eviction notice would be legitimate and justified.
Now, maybe you want to argue that illegals are too good at evading detection, so that if immigration officers simply presented them with an order to leave within 10 days, they'd simply skip town while staying in the country - making immediate arrest the only viable recourse. Last time I got into this on this forum, we got quite deep in the weeds of this question. But even if I were to grant that the current circumstances demand these extraordinary measures, extraordinary measures is what they are, and describing them as "making people disappear" is not an unfair characterization.
The scope of the issue at this point is essentially intractable. The 'brutality' of ICE is partly a calculated effort to change the vibe enough to encourage more self-deportation of illegal immigrants.
I live in a SEA country with roughly 20-30% of the population allegedly made of illegal immigrants from neighboring poorer countries. I see immigration checkpoints and forced deportation of illegals fairly frequently, yet nobody external to this country cares too much about it. Obviously the lack of birthright citizenship in this country means there's far less issues with 'wait one of the 20 people we caught with no paperwork, minimal English and in a sketchy workplace situation was actually born here, MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION' that abounds in the West. The vast majority of people with the resources to make it to the USA are facing a low-moderate decrease in living standards from being removed, they're not being sent to Mordor or 'disappeared'
This is fair, and worth repeating. But my primary concern is not with the long-term decrease in living standards once they're back home - my concern is with the inordinate amount of suffering involved in grabbing someone from their home without letting them pack their bags, say goodbye to their neighbors and coworkers, figure out what to do about pets, take a last stroll around the neighborhood that was their home for [X] years, etc. It's the difference between having to move, and having your house burn down. That (and of course the threat of violence during the raids themselves) is what I referred to as "brutal". That is what strikes me as being in violation of the Golden Rule, as being unkind, cruel, inhumane about ICE raids. Not the end goal of sending the illegals back to their country of origin.
Nothing can convince me that a not-otherwise-criminal illegal immigrant morally "deserves" that kind of treatment. You can make a pragmatic argument that, in practice, this is the only way to ensure they are deported at all, because they would otherwise vanish into the night the moment the officers' eyes are off them. But that just begs the question of how we got to that situation. It should not be beyond the state's capacity to "tag" an individual once identified by law enforcement, such that if they have not left the borders within [X] days they can instantly be tracked down and arrested. I'm taking ankle monitors, hell, maybe daily check-ins of some sort. Just something so that no human being has to suffer the inordinate stress and grief of being torn from their home literally overnight without the chance to put their affairs in order - an amount of suffering which is totally out of proportion with the very diffuse amount of harm that any given not-otherwise-criminal illegal immigrant causes by their continued presence in a host country.
I seriously do not comprehend this level of bleeding heart. If you sneak into a country illegally it comes with the territory that the life you build there will be precarious and liable to be snatched away at a moment’s notice. If we let people pack up all their possessions and move at their leisure then we are imposing no penalty on them, there would be no deterrence. There should be a degree of fear associated with living in a country illegally, ideally this will make some number self deport.
I suppose part of it is that think of illegal-immigrant status - particularly for people who outstayed a visa, rather than coming in illegally - as… well, not not a big deal exactly, but not the kind of thing that prima facie justifies any kind of retaliatory violence. Outstaying a visa seems more comparable to filing your taxes wrong than driving without a license, and still more similar to driving without a license than to drug trafficking. It's the kind of rule-breaking where if a critical mass of people do it at a time, it begins to harm the country in aggregate, so obviously the government takes measures to prevent it - but where a given rule-breaker isn't much more morally culpable than a jaywalker or someone who forgets a stray $50 on their tax reports.
To put it another way, I recognize at a rational, central-planning level that there must be limits on immigration, but I don't feel any personal animus against someone who circumvents those limits on the margins. My gut reaction isn't "this is an evil thing to do", it's "well, that seems a bit selfish in the grand scheme of things, a more virtuous person would think about the big picture and refrain from adding another straw to the camel's back… but eh, it is not given to just anybody to instinctively think like a central planner about the diffuse economic effects of excess untaxable unskilled labor, this is just some poor shmuck cutting corners and were I in their circumstances I might have taken the same leap". By all means we should try and take broad-level measures so that the opportunities for ignoring the rules close, but, as much as is possible, we shouldn't take this out on the actual human beings involved, who aren't doing anything that emotionally resonates with me as egregiously "immoral".
All of which being said, I'm also just a strong believer in kindness/charity/the Golden Rule. Even in cases where my gut reaction to a crime is disgust or resentment (and there are such crimes, illegal immigration just isn't among them), my higher conscience still generally tells me that to the extent that such a thing can be achieved while still suitably deterring further crimes of the same type, the individuals at issue should still be treated as well as possible - should still be given as much of a shot at happiness as possible without putting innocents at a disadvantage. Presumably your underlying moral principles differ somewhat.
I think ICE is using barbaric tactics and if we were serious about this whole get rid of the illegal immigrants thing we'd have passed Verify and mostly avoided the theatrics. But this view just seems so strangely naive. They didn't make a mistake on their tax, in the metaphor they've just decided that they're not going to pay taxes. They're blatantly and intentionally defying their host country's right to decide who is within their borders. I wouldn't feel like I was doing an oopsie if I decided to violate the borders and laws of my host country. The idea that they need to be served individual papers to be informed that their evicted is baffling, those papers were posted on whatever port of entry they came through. The time to say goodbye to their neighbors was before their stay became illegal. If this was them accidentally missing a renewal or thinking their stay ended next week rather than this week and it was all a clerical error then I could see what you mean but that's not what is happening. These are people who have been here for years and years after their legal status ended if they had one to begin with.
More options
Context Copy link
Recent experience says that you can't have both of these. Because this makes you subject to the very attack that has caused these sorts of ICE shenanigans and the general polarization around immigration: anyone who knows you're squeamish in this way can exploit it by refusing to enforce immigration laws on a local level and then hammer your empathy when someone from ICE finally gets that guy who's slipped past for a half-decade.
At which point, you'll be put in a position to pick a side and end up like everyone else.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They had literal years, decades even, to do this. How much time is enough?
I'd rather them prosecute the traffickers directly, but "daring to remove trafficked humans" might legitimately be the most punishment for the pro-trafficking faction that the anti-trafficking faction can muster.
Quoting myself from elsewhere in the thread:
Sure, but what actually happened here was half the country going "here's a free plane ticket, come on in, we'll never enforce this law, and you should ignore it- the guard may personally tell you you're in violation but he can't do anything, don't worry".
The guard now has the power to enforce the law, and has proceeded to do that.
As the reply to you states, a good chunk of these are already in the "this is the time you have to pack your bags and say goodbye" stage. For the ones that have not, they've been on notice since January 2025 when some official got on TV and said the guard's power was coming back, and literally half the nation (and statistically, where the trafficked humans are most likely to live) went into hysterics about "the guard is finally removing people".
Killing enemy soldiers is not breaking Golden Rule.
It might not be their fault they were there, but I'm not actually owed special protection from things that are not my fault, and trying to force me to grant it is an injury much like removing trafficked humans is to you. You could have bargained to change that law, and compromised with me, but you didn't do that. So, by
Golden RuleYour Rules, Fairly...More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When Pinochet "made people disappear" in Chile, they had cement blocks tied to their feet and were thrown into the Pacific Ocean from a helicopter. Then the government never acknowledged that this happened.
These death flights have been used by proper dictators to "make people disappear" all over the world. The Trump method of "disappearing" people is very different, and using the same word to describe them is an obvious motte-and-baily.
Physically removed, so to speak.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Your second paragraph would be my argument against your first.
The thing I would add is that the Trump administration has offered a free plane ticket to anywhere plus thousands of dollars to anyone willing to self-deport. That was their opportunity to pack their stuff and arrange an orderly return to their home country. Everybody who is still here, is here because they rejected that opportunity. To go back to the tenant analogy - you served them an eviction notice, that was their chance to pack up their stuff and move out in an orderly fashion. If they keep staying, virtually nobody disagrees that it's legitimate to have the sheriff show up and physically remove them and their possessions.
I don't think human psychology is such that a mass message of this kind is fungible with a personal "you, yes you, we know who and where you are - you need to scram" notification, for much the same reason that a big sign that says 'don't step on the grass' is not as effective as a guard personally yelling 'hey, you, with the ugly sweater, get off the grass' - even though, in the latter case, many more people will comply with the verbal command than escalate to physical violence. We can wish human behavior were more rational, but you've got to work with what you've got.
Regardless, I must once again return to a key point: it was not my intent to get into a debate about the practical merits of the "brutal" measures. Maybe they are necessary! Maybe they are morally justifiable! But that still leaves them quite different from "basic immigration enforcement".
Does the notice to them need to be in triplicate?
They know they are here illegal. They know there is a concerted effort to get them to leave. They could easily google and understand they will be treated nicely if they self deport.
More options
Context Copy link
A bunch of the people I've seen who have been deported have literally had multiple court days along the way in which they've been told to leave the country due to being unable to renew the visas, yet remained. The majority of the illegal immigrants aren't brought in via coyotes without ever encountering the system at all. They're just overstayers who've likely received explicit communications to leave.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Certainly these are different things, and I support both.
More options
Context Copy link
We've literally spent a year telling everyone that the party is over and it's time to leave, and offering them thousands of dollars if they just go willingly. You're the one doing a motte-and-bailey - "warning" in practice means a decade of catch and release, ignored court appointments and endless illegitimate appeals.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
America is also the only country on the planet that protects free speech and the right to bear arms. Maybe I'll care what those other countries are doing when they've established basic freedoms.
And maybe she was trying to prevent her own murder as well? She just saw a group of masked thugs surrounding her car. How could she know it was safe to surrender to them?
Switzerland?
I don't think free speech in Switzerland is quite as expansive as in the US, and they have a few exceptions for incitement or hate speech, which I oppose. But the US does have a few exceptions as well, and in the most part I think they're fairly solid. I do respect the US for their ongoing and steadfast refusal to recognise 'hate speech' as a valid concept, but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it's the only country on the planet with free speech.
More options
Context Copy link
Do you think that it's a "basic freedom" to be allowed to live anywhere you want without citizenship or a visa? Nowhere in the world is this considered a right, not even in the USA.
Don't be disingenuous. She knew they were ICE because that's the entire reason she was blocking them with her car.
Not necessarily. I'm just saying that I'm not convinced by the "other countries do it" argument. The question we should be asking is, what have we done so right that we're arguably the only country on earth with basic freedoms? I think our skepticism of federal authority has a lot to do with that. It's hard to enforce draconian immigration policies without infringing on our freedoms. In any situation where we have to choose between freedom and safety, we err on the side of freedom. I think a few people being murdered by illegal immigrants is a small price to pay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Minnesota doesn’t get to decide to take all of the benefits of membership in the United States and then just blatantly ignore our laws. They doubly don’t get to do that after facilitating the theft of billions of dollars in federal aid.
well I don't care about minnesota, but in my state we need our illegals to pick crops. It's really that simple. If Trump actually deports them all it will be a major economic blow, and we have the right to maintain our way of life and our livelihoods. The US is meant to be a loose confederation of states that each run themselves how they see fit.
If your economy depends on a caste of slave laborers to function, perhaps it deserves the major economic blow and restructuring that comes with removing said caste from service.
How are they "slave laborers"? They can leave or quit their jobs any time they want.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
100% in agreement, which is why Trump’s not bothering with agriculture.
More options
Context Copy link
Look if you want to go back to pre antebellum understanding of the constitution and change the United States is to are then sure. Let’s do it. But that applies for a helluva lot more than immigration. We need to get rid of the income tax. And social security. And Medicare and Medicaid. Need to throw out a bunch if new deal regulations as well.
Not good enough, we need to go pro-pre-ante-pen-bellum
Ha fair point. That’s what I get for posting quickly in the AM
To your point, though, I unironically want to repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to having Senators be appointed by the state legislatures, as specified in Article I, Section 3. If individual state legislatures choose to devolve this power to their respective electorates directly, that is their absolute right under the 10th Amendment—and otherwise, if the voters really want a say in their state’s Senators, then they are more than welcome to vote the bums out (of the state legislature)
As someone who whole-heartedly agrees with you, my understanding is this is essentially what happened. Most states had already devolved their Senatorial prerogatives to the People by the time the 17th was ratified, and many of the rest held non-binding primaries that the legislatures rarely overruled. I'm afraid there simply isn't any sort of popular appetite for a RETVRN to the properly appointed Senate. Even if we somehow overturnd the 17th Amendment, the vast majority of states would just keep their dorect elections anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. I’m not opposed to it. But…i am opposed to it if it’s limited to a single issue.
More options
Context Copy link
A Senate, If You Can Keep It and Two Amendments on the Senate would be a good read for you if you have not seen it yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is this a Poe? If seems a little too on the nose.
Yeah vibe that the account's just flat-out trolling. Some of the responses steer a bit too close to the wind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Who says they aren’t wanted there? I want them there. They are enforcing the duly enacted federal law. And fact of the matter is that unless we have internal checkpoints what blue states do with illegals adversely affects red states. So no, you don’t get a veto on our immigration laws where your side gets to make the law federally when you are in power but locally when out.
I think red states enforcing checkpoints sounds like a better idea than forcing a federal solution on everyone. As much as possible, we should try to let states make their own policy and let people move to whichever state seems to be running most efficiently. That lets the maximum number of people live under policies they support. Slavery was morally egregious enough to justify a civil war, but it seems like a waste to risk starting one over a minor disagreement like this.
Ok so internal checkpoints. Are we also supposed to fund the illegals? What about voting?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Potentially she should have not put her foot on said accelerator and complied with the requests?
Probably, but when aggressive people are surrounding your car, the flight or fight response might kick in. Being arrested by ICE is also not quite the same as being arrested by your local police department, since we don't really know what happens to everyone who goes into ICE custody. If the police are trying to arrest me unjustly, I would assume I'll get my day in court. But if ICE deports me to a costa rican gang prison it might be hard to prove my innocence.
This kind of misinformation will get more people killed.
I really dislike this word. The government doesn't get to decide what is true and what is false. They may claim that everyone in ICE custody is accounted for, but I have no reason to believe them. Donald Trump is a serial liar, and so is everyone working for him.
But in that case, why do you believe the government when it says "do not resist when police arrest you, if it's all a big mistake you will be released within a couple days at the most?" But then don't apply that same trust to it when it says, "Same applies to ICE?" It's the same source. If the problem is federal/local, substitute being arrested by the FBI, would you have the same response to being arrested by the FBI as you do to ICE?
Instead, I have seen a large online campaign to paint ICE as unusual with zero jurisdiction on anything, operating under no rules, with no training. When really, they get the normal amount of training (ICE agents train at FLETC for about 3–5 months, then complete on-the-job probation before being considered field-ready, which is a comparable amount to the FBI.) They have jurisdiction to arrest people, even American citizens, over crimes committed in their presence. And the people they arrest can only be held for so long before a judge approves the detainment. And the people they send out of the country all have final orders of removal from an immigration judge.
I don't believe them by default, they earn that trust through transparency and independent oversight. And of course, there is always the threat of consequences if government becomes too authoritarian. ICE employees don't behave anything like normal police officers, and they haven't done anything to earn our trust. I know several of my local sheriffs by name, one of them even lives down the street. ICE agents are faceless and unaccountable, and they seem to report directly to the serial liar and criminal currently running the government. We have no obligation to "obey" them just because some federal law saws so.
I am related to an above average number of police officers and security personnel and ICE agents have not earned that "don't behave anything like normal police officers" comment. They seem normal to me. You are going to have to be more specific in your derision.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In fact, it was a big point in the Allentown grandfather story that he didn't show up on that registry. Of course that was because the story was completely made up, rather than ICE doing anything wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It might, but that doesn't seem to be an acceptable legal defense, historically.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The videos are a pretty reliable Rorschach test for political orientations.
Bluesky is full of people watching it from all sides and in slow motion saying "yup, officer murdered her! it's plain as day" while X is full of people saying "yup, clearly justified self-defense"
Amazing.
Many on the left have aggressively spread the idea the "ICE agents aren't cops". But they are cops, at least to the same degree that DEA agents or ATF agents are.
Suppose a group of marijuana activists were organizing convoys to disrupt DEA operations. No one would be surprised if someone ended up getting shot.
More options
Context Copy link
Not that amazing. We have numerous previous incidents demonstrating the American public's total incapacity for achieving consensus over tribally-charged law enforcement incidents. For at least one side, and perhaps both, it is "who, whom" all the way down. This has obviously not gotten better since the Bundy standoff, BLM riots, rittenhouse and Jan 6th. It is pretty obviously not going to get better in the foreseeable future.
Something about this case seems much more cut and dried than the rest of the ones you mention. All of the relevant facts are on camera, from multiple angles. There's very little else you need to know. And there's still hardcore disagreement!
For a counter-point, take this this case from 2019 where a cop kills a parent at a school. There's bodycam video of the arrest and shootout . A very left-wing activist was causing a disturbance at a public school. It's unrelated to left-wing activism, more of a co-parenting dispute. Anyway, a police officer told him he had to leave. He refused so the police officer tried to arrest him. During the struggle the guy pulls a gun out and shoots twice. The officer responds with deadly force, killing him.
Consensus was achieved fairly quickly! In public commentary, there was not much disagreement over who in the wrong. A few left-wing anarchist types thought it was unjust but most normal people seemed to accept the police officer was justified.
Today's case makes it clear to me if this exact situation from 2019 was re-played but it was an ICE agent instead of a police resource officer it would be seen as a murder by every Democrat.
The Rittenhouse shootings were even more clear cut that this: they were textbook justified self defense, executed with exceptional aim and restraint, and followed immediately by an attempt to turn himself into the police.
And well, you know how that one went.
More options
Context Copy link
There's an obvious point here where ordinary cops have a real job maintaining public order, whereas nothing about what ICE does requires them to act the way they do other than the appetite for ostentatious thuggery.
Could you share your dignified and courteous looking method for locating and arresting people that are trying to hide from law enforcement?
Local police manage to do it just fine. You do investigation/surveillance and perform targeted arrests rather than grandiose sweeps with masked agents cosplaying as soldiers. (Of course, ICE does that in the most psychotic and inept way possible as well - see the Ozturk case)
Or, since we're talking about immigration enforcement specifically, you change the laws to make employing illegal immigrants virtually impossible. That will, of course, never happen, because it would mean holding the business gentry that run the GOP liable for something.
I go back to: the ostentatious thuggery is the point. ICE doesn't have to be filled with the semi-trained dregs of the Red Tribe, but it is. If you're anti-Trump, ICE is supposed to scare you. If you're pro-Trump, ICE is a steady source of cruelty porn.
I'm sure part of the point is to be grandiose and look unstoppable and ferocious but I still don't know how you do mass arrests in a way that isn't outrageous looking. I think it needs to be mass arrests too. If you just go in and arrest one person at a time you tip off all of the neighboring illegals to make themselves scarce.
Do we think the US could actually pull this off? It took us 20+ years just to implement Real ID.
Why would you even need mass arrests? What even are mass arrests and what do they have to do with honest immigration control? Actual immigration police work should 99% paperwork. You see it all the time with border control and passports. It's the whitest of white collar crimes. You check papers and hand papers to people telling them their papers are not in order, and occasional escort people to a holding place to expel them from the country. It's not dramatic. These are not hardened criminals, they're mostly middle aged schlubs living normal lives.
What you do is you send actual real officers of the law, not ICE paramilitary LARPers, to go where you think your intelligence has informed you someone has overstayed their visa, or never had a visa to begin with, then inform them and maybe put them in a car to take them to a jail or something. It's not rocket science. It doesn't need guns, let alone hidden secret police identities, tacticool gear, assault and aggressive belligerence, or any of this extra crap.
Like if i were an illegal immigrant in Japan, overstaying my visa or whatever, I would expect the police to knock on my door politely "Sumimasen, you must come with us." inform me I have brokent the law and eventually get me on a plane out of the country. Why is this hard?
Make themselves scarce where? These are immigrants. Not squatters or fantasy realm thieves. They can't live in the mountains or sewers to hide until the heat is down. The entire point of (mass) immigration is people need and work jobs to live. If you know enough to find someone that border crossed or doesn't have their papers in order, why wouldn't you be able to find them at their cousins? Why wouldn't you just tell their place of work, "inform us when they come back, they are breaking the law."?
For sure it could. What would be hard about it? But it won't. Because immigration control is a fake issue they don't really want to enforce.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is there anything about deportations that requires leftists to throw up road blocks to obstruct law enforcement and occasionally launch murderous militia attacks?
More options
Context Copy link
Please elaborate. Given the Resistance (TM) to ICE doing its job's increasing boldness and aggression, escalations by ICE officers are predictable, if unfortunate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
IIRC, the Bundy standoff had no disagreement over the facts for the standoff itself, and the subsequent killing of one of the participants resulted in the FBI shooters being caught tampering with evidence. None of this changed the tribal split.
Rittenhouse was filmed from multiple angles, and the film was available more or less immediately. Evidence abounded that he had acted within the law, evidence of him committing a crime did not exist. In the subsequent trial, every significant additional piece of evidence broke in his favor. None of this, nor even his acquittal, changed the tribal split.
My assessment is that the BLM riots and Jan 6th followed similar patterns. Both are much larger scale and far more complex, but the pattern of the evidence consistently breaking one way seems to me to hold in both.
We are past the point where evidence is dispositive. People want results, not process. It's not even really a mystery why: people on both sides perceive government as ineffectual at securing their values, and perceive those values under existential threat from their tribal opposites. Under such conditions, the natural consequence is a loss of faith in institutions and burgeoning extremism in pursuit of a solution to the perceived crisis.
More options
Context Copy link
Rittenhouse was filmed from every angle, fully available for review, and then litigated in every detail during a weeks long trial.
A significant portion of the electorate is still just straight-up lying about all of it.
Were the videos of the Rittenhouse shootings viral videos posted day of? I somehow never saw a single one. I mostly just followed the case on Wikipedia and thought he was not guilty and in fact sounded pretty heroic.
But my impression of the Rittenhouse case was everyone heard a story first, "guy with AR-15 crossed state lines to look for an excuse to kill SJWs" and nobody would update from there. Today's case, pretty much everyone saw the videos first and came to wildly different conclusions.
I saw the video of the skateboard attack and the false surrender/bye-cep within 24 hours of it happening. I'm pretty sure video of the initial shooting of Rosenbaum came out at about the same time but can't remember for sure, it was definitely only a few days max.
More options
Context Copy link
I think people vastly overrate how long the public actually follows and imbibes new information about these cases. I'm still seeing stuff positing Tyler Robinson was right-wing since 'his parents voted Republican' at which point a lot of people just stopped following the case or updating the information in their minds.
More options
Context Copy link
To toot my own horn I think I was the first to post in the old thread with time zones it's hard for me to say but I think I posted within a few hours of the shooting.
More options
Context Copy link
I watched the shootings happen live on a stream.
More options
Context Copy link
Some contemporaneous discussion here and here and here, from the first few days after the shooting.
The videos were available, and that's how Grosskruetz got the nickname Byeceps; most people just didn't (and, to be fair, I'm not a big fan of watching people die myself). It's easy today to think everyone's getting the full explanatory video, but I'd be surprised if that's the retrospective the normies think in a week.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, I remember seeing the videos the day of. People commented that the video evidence must be divine intervention in Rittenhouse's favor it was so clear-cut.
The first highly-upvoted video on Reddit had a title which described the rioters as trying to "lynch" Rittenhouse, iirc.
Huh. I thought I was very online but I'm apparently not nearly online enough to be commenting on this stuff.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, running from the cops shouldn't be a death sentence, but trying to run them over should be. Not hard to make the distinction.
Running from the cops shouldn’t be a death sentence, but it is a death gamble. If the officers primary duty is to make sure you are maximally safe while fleeing and to avoid any putting themselves between you and your exit, then the law stops existing for criminals. This is anarchotyrrany.
More options
Context Copy link
I think she was trying to run more than run him over, but also hammering the accelerator with a guy in front of you makes it a reasonable take from the guy in front of you you want to run him over.
What I can’t tell is whether that is true. That is, did she veer because he pulled a gun or was she always going to veer.
To my eye, it looked like a failed three-point turn. She started forwards with her wheels to the left, but turned them continuously rightwards as she went. This angle (from here) is the best I saw.
My parse of the video was that she was going straight till she was shot, likely slumped and that pulled her wheel to the right.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is the important point of the law here what her actual intent was (especially since it's now impractical to ask her) or what her perceived intent by the shooter was? I think both her and the shooter were probably panicking as is the norm in high-stress situations, but there was enough for the shooter to reasonably believe that he was under threat.
Sure it’s legally irrelevant. It is politically relevant.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't see anything inconsistent with "It was valid self defense, and the person who was shot did not commit a crime to trigger it." It doesn't apply here (she shouldn't have obstructed the street or resisted arrest or fled or drove at the officer), but honest misunderstandings can have tragic outcomes with nobody at fault.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Cops should be willing to take some risks to serve and protect the public. Which most cops are, because they have a sense of civic responsibility to the town they live in. That's the problem with having masked federal agents roaming the country shoving random people into the back of a van. They don't know anyone in the neighborhood they're supposedly "policing", and they begin to see the people as pests getting in the way of meeting their monthly deportation quota.
The nation could have functional normalized deportation enforcement. Cities could assist with ICE warrants just as they assist with other federal law enforcement. Cities might negotiate federal presence in specific areas or even coordinate arrests. If not oversight or assistance local police could bear witness as third parties more interested in the well-being of residents. Politicians could endorse organized protests while explicitly condemning vigilante efforts to interfere with federal law enforcement. These things could be done and relationships built while maintaining a meaningful opposition to Trump and ICE. There seem to be enough lawyers to obstruct 3 Trumps worth of deportation.
Alas, this is not the world we have built. Instead, we have sanctuary cities that have police forces forbidden from participating in this manner. We have politicians whose safest electoral option is to do nothing and order everyone else to do nothing. Except for the citizens who receive a fiery speech about invaders and the virtue of obstruction. All with a wink and a nod. The electorate responds, the inevitable occurs, and the winks and nods pays dividends in the form of a most exciting news story.
The more I see this play out the more I think this is the only way this was ever going to happen.
My city has more important things to do than deporting our own labor force. The police aren't "forbidden", our sheriff is elected by the people, and the people don't want him to spend resources on this nonsense. That's democracy in its purest form. If people don't want to live in our city, they can leave and go to a city and/or state with policies they agree with. That's why states' rights is such a good system.
The lack of internal hard borders is a major part of the draw of federation in the first place, and the USA's Constitution is broadly set up to prevent them (states are not allowed to refuse entry to citizens of other states). At the point where you're proposing bringing in internal hard borders, you're in practice talking about dissolving the USA along partisan lines (and possibly annexing the blue chunk to Canada, so that it's contiguous again). This is a colourable position, and one @FCfromSSC has been spruiking here for a while, but it's a rather-big ask; I would remind you of what happened the last time a chunk of the USA decided to secede.
More options
Context Copy link
People leaving a city does not fix the dysfunction and chaos resulting from the city refusing to work with ICE.
That's still just forbidding the police from cooperating with ICE. A distinction without a difference.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is not reasonable to tell them that one of the risks they have to assume is not being allowed to defend themselves from being murdered.
Words have meanings. There is nothing random about identifying people who have broken a specific law and sending them back to the specific countries they are citizens of.
Even under the most charitable assumptions for the police, there was at most a small chance she was trying to run him over. I don't think it's unreasonable to say the police cannot always kill someone just because they think the person might be trying to kill them. I also think the police have a duty to avoid unnecessarily creating situations where they don't know whether someone is about to kill them if they're going to respond to that uncertainty by killing someone.
She literally hit him with her car. It's on video. You can just watch it. There's three different angles in the top post. He's folded over on the hood. I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of people to refuse to believe their own eyes.
Now, I will grant that with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that she was probably a) distracted by the officer at her window, and thus unaware of the officer in front of her car, and b) she was likely attempting to flee rather than actually kill anybody
But this is hindsight. This is information we can gather by looking at the video from the comfort of our phones and laptops and replaying the footage until it makes sense.
A person can be reasonable in believing something, even if that thing is not true, if the information available in that moment led them to believe that thing. It is not a felony to not be omniscient.
What are you trying to say with the word "might"? It's already not legal for anyone, including police officers, anywhere in the US, to use lethal force if you suspect your life is in danger, with low probability. It is settled case law that the use of lethal force requires that a person should reasonably believe, with the information available to them, that their life is in danger. This is a higher standard than "might," and it is definitely met when you are a police officer and a criminal suspect hits you with their car.
The person who was shot drove herself over 500 miles from Missouri to Minneapolis, used her car to barricade a street against federal law enforcement (a federal crime), and tried to escape when they tried to arrest her, striking one of them.
Which of these decisions were the cops responsible for? How did the cops "create" this situation? I would be amazed if any law enforcement officer had told her to do any of these things!
What on earth are you talking about here?
It looked more to me like he leaned towards the car. But even if you're right, he didn't get run over even though he was hit. Why not? Why is he folded over the hood and sidestepping instead of getting caught under the car? Because the car was going in a different direction. That is the key fact here. He planted his feet as she drove towards him and only started to move out of the way at the very last second. Then he walked away seemingly totally fine. Why would he have done that if there was a risk of him getting run over? He could see which direction her wheel were turned in. He could see where the car was going. Yet he stayed where he was and it worked out for him. It seems to me he knew exactly what he was doing and did not think he was about to be run over, or else he would have gotten out of the way.
It's not hindsight. It's his job. If he is going to stand in front of large vehicles and shoot their drivers, he needs to be able to quickly assess the situation. The whole scene was right in front of him. He could see her and the other officer. He knew what was going on. And if he is going to be carrying a gun and given special leeway to enforce the law with it, he needs to be held to a high standard for situational awareness, and if he felt at all not up to the task at any moment, he needed to take steps to reduce the danger he was putting himself and others in.
This is the problem with so many of these arguments defending police killings. The police are professionals who should know how to handle these types of situations and who deliberately put themselves and others into dangerous situations. They have a lot of control over the situation. They often don't need to be where they put themselves and don't need to have taken the actions that led them to the situation where they felt the need to use deadly force.
They're responsible for all reasonably foreseeable outcomes of the situations that they create. Yes, they sometimes need to quickly respond to what criminals are doing and they don't always have the option of just walking away. But they're supposed to know how to steer situations towards a reasonable outcome. Standing in front of cars when you don't know how to react to the car driving towards you is not something they should be doing.
This is like excusing a doctor from a killing a patient on the operating table because he cut open a patient without knowing how to sew him back up. Yes, of course, if you randomly find someone with his guts hanging out, you shouldn't get in trouble for not helping him, nor is it the doctor's fault that the patient is in need of the surgery in the first place. But when the doctor decides he is going to be the hero and do life saving surgery, he is responsible once he cuts the patient open. He is supposed to know what to do and if he doesn't, he needs to leave the patient alone and either find someone else to do the surgery or provide a different treatment.
He's responsible for standing in front of the vehicle. The doctor isn't responsible for the person getting sick, but he doesn't need to cut him open if he can't do that without killing the patient.
Look, exactly nothing from your wall of text matters here.
It is legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force. That's it. It doesn't matter where he stands, or how omniscient he is, or what he coulda-woulda-shoulda done according to a monday morning quarterback on the internet with the benefit of hindsight. She drove a car into him. That is assault with a deadly weapon. He is legally entitled to respond with lethal force. Case closed.
It's not legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force if there is no threat to bodily harm. Nor is it necessarily permissible if you provoked the situation. I can't run onto the tarmac of an airport and start shooting down landing aircraft with artillery because of my, at that point, reasonable fear that a plane landing on top of me is a danger to my life. It doesn't matter if I don't have time to get out of the way by the time the plane is about to land. It's my fault for putting myself in that situation. There are limits to what I can do to create a dangerous situation for myself that leave lethal force as the only option to save my life.
He knew or should have known that, if a car was driving towards him, he would shoot and kill the driver, yet chose to stand in front of a moving car. Then when the car did appear to be driving towards him, he failed to take the opportunity to get out of the way and instead stood his ground, drew his weapon, and then leaned towards the car as it turned away and fired at the moment the car brushed past him. Then he fired two more shots as the car drove away from him.
Even if we grant that the car was a deadly threat, how does that excuse firing twice after it was no longer a threat? How can even the first shot be justified when he knew or should have known that the killing not have stopped the car?
You have a right to kill someone if it is necessary to protect yourself. If shooting her didn't help him, then he had no right to do it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In none of the videos do I see the officer folder over the hood, or even significantly struck.
Oh dear. You should schedule a trip to the optometrist right away.
Look I don’t know what to say. By now I’ve seen a dozen slow-motion versions of these clips. He was not materially struck.
More options
Context Copy link
This sarcasm does not further the discussion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Remember that "citibike Karen" incident that went viral a while back? Where a group of young black men accused a white pregnant woman of stealing a bike from them? I remember a lot of the response to that, even before it came out it was all bullshit, was "how fucking dumb can you be, how ideologically motivated, that your narrative of events could completely upend what everybody knows about how the world works." Or things to that effect. And they were right.
Now we have an incident where the same people who were making those (ultimately correct) mocking posts have turned around and decided that it was more likely that a mother of three decided to go out in a blaze of glory killing ICE agents with her car, rather than a bunch of twitchy gung-ho goons lit her up with little provocation.
I mean, you can just watch the video that shows her driving her car directly into a cop. I'm not sure what's "twitchy" and "gung-ho" about believing that the person who just intentionally drove their car into you might intend you harm.
More options
Context Copy link
A woman going home from her job, vs a gang of the usual thugs.
A woman going out of her way to go to a protest and disrupt police, vs an officer doing his job.
These are not equivalent.
I think Ashli Babbitt's the easiest case to equivocate to this one and was a substantially worse shoot than this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am confused. What is/was your take on citibike Karen?
More options
Context Copy link
It's entirely possible, probable even, that she both (a) didn't intend to kill ICE agents, but also (b) provoked them quite seriously. ICE agents have been attacked with vehicles already, so it's not all that unreasonable they would anticipate that possibility, and she accelerated right at one in the process of attempting to flee their traffic stop (already a potential felony).
If ICE thinks it's that likely that someone would try to run them over, they shouldn't be deliberately standing in front of vehicles to try to stop them. That only works and is only safe if they know the driver won't do that.
[NormanRockwellFreedomOfSpeech.jpg] I think it is okay for law enforcement officers to shoot people who are willing to run them over.
Yeah I think it's reasonable department policy to suggest police don't stand in front of cars to reduce their chance of getting run over but on the other hand that doesn't mean attempting to run them over isn't a crime and massive escalation of a scenario.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, I think that johnfabian is presenting a bit of a false dichotomy here:
It looks to me like (1) the woman's intention was to flee in her car; and (2) the ICE agent nevertheless reasonably perceived that he was being attacked either intentionally or knowingly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Fleeing police or resisting arrest shouldn't be a death sentence, but using a weapon against the police to aid your escape can be. Vehicle as a Weapon (VaaW) attacks are a big deal. They make up one of the most common forms of terrorist attack world wide and can easily kill or maim victims. You should compare the attitudes of commentators about this to their attitudes about past protest incidents. Who Whom.
And that's before we get into the differences between police directing you to exit your vehicle compared to a wild mob attacking your car.
Was the car actually going fast enough to seriously injury him? He wasn't even directly on front of the vehicle and she was turning. At worst, he would have been knocked over.
And then dragged under
The car turned away from him, and had already done so when he fired. He would not have been dragged under.
The car was pointed right at him when the first shot was fired, the wheels didn't turn right until after. Watch the video in slow motion. And regardless, with how fast it happened there was no way for him to know it was turning past him.
No, the car was already well into its turn and he had to lean over to his left to maintain his line of sight. His right leg and hips were clear of the car. If you look at where the bullet hole is, you can see he shot from way off to the side.
I understand why you think he couldn't have know that he was shooting through the side window he fired his two shots. How slow would his reaction time have to be for that? He can see what's in front of him at the very instant he pulls the trigger.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Tell you what, you stand in front of an SUV as the driver guns the gas and post a video so we can see how badly you get hurt.
More options
Context Copy link
a car going 5 mph without stopping will knock you over and then can kill you when it runs you over.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Anyone know why they wanted to arrest her in the first place?
She was using her car as a barricade to prevent the passage of ICE vehicles. Obstructing law enforcement is a crime.
More options
Context Copy link
Likely for obstruction
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You guys have all gotten so into the weeds about the mechanics of the individual shooting that you’re missing the big Fort Sumpter style moves that are going on right now:
•There’s something like 3000 federal law enforcement offers deployed in Minneapolis right now
•Mainstream media, Reddit, and various politicians have incited multiple assassination attempts on these officers
•Relatively photogenic citizen non-felon in gunned down in ambiguous situation, there is now a bloody shirt to waive
•Mayor and Governor are now calling for the removal of all federal agents from Minneapolis
•Governor Walz is now threatening to use the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents from the city, setting the stage for conflicting guard federalizations and call up orders
•You will have an armed unit of the state/federal military apparatus actually having to pick a side in a legally ambiguous situation
•You will have armed state/municipal police facing off against armed federal agents with the national guard caught somewhere in the middle
This is not good. No matter who’s fault it is, this is not good.
I Googled this and cannot find any mention of it.
There's a lot of snippets getting pulled like this. I haven't been able to find a full transcript.
That's quite different than saying he's going to forcibly remove federal agents from the city.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Who do you mean by this?
Might as well include the whole population of the world in this category.
This one would be the simplest to prove, so if you don't respond to other ones, I'd like to see your response to this - who incited the assassination?
More options
Context Copy link
This is utterly stupid. It's what George Wallace tried, and it gives Trump an ironclad reason (rebellion, literally) to invoke the Insurrection Act and federalize the Guard. Walz may be one of two politicians dumb enough to do something like that (the other being his former running mate), but hopefully someone will talk him down.
Whose fault matters. If you just say it's "not good", you're implying that any side which can stop it should even at the cost of backing down. And Trump is on solid ground here; Walz is allowed not to assist Federal law enforcement in carrying out their duties, but he's not allowed to keep them from carrying them out themselves, and immigration enforcement is not some fantasy spun off of a vague enabling statute, it's based on pretty solid statute law.
The sense that I get from Walz is that he's basically a patsy for powerful democrats. He should absolutely not be a national figure, and that type of attention can be intoxicating. A (potentially) dangerous mix.
I hope nobody is egging him on.
He's a lame duck and his career is over. He can flip tables as much as he wants with zero consequence.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean Greg Abbott got away with it. It's possible Walz is dumb enough to think that he's Greg Abbott.
Nor is Minnesota Texas. I know exactly where the Texas National Guard stands in a conflict between their state and the feds. The Minnesota National Guard? Im not so sure. How strong is state identity and how popular is Trump among Minnesota guardsmen?
A lot of the guardsmen who sided with Abbott literally were not Texan- operation lone star was a coalition.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it may be significant this follows so closely on the Somali daycare scandal. Minnesota Democrats have every incentive to blow this up as big as possible to distract from that, so I see major incentives for escalation here.
More options
Context Copy link
Photogenic woman whose last name is Good. Hard to imagine a name more suited for emotionally-charged polemics.
Kind of shocking, how does a young mother decide to try to use her car to block ICE? Do these people have no sense these are dangerous activities?
It’s kind of interesting to me that the last story I remember hearing about an ICE shooting was also a woman (who survived). Why are women doing this? Do they have some sense of invincibility?
It's that they don't understand how dangerous the game they're playing is. People see a lot of youtube videos and tik toks and stuff and they feel empowered to act out their revolutionary fantasies.
More options
Context Copy link
I suspect she never got The Talk. I got it in Driver's Ed class: if you're ever stopped by police, keep your hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, and be polite: "Good [time of day] officer, what seems to be the problem?". You can disagree politely, but you're not going to win any arguments at that point: if you do well, a lawyer can get things tossed out later, though.
Of course, I'm not sure women normally get that one.
I've never even heard of this as being a special thing that is taught.
So you know how it's popular on Instagram to post about how women are taught to "never let them take you to another location, piss yourself, etc." to avoid sexual assault, and men don't have an equivalent of that? This is that equivalent.
More options
Context Copy link
I was taught- stay in your vehicle, be polite, let them know if you have a gun but otherwise say nothing except direct answers to questions with no further details. Do not let them search your vehicle without a warrant.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a white 40yo male who grew up in a middle class CA suburb. It was explicitly taught to me in school that if a police officer pulls you over and you put your hands out of view, you will be shot (because you could be reaching for a gun).
Same, couple of years younger. Is how to deal with a police stop not a standard part of driver's ed elsewhere? I was literally tested on this in order to get my license.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Should it have to be?
I dont think I ever had that officially instructed to me in some class. Just something you pick up on from family and relatives in addition to being intuitively obvious.
The part about being polite, no I guess not. But the thing about the hand positions sounds strange to me. I guess it's because guns are so common in the United States. Here in Canada, it's not really something anyone ever worries about because they're largely illegal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm guessing you grew up in a place or social/economic milieu where people didn't have many violent interactions with cops. It's very common for e.g. responsible black parents to teach their kids that lesson.
I guess not. According to this there have been six police officers deliberately killed on duty in my province of one million people. Two in my lifetime and about one every few decades. The latest one was relatively recent in 2020 because we had a mass shooting, which is very unusual.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I never went to no drivers' ed class, but I'm not being "polite" to a police officer who is openly trying to charge me with something. The police are owed nothing from the citizens who pay their salaries. And ICE are not even police.
Are you trying to win a Darwin Award?
I agree with him on being polite to people who are trying to punish me, and it's gotten me in trouble. But I never tried to run them over and I'd fully expect them to shoot me if I did.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Don't forget about the Mark Kelly video from a few months ago reminding soldiers that they should think hard about what orders they follow because they need to personally decide if they're legal or not.
I didn't follow that one too closely but it seemed like what he said is just...true, isn't it? Was the issue the implication?
If Trump had responded that the FBI should arrest any senators guilty of sedition that would also have been true.
Sure? I’d think it was weird but not much more.
The problem is the implication. We can play dumb and act like either are just innocent reminders of facts that are usually irrelevant because the preconditions for them (illegal orders or seditious senators) doesn't happen often, but what really matters is that the timing and the choice of messengers carries with it a neon flashing sign implying those preconditions have happened.
So hypothetically, if I think the President is giving illegal orders to the military, or might, it’s out of bounds to say that to soldiers?
The closest I can get to agreeing is seeing it as an escalation and playing with fire. Something like “a soldier’s duty to disobey illegal orders is extremely serious and can have extremely serious consequences don’t fuck around with it as part of your political posturing.” Is that accurate?
I think you would have an obligation to state with some precision what orders you think are illegal, or would be illegal, rather than trying to create a cloud of FUD.
More options
Context Copy link
If you think so, you point to which orders you mean. Also, it's probably not up to a partisan politician to point it out, but to military instructors to explain it.
Pretty much. The military relies on obedience from soldiers except in the case of grossly illegal orders. "Don't execute illegal orders" is not for complicated matters that requires judges and courtrooms to parse, let alone those thorny enough that they often end up at the Supreme Court level, it's for obvious "I order you to set these unarmed civilians on fire" stuff. If those senators had any examples of those they should have been able to point them out. Otherwise, they're just messing up the chain of command by encouraging grunts to apply discretion to stuff that's way, way, way above their station to decide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am not any kind of relevant professional, but my impression is that the military has a pretty strong "You should be following orders unless they are obviously insane" ethos... which seems pretty critical to their functioning as a military. Kelly's wink wink nudge nudge "You should disobey orders that might upset the cast of The View" is probably not the sort of thing that a serious military can tolerate.
This is not a charitable characterization of what he said. He said they're allowed to refuse illegal orders. Someone else in the video said they must refuse illegal orders, which I think is more accurate. I think this was in reference to the boat bombings, including bombing the second strike on the survivors of one of them.
These seem to be clearly illegal. I haven't seen any arguments about how they could be legal.
No they aren’t clearly illegal. Hell Kelly himself acknowledges they are legally grey.
The U.S. government is using the military to summarily execute people outside of a military conflict. That is illegal. The excuse is that they are alleged drug dealers. The correct and legal response to that is to present evidence for probable cause to a judge, get a warrant, and then arrest them, then to put them on trial, present evidence that proves them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and have a judge sentence them for some prison term.
They are not allowed to kill them at any point in this process. They are not allowed to do anything to them based on a mere suspicion of a crime being committed. They have presented no evidence, and the alleged crimes are not even within the jurisdiction of the United States. We know from experience that a quarter of suspected drug boats aren't even carrying drugs. Nonetheless, even proof that they are really drug boats or even proof that they are not only drug boats but smuggling drugs into the United States would not excuse what they've been doing.
If it is a military conflict, they need to get congressional approval. The only law that would give them the right to act unilaterally would be if they were attacking the United States, because the executive branch has the power to act in defence of the United States. Smuggling cocaine is not an act of war. So that is not sufficient.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Context matters. If I started pointing out that there are circumstances where it would be legal and moral to kill you, I expect you would take that as a bit more than a detached hypothetical.
Then you haven't looked. Notice how that whole media stunt was dropped, instead of continuing with congressional hearings on these supposedly clearly illegal murders?
Take it a step further. Why do you think it's illegal? What law was violated?
If the US was not at war in the relevant legal sense, the law against murder. They were killings in peacetime with malice aforethought.
If the US was at war in the relevant legal sense, then the double tap violated various provisions of the Geneva Conventions relating to violence against shipwrecked sailors.
The Trump administration's defence of the boat killings is basically that drug dealers are hostis humani generis. This issue is a political loser for Trump's opponents because the median voter basically agrees with him on this point, but nothing in US or international law treats cocaine differently from any other kind of contraband.
You are assuming facts not in evidence (ie double tap)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am also not a soldier but my understanding was we actually have a pretty strong tradition of relying on the judgment of ground troops as to whether or not an order is illegal.
I suspect that's less a tradition than just the only thing that's actually practicable. The man on the ground receiving the potentially illegal order is the only one who can decide not to obey it. But I would be shocked if the military actually stressed this as something for soldiers to routinely think about. Even just being peripherally aware of it is a cost in friction for every action you want that solider to take.
I would expect the real world implementation is something like "Here's your mandatory once per year 'don't obey illegal orders' video. Shut up and watch it. If you get an illegal order, you have to refuse to obey it. This is your own responsibility, and if you ever guess wrong you're fucked. And if any of you dumbasses actually questions or refuses orders, you are way more likely to do pushups until you die and then we will court-martial your corpse. Now, never think about this again until next year's mandatory ethics video."
‘By the way, this video is in between our sexual harassment training video and our drug use in the workplace policy video, both of which you will actually be tested on.’
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If Tim Walz uses the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents then Trump will have full legal and ethical justification to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in literal tanks.
EDIT: I am watching the clips where people say that Tim Walz is threatening to use the National Guard against federal agents. He does not seem to be actually saying that.
None of this matters. The legal justifications don't matter. People are not swayed by logic or law.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unless I’m missing something huge, no, they didn’t.
Not the first. Won’t be the last. Law enforcement is hard.
Either Trump invokes Title 10 or he doesn’t. If he does, the Guard is at his disposal. Otherwise it’s under Walz.
You don’t say?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Apparently, Elon thinks that video might be to disturbing to watch without an account, and I don't really want to ask grok to turn all the participants into nude 13yo's.
Does someone have another link to a different source which is less nanny-state than X?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K9CJY5p0xz4
This one is also age gated as well but maybe you are willing to give papa google your info instead
Thanks, this worked for me (even without logging into google).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, fleeing shouldn't be a death sentence. But attempting to strike an officer with your car can be. (agent, officer, whatever). Sure, her intent was to flee, and striking the officer was simply a side effect to which she was completely indifferent. In Minnesota, if the officer died, it would have been considered depraved-heart murder, the second degree felony of which Derek Chauvin was convicted.
As for the officer, what happened? While he was getting his gun out, the car accelerated, he panicked, tried to get out of the way, was clipped by the car, and awkwardly shot his assailant through the driver-side window. There was less than a second between the assailant stepping on the gas and the shot being fired. Why did he shoot through the window? The car unexpected turned away, which is why he didn't become a pancake.
I don't think shooting was "the right move," in that by the time the shot was actually fired the danger had already passed. But that's a skill issue - the decision to shoot initially was 100% justified, as is backed by countless cases.
A leftist attempted to end the officer's life, or at least acted in a way that was completely indifferent to it, and because of that she died. Now most other leftists are trying to end his life a different way. We're not going to stand for it this time, or Monday Morning QB in ultra-slow motion the actions an officer took when a leftist protester was trying to murder him.
While we cannot see inside someone's brain from a video, the explanation above is perfectly rational, consistent with the evidence, and clearly the most likely explanation (compared the delulu fantasy that the officer for no reason decided he wanted to kill someone). Many will pretend not to understand, or pretend that it is implausible, hence making discourse impossible. I am not going to argue with them. Instead, we are simply going to call on the Trump administration and red states to protect this officer from Minnesota's deranged courts. We will not let people who openly brag about wanting to kill ICE agents lie about what happened today. This time, we are holding the line.
I don't think it's right to characterize this as so unexpected as to excuse the result of his decision. He's a trained police officer who chose to stand in front of a vehicle and to use his gun to try to stop it. He put someone's life in his hands and therefore needed to be able to quickly react to all reasonably foreseeable outcomes. He could have looked at her tires to see she was already turning the other way. He needed to not panic. He needed to not shoot once the apparent threat was gone. If he couldn't handle that kind of situation, he needed to not put himself in one.
Even if she had been trying to run him over, the car continued for some distance afterward until it slammed into a parked car. How would him shooting her have protected himself?
It was a wholly preventable death and if his best defence shows that he was incompetent, then he should at least be guilty of manslaughter.
I am paying him to stand in front of that car. It’s literally his job. And to use necessary force to enforce our laws. If he’s detaining a person we give him the ability to do that detention.
My understanding is that police are generally told not to stand in front of cars and shoot the drivers to try to stop them because it's dangerous and it doesn't work, as you can see in this video. After she was shot, the car continued forward until it crashed into a parked car. So he went against the standard police procedure, killed someone, and failed to stop the car.
Sure. But that’s not a legal standard. Yes it’s kind of dumb for a cop to stand in front of car, but if he decides to it’s still attempted murder to drive into him. And legally he has the right to block her and attempt to detain. I voted for him to detain.
And now that he killed someone; how many of people are going to be physically obstructing ICE? A lot less. Which means they spend more time deporting which is what I voted for.
It's not attempted murder. This is hyperbole. Murder requires intent. It's very unlikely she knew he was there when she started driving and then she immediately turned to her right. She did not deliberately drive into him. Her car brushed by him.
It absolutely matters for his legal defence if he recklessly put himself into a dangerous situation by walking in front of a moving vehicle.
Resisting arrest with a car is attempted murder.
Resisting arrest using violence or force on an officer is a felony. If the officer dies that then is of course felony murder since a felony was done even if there was never an intent to kill the officer.
Legally murder does not require intent to murder. It requires intent to commit a felony which happened here.
None of this is true. All of these crimes require other elements which you are ignoring. It is not as simple as this.
Murder doesn't require intent to kill, but attempted murder does.
Killing someone while committing a felony is not necessarily felony murder.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Speak for yourself. You have been warned about this before.
Three day ban to cool off.
This rule is consistently the most confusing one to me. Everything sulla says comes with the implicit qualifier “so thinks sulla.” Why is using “we” so offensive, obviously sulla is referring to those that agree with him. He never said anything like “All of the motte agrees leftists are retarded.”
Leaving that qualifier implicit is like a cat puffing itself up. It’s a threat display. “So thinks Sulla…and some other people. How many? Guess. :3”
Rhetorically convenient. Not conducive to discussion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Although I agree with the moderated post, I also agree with @netstack that The Motte isn't the place for this sort of chest thumping and grandstanding. Take it to X.
More options
Context Copy link
Leftist mod abusing the rules proving the posters point. Ironic.
Well then you'll love this. You have one of the longest mod records here. You are one of those users whose list of warnings and tembans (with zero AAQCs) requires the scroll button. You have been told specifically to knock it off with the ankle-biting "Waaaah! The mods are leftist and biased!" whining.
Basically, everything I told you before.
Because it's been a while, and because we generally dislike banning people for attacking mods or criticizing moderation (even when they really, really deserve it) I am not permabanning you. But you can take a month off, and if you don't come back, I doubt you will be missed.
For everyone else:
Here's yet another tedious exchange we have all the time on the Motte:
Culture Warring Poster: "I HATE MY ENEMIES! BOO MY ENEMIES! MY ENEMIES SUCK! CAN WE KILL MY ENEMIES?"
Mod: "Don't talk like that. This is not what the Motte is for."
Tiresome Anklebiter: "But I agree with him! His/my enemies do suck! Obviously the mod sympathizes with my enemies!"
If you haven't internalized the idea that we discuss the culture war (and the multifarious ways in which your enemies suck) but this isn't a place for rallyng the troops or consensus building, let alone talking about how much you want to curb-stomp your enemies, then you are being intentionally obtuse.
Fwiw, IMO @sulla's post would have been okay until the last paragraph.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This was my first thought as well, but my second thought is, "in the split second, if you think this person is willing to run you over, just because they missed the first time doesn't mean they won't run someone else over." If the deceased hit another ICE agent on the way out, everyone would be asking why this guy didn't take his shot.
More options
Context Copy link
Are you sure the motte is the correct site for you, then? You might have a better chance to reach the Trump administration on X or Truth Social, I think.
Also, I am not sure what standing Trump has to interfere with state law being applied. Are you suggesting that he sends the Delta force to extradite the shooter?
If you visit a jurisdiction, you are placing yourself in the tender cares of its justice system, however biased it might be. This is one reason why I would avoid visiting Iran -- Sharia law is not really my kink.
Juries have their own regional biases. I would assume that in the 1950s South, a white guy killing a black guy would have a higher probability of being acquitted for reasons of self defense, all things being equal, than vice versa. My advice to a black guy in the 50s would be to not be in the South and try his best to keep his nose clean if he has to be there. This is not a great solution, but what is the alternative? Not letting Texas hold murder trials until 1980?
Sympathies vary vastly between groups. Violence which is seen as self-defense nine times out of ten when enacted by a cop might be seen as a felony nine times out of ten when enacted against a cop (try "I thought the cop was going to run me over, so obviously I shot him").
Unluckily for the shooter, ICE is about as popular in blue areas as a black guy accused of murdering a white man in the '50s South. To be fair, he knew that when he signed on. The reason that Trump pays ICE high salaries and a big signing bonus is that it is common knowledge that half of the country considers them his brownshirts. If he gets convicted for a shooting for which a jury would have ruled self-defense when committed by a local cop, that is just an occupational hazard.
I'm reasonably sure that the state of Minnesota cannot charge or arrest a federal law enforcement officer for acts that occur in the line of duty.
I'm not sure about 9 out of 10 but it is straightforwardly correct that police officers have legal authority to use force in ways that the rest of us don't, because we are not police officers. If you do not understand why the people whose actual job is to arrest criminals on behalf of the legal system have more latitude to use force than the rest of us whose only accountability to the legal system is to not break laws, I'm not sure what to tell you.
I was not not saying that I did not understand it, or I thought it was bad. Obviously we allow cops to use violence which would land civilians in jail. Someone has to execute the arrest warrants, after all.
I am also fine with them getting a bit more leniency when claiming self-defense (which was what I was going for here specifically, and where cops are not intrinsically privileged over civilians as a matter of law, afaik). In particular, we can generally skip the question what poor life choices on your part may have led to you having to wield deadly force to defend your own life -- dealing with people who might be unstable or violent (so the rest of us won't have to) is their job.
On the other hand, I would also hold them to a higher standard than civilians (in pretty much the same way you would hold a physician rendering first aid to a higher standard). "I panicked, and just acted on autopilot, and was not even aware that the aggressor had long been incapacitated and the need for self-defense was over" for example is an excuse I would be much more likely to buy from a civilian.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Me neither, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of federal immunity in play here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
From my viewing of the video, it seems clear that the driver tried to run over the ICE agent first, at which point the agent responded by opening fire. Could have been handled better, but still a justified shooting.
She actually did hit him.
Has that been confirmed or you’re going off the video? It looks like it from the far away angle but I don’t feel certain from that alone.
There's a lot of videos, and in some of them it's pretty clear there's contact.
More options
Context Copy link
In one of the videos you can see the officer literally folded over the hood of the car. She hit him.
Oh ok I’ll take a look for it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not at all. She was turning to the right. Maybe it's still a justified shooting because the officer couldn't read her mind, but if she wanted to run him over, she could have.
It isn’t clear to me that she didn’t turn right after the officer pulled the gun (ie but for the gun pull, she would’ve ran over the officer)
Stop the video at 14.5 seconds and go frame by frame, look at the position of the left front wheel relative to its mud flap. It made a fluid motion; it never stopped turning to the right. There's no frame where the car's wheel was not turning towards the right.
Yeah, I watched it again, and she clearly intended to turn right from the very beginning. Her wheels started turning at the same time that she started moving forward. That's also the moment the cop pulled out his gun. So I can see how he might have thought she might have been about to drive at him when he decided to pull out his gun. However, by the time he pulled the trigger, she was well into her turn and it should have been clear to him what she was trying to do.
What you can also see if you watch carefully is that, as she was backing up, he started getting ready to take his gun out while standing still. He had a chance to get out of the way, but decided that in the case where she did drive at him, it would be better for him to kill her than to have gotten out of the way and let her escape.
You are asking the LEO to be Paul Atreides. You are assuming he knew the intent you are giving her (ie that she was going to flee). He didn’t know which direction she was going to drive and thus how difficult it would be to dodge.
Here is what he did know:
A crazy woman decided to barricade a road to prevent ICE from operating. She was refusing multiple orders and when another agent was trying to apprehend her, she backed up and then put the car into gear to drive forward.
Is it reasonable in that context to fear she might do something crazy like drive at him? Yes. In fact she did.
Is it crazy for him to be ready to draw his gun to neutralize the target? No.
I'm not saying he knew. I'm saying that he should have known her intent. If he had any reason to think it would be difficult to ascertain her intent and that that ambiguity would lead him to take her life as a precaution, he should not have stepped in front of the vehicle, and having stepped in front of the vehicle, he should have gotten out of the way at the earliest opportunity when he saw that she was going to start moving the car. What reasonable goal was he hoping to accomplish by standing in front of the car, putting both of their lives at risk?
We don't know that she was crazy and she wasn't barricading the road. She blocked one lane on a wide street. You can see a car drive past her in the video.
Regardless, even if this were all true, it doesn't mean she needed to die. He had a responsibility to minimize that risk. Someone being crazy is not an excuse to have them killed. It calls for all the more caution. If he knew she was crazy, that makes all the more irresponsible to stand in front of her vehicle while she was in the driver's seat.
Yes, and the appropriate response to that is to get out of the way, not to create a situation in which he feels the need to kill someone.
Not so long as he doesn't kill her unnecessarily, which he ended up doing. He should be actively avoiding situations where he might need to draw his weapon unless he has to be there. Nothing was accomplished by his standing in front of her car.
Even after he had made the decision to put himself in that dangerous situation, the presumption should have been that she wasn't going to run him over. Of course it was possible. But it was unlikely. If the choice is between certainly killing her and a small possiblity that she injured him (there is no way his life was in danger at that low speed), he needed to take the risk. His series of mistakes leading up to that dangerous situation doesn't give him an excuse to kill her.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No. Look at the direction the front left wheel is facing when she begins to accelerate (apologies, easiest source to find). I'm almost certain the vehicle has power steering and could have been redirected before accelerating.
Having a hearty chuckle that the best video we can find on our humble rationalist forum is Asmongold.
I was a bit slack to be honest. I've seen all the different angles on twitter slowed down.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, he cut off the video right when the wheel was straight, and then replayed it again and again, stopping at that instant to make his point. Why did he not show the full video in which the wheel completes the turn from left to right? My point still stands, if she wanted to run the officer over, then she could have.
It's a case of Ice saves ICE: had the road not been icy, she 100% would have ran him over.
Nice joke, hard disagree on the facts though. The icy road didn't make her accidentally turn the wheels to the right. The cop was already on the left side of her car. If she wanted to ram him, she wouldn't need to turn right at all, and neither bullet nor ice would have stopped her car from going over him, considering how far it went afterwards.
The only fact here is that she stepped on the gas while the tyres were straight and pointing towards the officer. The lack of traction gave her time to continue turning the wheel. Let's focus on her actions instead of her intentions, unless you can read minds?
She wanted to get away even if it meant bumping (in her mind) a nazi or two. More charitably, her poor driving led to her almost running over an officer (or at least bumping him) and she paid dearly for it. FAFO, as the kids say.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think she intentionally tried to run over the officer. I think in her attempt to avoid being apprehended, she started to drive off while turning the wheel and the officer leaned on the hood to try to change her mind. Her mind was not changed in that split second and the rest is history. It was a dumb move that got her killed.
If you watch the slow motion videos of the vehicle, yeah she did try to run into them. She turned her wheels towards them, then started accelerating.
https://x.com/SarahisCensored/status/2009022817019572408
She only turned after she hit the cop.
She backs-up with the wheels turned to the left, stops, turns the wheels to the right, and then accelerates forward. The officer is in front of the car, so via the intermediate value theorem, there is indeed a point where the wheels are pointed directly at the cop.
This doesn't really mean much, because she keeps turning the wheels, and this is also exactly the technique one would use to execute a two-point turn.
She hadn't completed turning to the right when she accelerated forward. As @Stellula points out, the wheels are straight when she starts going forwards, and the cop pulls the gun and fires immediately.
More options
Context Copy link
I disagree. Watch the wheels, which are spinning out on the ice. When she tires to accelerate, she’s pointed right at the cop.
When you turn the wheel and press the accelerator at the same time, the car doesn't go in a straight line.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I can’t currently watch the videos—Twitter delenda est—so this may be easy to answer.
Did the shooting officer have his body cam on per department policy?
I believe we should give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt proportional to their level of transparency. The state has the privilege of choosing its battles. If the officer made that shot knowing that he would be broadcast to the broader Internet, then he probably had a genuine fear for his life.
More options
Context Copy link
I had to have a bit of a think about this. Cops standing in front of vehicles as a means to prevent escape then escalating to deadly force has also felt a little off to me but I was not totally clear on why. I think what icks me about it is that, as a tactic, it manufactures a justification to escalate to deadly force to prevent an escape where one would not otherwise be present.
Consider a few cases.
Imagine if the individual in the video was not in a car but rather on foot or on a bicycle. As agents approach to effect an arrest they flee. Would the police have had a legal justification to shoot them to prevent them from fleeing? My impression is no, they would not.
Imagine the individual is in a car, but they effect their escape while police are still several feet away, to the sides or rear of the vehicle. Would the police have had a legal justification to shoot them to prevent them from fleeing? My impression again is no, they would not.
But once you place an office in the direction of the vehicle's escape that escape becomes assault with a deadly weapon, which does permit escalation to lethal force.
It's obvious why officers like it as a tactic. Most people are probably not willing to make contact with a person with their vehicle to flee a crime, so it effectively prevents the obvious way someone might escape. If they are wrong about that individual's willingness it lets them escalate to shooting.
I continue to have mixed feelings about it. I don't like it as a means of manufacturing an excuse to use deadly force where you wouldn't normally be able to but it is not clear to me what reform of it as a tactic would look like.
As to this particular case I think it is unlikely the office gets convicted of a crime. I don't recall particular cases but I'm reasonably confident I've seen cases where officers used deadly force when under less threat and get acquitted. The high profile nature of the case may alter that, though.
ETA:
Someone in the comments on one of the videos posted this slowed down version and now I am less sure. It looks to me like the agent in front of the vehicle (who did the shooting) might be clear of the front of the vehicle before they open fire. High potential to be another McGlockton where what happened in a second or two of time is determinative.
ETA 2:
Slowing down Angle 3 to 1/4 speed and watching from seconds 2-4 it seems clearer to me the agent was out of danger before they opened fire.
ETA 3:
I guess I'm closer to 100% probability that this guy doesn't get convicted. Not because I think it's a good shoot but because someone pointed out that, as a federal officer, state likely can't prosecute and very unlikely the federal government prosecutes. Pending a change in administration I think it's very unlikely there are legal consequences for this guy.
This logic strikes me as dubious. Are cops (or ICE agents) really so dedicated that they're eager to put their lives on the line -- and the danger of standing in front of a car that might abruptly accelerate is very real -- for marginally better clearance rates? Isn't the standard leftist line that cops are so quick to escalate to lethal force because they're cowards unwilling to accept the risks associated with de-escalation? I'm not sure that's true, but it's at least not obviously contrary to their individual interests.
(I could envision a version of this scheme -- leaving out an unloaded gun in easy reach of a suspect, maybe -- where they could try to manufacture an excuse to escalate to lethal force without any substantial personal risk, but this certainly wasn't that. If we're arguing about tire angle, then the officer's life was in the suspect's hands.)
As to why the cop did step in front of the car? I think incompetence is more likely than suicidal malice; the latter exists, but the former is vastly more common.
There were a bunch of people around. This woman was literally barricading the street. It was a chaotic environment.
The real harm here is that Minnesota refuses to let local LEO help ICE so that ICE would have the manpower to de escalate these situations. If there were five cop cars there, they could box the woman in, have people to deal with the crowd, and arrest the woman in an orderly fashion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The answer to all of your concerns is that nobody has a right to flee from the police.
People seem to be under the impression that because the law is a set of rules, and police in particular have rules that restrict how they are allowed to enforce the law, that the whole thing is like a sport or a game, where the point of the rules is to make the game fair for the players.
So of course they see the situation where a criminal is confronted by the police, and they think, how do I make it fair, so that the criminal has a chance to win the game? It's not fair if the police have too many advantages!
This is wrong. The law is written down so that everyone knows what is legal and how they can avoid committing crimes. Limitations on the police exist so that people are not unduly harassed by police unless they are sincerely suspected of a crime. None of these things exist to make things "fair" for criminals, they exist to preserve liberty for non-criminals.
The driver of the car was the one who escalated to deadly force here.
The other very strange thing that keeps happening in police use of force discussions is the inability of the anti-police side to ever ascribe any sort of agency to anyone other than the officers. The police officer escalated the situation by... standing there! He escalated it by... drawing his firearm after the driver had already started accelerating toward him! Never any room for the possibility that the driver would still be alive if she had made any of dozens of decisions leading up to that moment any differently, starting with deciding to drive from Missouri to Minnesota to harass federal law enforcement.
You mean she...CROSSED STATE LINES???
I remember a huge deal being made out of this in the Rittenhouse case; he had no legitimate interest to be there because it was in a different state so him crossing state lines to go to the protest site was evidence he was up to no good.
Sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander here. If Rittenhouse should have stayed at home whatever his feelings about the protests or wanting to do something to help, then so should this woman.
"Crossed state lines" with Rittenhouse was an attempt to paint him as having traveled a great distance out of his way to a community he had no connection to, which was false in his case since he had family and friends in Kenosha, which was about a 15 minute drive away from his house. If he had actually traveled a great distance out of his way to a community he had no connection to, one could genuinely say that he had no good reason to be there, and "he crossed state lines!" was a dishonest attempt to imply this even though it wasn't true.
Missouri is about 500 miles from Minneapolis at it's closest point, and in one of the recordings of the aftermath of this ice shooting, you can hear her wife saying that they have no local friends or relatives to turn to. So she actually did travel a significant distance out of her way to a community she had no connection to! She could have just not done that!
Would you care to bet on how much we'll hear about "but guys, she did cross state lines" from the people currently calling her an innocent martyr?
I agree with everyone saying her actions should not have been a death sentence. But with the whole mess around ICE and people turning up to protests and co-ordinating doxxing etc., this is the sort of heated, stressed, 'these people will try to injure or kill me' attitude on both sides that gets people into these situations and ending up hurt.
If you're going to turn up to a protest that has a good chance of being a "peaceful protest" (i.e. somebody is going to start smashing windows, throwing stones at the cops, setting things on fire, etc.) then you are putting yourself in a position of risk.
I don't think Rittenhouse should have been in Kenosha, but I also think he acted in genuine self-defence. I don't think this lady should have been in Minneapolis, and I do think the ICE guy acted in what he genuinely believed was self-defence. There's no winners here. She shouldn't be dead, and this guy shouldn't be vilified as the new fascist racist murderer.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Correct, but irrelevant.
Correct, but irrelevant.
The only relevant question is 'did the shooter satisfy the conditions for self defence?' this seems very marginal. The fact alone that the officer fired through a side window while not in imminent danger is going to make things extremely difficult for him if this ever goes to court.
The Charlottesville car guy got 4 life sentences because of his attitude and motivation towards the protest beforehand.
Are you calling for him to be pardoned and compensated by the state for his unjust incarceration?
There is no relationship between these two cases.
At the very start, I saw reports or comments that the Charlottesville guy had been caught in a crowd of protesters, was trying to get clear, and accidentally ran into people. That seems to be not the case, but there's also some element (I think) of genuinely panicking and trying to get away which resulted in unintended harm. Or at the very least, he wasn't mentally all there. That makes no difference to the narrative around the entire affair, though.
What struck me most about the difference in coverage was the way the Waukesha Christmas parade car-ramming was reported. In that, at first it was all "a car ran into people" as though it were the vehicle deciding to do it, and no human agency was involved at all.
More options
Context Copy link
Aside from the question how how threatening it is to drive towards someone in a car, and if your explicitly antagonistic motivation in going to a protest matters when determining guilt.
Glassnoser is around this thread arguing that lightly hitting someone with a car is no big deal. I wonder if he would think the same about bumping into a morbidly obese smoker who then has a heart attack? Or if he would blame her for putting herself in front of a car?
Saying there's no relationship is just silly. There's plenty to compare and contrast, to tease out the differences and separate reason from who/whom.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
no, the fact that a person doesn't have a right to flee from police means the woman is the initial user of unlawful force which is an element of self-defense
no, the first shot went through the windshield of a 3 shot sequence within roughly 1 second time frame which you can clearly see in the video (the glass fragments shoot up in front of the vehicle from the bullet hitting the windshield)
not that this is dispositive; a person who uses lethal force doesn't actually have to, within 1 second time frame from the point at which the cop was hit by the vehicle, realize the threat of great bodily harm or death is over (and that he wont be dragged alongside the vehicle or slip on the ice and fall under it) in order to use lethal force even if the biological lag of reality means the shots go through the side window
even if you think the above is not true and he didn't shoot through the windshield (which I would bet a significant amount of money that at least one shot went through the windshield) and he gunned the lady down as she drove by, lethal self-defense can be used in the defense of others, e.g., against a felon fleeing after committing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (her car) driving recklessly thus putting everyone else on that street in danger including other law enforcement
and this isn't going to court because even if some unethical scumbag state prosecutor attempted to bring charges it would be immediately removed to federal court due to a federal officer engaging in lawful federal activities as an agent of the federal government and it will get thrown out at the federal level even in Minnesota
but even if it did, the only way this case brought and not immediately thrown out is because of politics and not because of questions about the legality of this use of lethal force because it is just cut-and-dried legal use of force in every state in the country and at the federal level especially when you consider you would have to disprove the self-defense claim beyond reasonable doubt
More options
Context Copy link
Every still image I've seen pretty clearly shows a bullet hole in the front windshield. Close to the edge of the front, roughly where state registration tags usually go, but still the front. I'm sure some shots went through the side considering like 4 rounds were fired, but characterizing them all as being shot from the side does not seem fair.
Not an intentional characterization. The first shot indeed went through the front window. It's the subsequent shots that I think will be very difficult to justify as self defense. I know that there is a norm that cops 'mag dump' into suspects, which they then justify with the phrase 'I fired until the threat was eliminated' - which is the legal standard.
Problem is, that justification makes sense if you're talking about a guy who just pulled a gun or charged at you. It makes way less sense if the threat was a car, and you've just dodged out of the way of that car to the extent that subsequent shots then go through the side window. What is the justification for those subsequent shots? The shooter was no longer in danger. I really think those are going to be a major issue for the shooter, legally.
A sequence of 3 shots within a second are not going to be difficult to justify as self-defense. If the first is justified, the next two within a second are going to be justified. No one is required to shoot once and wait a few seconds to see what happened.
I just find it interesting as you're discovering what really happened the different facts don't seem to affect your opinion and instead you just find some other rationale why your initial opinion is still correct.
It’s not about ‘wait and see’, it’s about the fact that he is no longer in front of the vehicle.
To what are you referring?
the fact you didn't know the first shot went through the windshield proving he was in front of the vehicle when he shot 3 times within about a second
and so your motte position was 'sure, sure, maybe the first shot was fine, but what about the 2nd and 3rd shot .33 seconds later which went 6 inches to the right through the side window'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Particularly if it turns out that the first shot was non-fatal -- which actually seems kind of likely given the location of the hole + quickdraw; he might not have even hit her at all there.
If he doesn't exactly have self-defence for the shots through the window, this would leave him only with defense of others/the public -- which might fly for a normal cop in this situation with a normal (here meaning crazed out of his mind on liquor and drugs) fleeing suspect; preventing a dangerous high-speed chase, heat of the moment, etc.
In this case that seems like kind of a tough row to hoe.
Even with civilian shootings it's usually not necessary to justify each shot in a rapid sequence separately. (Whether the shots were in such a sequence was a point in the Bernhard Goetz case, IIRC)
More options
Context Copy link
No. Once you establish the first shot is reasonable, the other shots within a second are also reasonable. It is a very fluid situation and LEO cannot be expected to assess within less than a second whether the threat has passed once they fire. If it was say 30 seconds later, sure. But asking them to within half a second continue to make these decisions is asking LEO to be superhuman.
Like shaken says, this is normally pretty ironclad because normally they are defending themselves from a guy with a gun etc who is hard to cross-off as a threat -- so continuing to shoot if he drops the gun or something isn't too bad.
This time, the car was clearly past him, and he had to actively turn his body to get the shot -- you could argue about target fixation or something, but based on the video I don't think it's an easy sell to a jury.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A car is a deadly weapon and she hit him with it. The conditions for self defense do not get any more satisfied.
Not really. The standard is reasonable belief of an imminent deadly threat which can only be stopped through deadly force.
The most obvious way in which this was violated is - where was the imminent threat when the shots went through the side window?
I'm not sure about other states, but in Minnesota the law states that lethal force is permitted to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Nothing about this requires that the offense can only be stopped by lethal force, it simply permits lethal force under any circumstance where you reasonably believe your life is threatened.
It is absolutely unreasonable to demand a separate legal justification for every individual round fired mere fractions of a second apart, and I'm not aware of anyone who actually tries to hold human beings to that standard. The simple answer is that he stopped firing when he realized the threat was over, which is going to be some measurable amount of time after the threat was actually over because he is a human being and human beings are not capable of instantly processing information and making decisions about it. The law does not make it a felony to have human limitations, that would be stupid.
More options
Context Copy link
not really; there are a maximum of five legal elements of defensive force in any state in the United States and the federal government:
your quick summary has at least 2 errors: one, it can be threat of death or serious/great bodily injury, and two, it is not a requirement the threat can only be stopped with deadly force
the cop was attempting to effectuate a lawful arrest of a woman obviously committing obstruction, the woman accelerates the suv which you can tell with the spinning tires turned towards the cop, hitting or about to hit someone with a car is a deadly force threat, cops do not have a duty to avoid but even if this was a regular person they could not retreat from an accelerating vehicle a few feet away from them in complete safety, and a person in that cop's circumstance could have both a subjective and objectively reasonable belief he's about to be run over
every single element is pretty cut-and-dried satisfied in this scenario and remember a prosecutor would need to disprove the above beyond reasonable doubt
Technically yes, in practice this is the same thing.
I believe this is incorrect; you may not use lethal force to stop a threat if it is obvious a non lethal force would suffice.
Although neither of these points seem relevant to this specific example. The problem the shooter will have, is that the moment he is alongside the car there is no longer any threat of any kind of injury to himself, yet he keeps firing. This will not be impossible to overcome but his defence would have their work cut out for them.
This is somewhat undermined by the fact that he actually did retreat in complete safety.
For the front shot, sure. That’s a plausible defence. Once the cop is alongside the car, however, the idea that he would be afraid of “slipping on the ice” or being “dragged under the vehicle” and that the only remedy to that threat is to keep firing shots into the driver is weak as hell. Good luck convincing a jury that a reasonable person would feel the same way. No, if he ever does find himself in court over this, the best bet to defend against those shots would be either ‘defence of others’ or ‘heat of the moment’, neither of which is great. I sure as shit wouldn’t want to be facing down a jury in his shoes.
no, they're not "practically" the same thing as one is not always the other
based on what? your legal experience? your sleuthing on google? vibes?
and that's not what you wrote, you wrote "which can only be stopped through deadly force"
no, he will not have a problem making the defense that 3 shots over 1 second which started in front of the car when he was struck by the accelerating car are also justified
and again, a person can use deadly self-defense force in defense of others which would also fit this scenario because a fleeing felon who just committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which she was still driving is an imminent deadly threat to others, including other law enforcement
he got hit by the car so he was, in fact, not able to retreat in complete safety which is the standard
and even if he wasn't hit by the car, the after-the-fact knowledge he retreated without being injured doesn't mean it wasn't reasonable for him to think he could not retreat in complete safety when he 3 feet in front of an accelerating vehicle
and again, law enforcement has special carveouts for any duty to retreat even in the 11 states which have this duty (mainly, they de facto do not have one) because otherwise law enforcement couldn't enforce laws without wholly giving up their right to lawful self-defense
that's not the standard; the standard is the jury must have zero reasonable doubt the above is wrong
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the reason why the officer stepped in front of the vehicle was because they intended to arrest her. Blocking the road with an apparent intension to prevent the work of ICE officers is a crime. They didn't want her to get away. They wanted her in custody.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think this is true at all. The justification in question is "my life was in danger so I had to use deadly force". Who actually manufactured this situation?
Woman:
ICE agent:
Standing in front of a parked car, which is what the ICE agent did, does not put a life in danger. He could have stood there all day, all year, until the end of time, and he still would not have been in danger from that car. The entire situation, and the entirety of the danger, was manufactured by the woman. She sought out confrontation, and when she got it she escalated with violence right up to the point where she got her brains blown all over her dashboard.
More options
Context Copy link
It doesn't even need to be a car. Imagine a suspect is running away on foot. If the officer is off to the side or behind, they aren't justified in shooting. If they're in front, they can probably shoot the person charging at them.
I don't believe that suspects have the right to an escape route or that the police are bloodthirsty enough to manufacture an excuse to kill random people, so I don't have the same conflicted feelings as you.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree it's bad policy to have an officer stand in front of a vehicle. The escalation is one factor. But it also just blatantly puts officer lives at risk in a totally unnecessary way.
They have vehicles nearby, they have the persons plates, and even eye witnesses on the person driving. If they make a run for it they are fucked and not getting far.
If something is going to be placed in front of the vehicle it should be a police vehicle.
I guess this is an angle I also didn't think about that is relevant. If you are attempting to stop someone fleeing with an officer's body there is almost always an alternative. Like, the first truck they arrived in could have just parked in front of the victim's vehicle? A different vehicle goes around it moments before!
This is indeed department policy for most normal police organizations. (Blocking the suspect's vehicle in with a car where feasible)
I'm not against what these guys are doing or anything, but I will say that based on the first part of the video their training might not be the most modern; either that or they are all sick and tired of being yelled at and obstructed all the time...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I will concede that you have a point here, but I think the typical reverse argument, that police should uniformly just let someone go to prevent immediate violence is also a slippery slope. No-high-speed-chase policies were perhaps well-intentioned (such chases do often end in death and destruction, often to bystanders), but the precedent of "if you just drive 90mph they have to let you go" led to its own forms of lawlessness. Policies to not (immediately [1]) arrest people that risk enough police/bystander lives are their own incentives to always escalate. Law enforcement is mostly-uniquely given the arrest power for a reason.
I do not think that this is at all incompatible with Gillitrut's point.
Unprovoked escalation by any side is bad. If a cop has the option to either park a stroller in front of a suspects car or place his own car there for the purpose of impeding an escape, then it seems reasonable to require them to use their car, which will mean that the suspect will be less likely to escalate to deadly violence if they try to escape. (If it is fine to use a suspects unwillingness to endanger innocents to detain them, then SWAT forces should be wearing babies instead of kevlar vests.)
Some jurisdiction have a concept of self-defense being limited if the actor specifically provoked the self-defense situation. Placing a human in front of a car, or handcuffing yourself to the car for that matter, will do very little to impede the movement of the car. It is purely meant to create a situation where you will be able to claim self-defense or file additional charges.
More options
Context Copy link
I guess to my mind the underlying crime is obviously relevant to what means are justified in arresting or stopping the suspecting. You've got a murderer with a hostage? By all means, high speed chase. Use deadly force. You think someone has an illegal quantity of drugs? Probably no high speed chase or deadly force. This latter is outside the context of self-defense of course. If guy with drugs pulls a gun on you, feel free to escalate appropriately. The point is that there needs to be a proportional relationship between the means and the crime.
But if you make it trivially easy to evade enforcement of non-capital crimes, it's unclear why anyone would do anything other than evade all the time.
I think there is a wide gap between "lethal force" and "trivially easy."
Criminals in Chicago know that the police won't chase them due to recent changes in policy so they just turn everything into a chase and never get apprehended.
This led to a substantial increase in crime.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2023/12/4/23988293/chicago-police-cpd-vehicle-pursuit-chase-policy-civilian-commission-consent-decree
The proponents of these types of policies like yourself seem to think people get startled or have an overreaction to being pulled over and then once they've collected their faculties, will willingly turn themselves into the police station.
Criminals are NOT like you and me (i.e. people who after committing an impulsive crime would turn themselves in) and are happy to try to run away every time from the police - thus the increase in crime.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think there's a wide gap between "trivially easy" and "drive away really fast, oh and the police are not allowed to block you"
Just because they don't block your car doesn't mean you got away scot-free. They can follow you, block roads, use spike strips or PIT maneuvers to make you lose control in a way that's unlikely to be lethal, and so on.
Even if (they let) you get away, they can use your license plate to find out where you live, and arrest you at home. In addition to whatever you were suspected of before, you're now guilty of evading the police too. If you commited traffic violations while fleeing, those wil be added too. If they chased you, your car is likely to get wrecked.
All in all, plenty of good reasons to comply if you're innocent or guilty of a relatively small offence only (e.g. DUI). In short, it's not trivially easy to evade arrest if the police is not generally allowed to shoot drivers of vehicles.
Sorry if I misunderstand, but isn't this just high-speed chases again?
More options
Context Copy link
If you just drive away fast, they won't be able to follow you or know where you went if they can't chase you. And obviously they can't PIT you without chasing you.
Just do what a lot of my city's residents do: don't have a license plate. If they try to stop you for not having a license plate, drive away really fast. Not having a license plate is not a serious crime, so they're not allowed to chase you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is literally a policy officer's jobs to escalate in order to enforce the law. That is what it means to have a monopoly on violence.
The purpose of ICE is to enforce immigration law. While it could be the case that detaining a citizen in a car was required to enforce immigration law, this is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
Citizens (generally leftist white women) have been actively obstructing the enforcement of immigration law for almost a year now. One of their favorite tactics is using their cars to block ICE agents and vehicles. I could see how this might seem like an extraordinary claim if you've paid zero attention to the character and nature of the anti-ICE protests for the last year.
Ok, I will grant you that she was very likely trying to obstruct immigration enforcement and they had probable cause to detain her.
I would still argue that standing in the way of her car was a bad call to make.
There are certainly cases when I would want cops to risk their own lives and the lives of a suspect rather than letting them escape, for example if they are dealing with a mass shooter, where any failure to detain them will likely lead to more people being killed.
However, the driver of this car does not seem to be such a case. They had her license plate, they had her on bodycam footage, there is no reason to suspect that she was planning any terror attacks. "If she panics and drives away, we will just charge her with reckless driving and refusal to comply with a lawful order on top of the obstruction charge, it is not like she will escape to Argentina to escape justice."
In an isolated case, sure. For this repeated, consistent ideologically driven nonsense there's no reason to give her the benefit of the doubt that she won't just turn around and blockade them again, newly emboldened by the lack of consequences. At this point, what the protestors are doing is functionally a heckler's veto on law enforcement. Speaking as a person whose side just won an election on enforcing that law in particular, I want the book thrown at these idiots.
In support of this - I've seen reporting indicating that the ICE crew was followed around and harassed for hours while trying to carry out operations, with further witnesses stating this woman was a part of that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That does not justify any escalation to enforce any law. Policy officer's can't shoot a jaywalker to stop them from jaywalking.
They can shoot a jaywalker who continues to disobey lawful orders and who meets force with force all the way until the situation becomes deadly.
We have laws like this that defer to subjects and we have laws like this that defer to law enforcement. It's situational, but driving with an officer grabbing onto your hood in a tense situation is not a good idea, even if you think you're in the right.
I will say though, this shooting could be legally justified, but optically it doesn't look good. They are also in Somalieapolis, Minnesota, so I expect a large protest and candle light vigils and Democratic politicians demanding further law enforcement castration that will reinforce their immigration policy and their version of anarcho-tyranny.
Its just awful optically, only one shot actually went through the windshield, the rest were through the driver side window, meaning the car was past the officer by the time he really punched her ticket. By the time he unholstered, the wheels were pointing away from him, too. Not that this really matters, in that if she actually wanted to smoosh him or another officer she could have obviously turned the car around/started reversing and she had technically already acted to smoosh him (while turning so as to not smoosh him, but still). Doesn't change the legality, but it just looks awful. If the left had any credibility, this would be an excellent time to use it to argue against ICE overreach. Alas, they've cried wolf a few thousand times too many.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
He simply stood in a spot. That's is not the same as shooting a jaywalker or even remotely comparable. That is just a dishonest comparison.
The point is that not all escalations to enforce all laws are justified. I think it bad when police officers manufacture justifications to escalate.
Okay. I agree not all escalations are justified. I think the escalation of standing in a spot so that the suspect cannot simply leave is justified.
Isn't this approach going to unnecessarily put the lives of police officers in danger? Sure, if you're dealing with a reasonable person who committed a crime of passion or something they're going to think twice about running over a cop, but if you're looking at a career criminal who will already be getting a life sentence if they get caught... why wouldn't they just run the cop over?
Eventually, the people willing to die to attack a police officer standing in front of their car will all be dead and the problem solves itself.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am not sure that I agree, in all cases.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I watched the videos at various angles and it doesn't seem as clear cut ,hard to make heads or tails here
This is pure "scissor statement" video, isn't it? It seems clear that the driver isn't trying to hit the cop, since she's steering away from him and away from the direction he's moving in, but even with three angles to look at it's not clear to me whether she hits him anyway (I think not, but I won't be surprised if badge cameras prove me wrong) or whether she would have hit him had he not already been dodging to one side (I think so, but again awaiting further evidence).
I think what makes up my mind is that I don't think the situation was clear to the officer either, not if he's having to make this decision so fast that his detractors are having to replay the clips in slow motion. In hindsight he could have done better, but we want to be able to hire even average cops, for a job where they'll frequently be surrounded by people who hate them and try to kill them, and that's not going to be possible unless we take seriously the sorts of "mens rea"/"reasonable person" requirements we should have to prosecute what might be a natural attempt at self-defense.
Back in the day, Saturday Night Live recognized that this was a funny joke:
"I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver. And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him and hand it to him."
It wasn't because they were a bastion of right-wing television, or because they thought Clinton had given murderous orders to his secret service agents, it was because they recognized that it would be ridiculous to do something that looks so threatening, even something actually innocent, without anticipating the likely consequences.
No, this happens literally every single time a cop or state thug (note, I am not thinking of America when I write this. I have been lead to believe I have to spell things out very painfully on the Motte. To be more precise I'm thinking of the USSR "police" gunning down the public, like in Death of Stalin) kills someone. There is always a substantial group that will justify it, hell or high water. People will always see what they want to see. And it's on predictable lines that are in no way connected to whatever reality a story or video has. The contents of the video mean nothing. It would have to be the most perfect black and white public broad daylight execution you could imagine, complete with Nazi tattoos and maybe some casual rape, before the usual state violence apologist contingent would begin to think critically about the officers. Even then, I'm not sure. There's nothing special about this.
I don't know what posses people to be like this, but it's a thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But, the key (and obvious) point is that people who graffiti "kill ICE" on college campuses will pretend that it's obvious that the agent woke up today with the intent to kill, and refuse to see any other point of view.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
From DHS twitter:
Was, uh, a riot going on down the street or something? Or do the videos you linked capture the totality of the violent riot?
If there was any riot it's likely behind the scene of the confrontation, as you can see several non-agents in the area on the video on that side of the street, while ahead is totally empty.
There are multiple camera angles and photos of this incident and most of the protestors were seen walking around with their phones out. If no footage of a violent riot materializes in the coming hours/days, it's just a lie.
Or alternatively it was a riot and everyone decided to start looking chill the moment shit shtf.
If there was a riot we'd see visual evidence of it on social media. It's not like they only started filming after the shooting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Relevant Supreme Court decisions:
1
2
More options
Context Copy link
Watching these it’s pretty hard to convince me that the officer was shooting in self defense. The second video is behind a login wall, but if it’s the same one I found by googling, you can see the officer who is crossing in front of the car begin reaching for his gun while the vehicle is reversing. If he truely fear for his life, he could have just moved. By the time he was firing, he was clearly not in front of the vehicle.
It’s also kind of unfathomable to me that an officer begins firing at a moving vehicle in a residential neighborhood with bystanders on the sidewalk. This was not a life or death scenario, and he took less than a second to start firing.
State enforcement of laws is violence, but that violence has to be mediated by circumstance. This reads to me like a frustrated officer having a ‘FAFO’ moment, which is not what I want in law enforcement. You cannot start shooting because you’re mad.
I don't think police officers have a duty to retreat, in which case whether he could have moved or not is not really relevant.
Duty to retreat or duty not to deliberately place yourself in front of a vehicle to cause a confrontation. I don't think the principle to stand your ground automatically means you get to aggressively claim increasing land because once you have it, you can't be forced to retreat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The claim that the victim was trying to run an agent over is not only not true, video footage clearly shows that it isn't. That won't stop DHS from lying (again) and claiming that ICE agents were victims instead of perpetrators (again). It's thoroughly unclear why they were trying to stop this woman in the first place, and given ICE's pattern of lying, I have zero confidence in their testimony (see also: Chicago)
The slippery slope here is one we've already slid down: "law enforcement needs certain authority to do their job" has become "law enforcement can do whatever they want if it's allegedly part of their job and it's a spin of the roulette wheel whether they'll ever face consequences." The best you can realistically hope for is an order telling them to stop violating your rights, which is of limited utility when you're dead. Maybe you'll get lucky and there will be earth-shattering protests, but more likely the taxpayers will get stuck footing the bill while nothing of consequence results for the actual perpetrators.
The legality of the shoot is not dependant on "did she intend to run him over", it's "did he reasonably think she was trying to run him over." Two very different things.
The legal question is regrettably rather immaterial. The odds that a federal agent is going to be held accountable by the current (or any) administration is quite low, and doubly so for Steven Miller's specialest boys. However, Noem is currently asserting not merely that the shooting was legally justified but that the victim was actually a domestic terrorist attempting to murder ICE agents, which is very obviously false.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It appears she had parked her car perpendicularly on a small road, presumably to block or otherwise obstruct ICE activity, this being the cause of their apprehending her, which seems legitimate to me.
I will agree she was most likely not specifically trying to run over ICE agents, but rather to flee. However there was an agent on the hood of her car that she certainly did hit.
She is doing a piss-poor job, then, because another car passes in front of her shortly before ICE agents approach her. It looks more to me like she got stopped in the middle of a three point turn.
I have a strong suspicion that ICE deliberately hemmed her in, given that there are ICE vehicles on either side of her. Likely doing the thing they often do where they stop and harass people for observing them. Only this time, the observer panicked and so did ICE.
Where? The agent in front of her was some ways off and she unambiguously turns away from him.
There was a longer video I saw that showed a few minutes beforehand. There were dozens of people on foot "observing" the ICE agents, where "observing" is some dishonest libtard euphemism for "screaming insults and hostility like psychotic banshees in a way that absolutely and obviously made the situation more tense, stressful and dangerous for everyone involved."
Yes. The protestors should all be tried as accessories. In the best case for your take here, they were idiotically engineering the precursors for a tragedy. In the realistic scenario, they were actively hoping for it, plus or minus some dead LEOs.
Frankly, I do not give a fuck. Civilians on the sidewalk being assholes is normal even for regular police ops. The ICE people earn a 100k$/year of taxpayer money, the 'libtards' on the sidewalk do not. You will forgive me for holding the people with the government paychecks and badges to higher standards than the others.
Are you suggesting that they were committing a felony, so that they are guilty of felony murder?
Hm, MN seems to have a rather broad felony murder law](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.19):
With felony being very broadly defined:
The trade-off is that you only get 2nd degree murder, which does not have a minimum mandatory sentence. So what felony do you think the people yelling at ICE from the sidewalk might be found guilty off?
Of course. Infinitely high standards for ICE agents, whoopsie-daisie we accidentally frauded $10 billion for welfare agents.
Fairness says right-wingers can act like this at every Democrat employed by the state of Minnesota, right? Their offices are paid for by the tax-payers, so they should have no expectation to privacy or not having people scream the most insane, hateful obscenities in their faces every minute they're on the clock.
Maybe if Nick and Dave are literally filming every single form that they fill out, we'll finally get a handle on all the fraud and corruption.
And obviously, if any of them is ever less than perfectly professional about the process, they get fired immediately.
As a principled first amendment fan, i think that you should be able to scream whatever the fuck you want at cops at any time.
Public defenders too then, right?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do not endorse this personally, but presumably if you started with the driver violating 18 USC 111, which is elevated to a felony through the use of violence, and could prove direct incitement by the protestors under 18 USC 2, that would theoretically get you there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You know better.
More options
Context Copy link
Surely you don't seriously believe that protestors should be tried as accessories simply for being obnoxious and increasing background stress? If you don't, please don't say it, because it doesn't do favors to the discourse here whether or not it's specifically prohibited. If you do, you need to do better than simply toss out something inflammatory like that. Making the action of 'raising tension' a crime is bananas.
Morally? I think they're absolutely culpable. I find their behavior virulently anti-social and anti-civic, and it ought to be possible to crack down on it in some fashion. Maybe if they'd gotten hit with obstruction or harassment misdemeanors beforehand, we wouldn't be talking about how much blame they deserve for a death.
I agree that in practice, these kinds of histrionics aren't good for much. But I'm curious how you would answer the following - suppose, for the sake of argument, that you did believe ICE under Trump are an institution of evil, that ~every ICE operation is a moral outrage. How would you behave if you were walking around your neighborhood and found yourself witness to just such an operation? If necessary, switch out ICE and immigration enforcement under Trump for any atrocity of your choice that a lawfully-elected government with diametrically opposed values and politics to your own might legalize within your lifetime, and ask yourself how you'd react to seeing that underway.
The way I see it, no one wants to be the guy who walks past the drowning child without comment. A man's conscience won't take it - for that matter, neither will his pride. He must do something - anything! The absence of such a moral instinct would actually be quite a worrying sign. Lucky for the fabric of society, for most people, that instinct is tempered by reason, so they don't jump in blindly and try to suicidally obstruct the enactment of the (perceived-to-be-)evil law all by themselves. But the outrage still has to out. So they jeer and scream and organize protests.
In other words, where you see something that needlessly escalates tense situations towards violence, I see the useful venting of energy that could otherwise boil over into far more immediate violence.
Yeah but ask those 'observers' how they feel about people protesting abortion clinics and they'd flip their tune instantaneously.
More options
Context Copy link
Isn’t this just Jan 6? If you are morally outraged - you Protest and go to jail. In some cases perhaps tortured. Or you keep your mouth shut and show up to work everyday while providing for your family etc. That is your choice when you fight the regime.
In the case of Jan 6 everyone else basically decided to agree with them. The regime changed and in many cases you become a hero and often the leaders of the new regime.
More options
Context Copy link
One of the reasons I despise these sort of protestors is the LARPing, Stolen Valor element to it. If I happened upon the SS engaged in an operation, I can't really say what I would do without more of a scenario. But I am willing to go on the record and say that performatively screaming at them like the worst Karen to ever disgrace a department store, accomplishing nothing remotely useful except making sure the Legions of Terror know that I am powerless and that I hate them, seems like the stupidest fucking thing I could possibly do. It's literally a Futurama gag.
The anti-ICE protestors have been exactly that stupid for probably 9 digits worth of encounter-people in the last year, and the response from the Legions of Terror has been incredibly reserved and professional. They do this shit, and get away with this shit, millions of times, precisely because everything they pretend to believe is wrong.
And they either know that, on at least some level,
Or they're all appallingly useless retards.
In the real world, ICE is doing routine law enforcement, following real, democratically enacted laws, after their biggest booster just won an election on having them do exactly that, and their professionalism and accuracy rates are, AFAICT, unprecedented in government service.
If I thought that was still evil (and there are government agencies where that is the case), then I would, you know, argue against them. And vote against them. And try to convince other people. I certainly wouldn't interpose myself in an ATF agent's way while he was doing his job, screaming that he's a baby murderer in his face, and then have the unmitigated gall to act surprised when he didn't take that well.
The people protesting this by acting like the shittiest, pro-criminal, traitor Karens are basically throwing a parade with a marching band, riding in the position of honor atop a bus sized brass boar, banging cymbals overhead, while planes in the sky write "We refuse to abide by the results of elections and you'd have to be fools to tolerate sharing a country with us."
Would you be that sanguine if we "vented" some anti-immigration energy by screaming obscenities in the faces of Somali daycare owners every time they tried to enter any public space?
Or do you just accept that left-wingers are dumb children who can't be expected to act like proper citizens or adults?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Personally, I find accosting and murdering innocent people and then calling them domestic terrorists to be anti-social and anti-civic, and it ought to be possible to crack down on it in some fashion. Maybe if law enforcement suffered consequences more often for abusing their power, it would happen less often.
Which of the following would you disagree with?
From my perspective, if both are true, then innocent is not an accurate description of this person.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, I'm glad you clarified, but there's a wide gulf between "tried as accessories" (requires knowledge of a crime and actual aid) and moral culpability (subjective opinion) so you shouldn't treat them as interchangeable. And regularly handing out misdemeanors for protest somewhat undermines the actual right of protest. I mean, personally I agree that this type of 'protest' is largely counterproductive, but sometimes we need to tolerate anti-social or anti-civic behavior for the sake of upholding the sanctity of civic rights generally. Would we be better off as a society if misdemeanors are handed out left and right just because ICE gets annoyed? Feels like no.
I don't want to do the leftist moral victim-blame card of saying "oh ICE/Trump deserved it because they escalated first"; blaming protestors feels like basically the opposite side of the same coin, yeah?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
She definitely does make contact with him. The other angle makes it a little more clear. https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2008973759097733306
I don't think that clearly shows that at all, and other close-up footage makes it pretty clear that any contact was incidental at most (the guy who was allegedly injured is clearly fine).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Do you honestly believe for 1 second that she's just doing piss poor job of parallel parking, or alternatively gotten lost and trying to make a u turn? That it's just a tooootal coincidence that this happened right in the middle of a massive protest, with a bunch of protestors already filming the situation? That she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I pretty clearly spell out what I think happened in the second paragraph of my post.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this issue, but to push back on the idea of it being a slippery slope, I think we can steelman the "fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence" idea to something like "the police should not deliberately block off only nonviolent methods of fleeing in order to force an equivalence between fleeing and violence.
Imagine a dystopia in which police have a secret goal of wanting to shoot as many people as possible, but are legally prohibited from this because their laws are almost equivalent to ours: you can only shoot someone in self defense (or defense of another), but have some extra loopholes that allow the following scenario. The police always travel in pairs, and instead of normal handcuffs they carry one cuff with a long thin wire dangling off them. When a police officer cuffs someone it doesn't directly restrain them in any way, but the police officer ties the wire around their own neck. This means if the suspect attempts to run and gets far enough away, the wire tightens and slices/strangles the officer. The other officer can then legally shoot the suspect in order to save their partner's life. That is, the officer is deliberately endangering themselves in a conditional way in order to create opportunities to shoot people.
The steelmanned argument would then place "standing in front of a driven vehicle" in this same scenario. You are not physically restraining a person. You are not actually preventing them from escaping. Instead, you are creating a scenario in which you deliberately endanger yourself conditional on them fleeing as an excuse to shoot them. This is roughly equivalent to just training a gun on them and saying "don't run or I'll shoot you", which police officers are generally not allowed to do. This is a loophole in which they are allowed to do it. Saying "we should close this loophole, you can't just put yourself in danger for the express purpose of giving yourselves opportunities to shoot people" does not slip into "violence is allowed" because it's categorically and consistently anti danger/violence. It's not necessarily about deliberately giving people opportunities to flee, or even failing to close off opportunities to flee if you can actually do that, but it's a claim that abusing your legal power and using yourself as a hostage is not a legitimate means to close off escape.
Of course, I expect a large fraction of people do believe weaker versions of this and just hate police. But I think there is some legitimate point here in the stronger version.
You say this as if this is not already the case in our current reality. How exactly do you think that police use of force laws work? Because I guarantee you it's not the free for all that anti-police activists like to think it is.
Nobody has a legal or moral right to flee from the police, nonviolently or otherwise! Preventing criminals from fleeing the police is a good thing! They shouldn't do that! Why do you seemingly care so much about making sure that criminals have a fair shot at beating an arrest?
The "almost" equivalent is the part where the neck garotte would probably be illegal in our world, but is legal in this hypothetical.
I'm not saying people actually have a right to flee. They're still breaking the law. I'm saying their fleeing is not equivalent to violence and deliberately booby trapping their flight path to be deadly is wrong. Ie, imagine the police officers were going to bust into a drug house but, before entering, they stick landmines at all of the doors and windows so anyone fleeing gets blown up. Yeah, the drug dealers should get arrested and don't deserve to escape. But if they try to flee they shouldn't die for it. I'm pro-death penalty for especially horrific acts of villainy. I'm pro police officers killing people if forced into a dilemma where it's their life vs the life of a criminal threatening them. I'm not pro killing literally any criminal for literally any crime. Consequences should be proportional. Fleeing is not proportional to death. Police officers endangering themselves in order to create an artificial escalation so that fleeing is proportional to death is not the fleeing criminal's fault, but the police's, so does not change the moral calculus here.
The police officer standing in front of a car is only endangered to the precise extent that the criminal is willing to use force against them to escape. This is also true if i.e. an officer is grappling with a suspect, the officer is endangered to the precise extent that the criminal is willing and able to use force to escape from the grapple, but I don't think you would argue against officers grappling with suspects to restrain them... So why is it a problem for an officer to just... stand somewhere?
The difference is that an officer physically grappling them physically restrains them. The officer has a plausible means of preventing the escape beyond their gun. If the officer did not have a gun, or was not allowed to use their gun, a physical grapple is still a useful and legitimate means of restraining a suspect. A normal, non-police officer attempting to do a citizen's arrest might plausibly physically restrain someone this way because it literally restrains them.
In the car case, the officer does not have any means of preventing escape other than their gun. Their body is not going to stop the car, they don't expect their body to stop the car. They do not intend to physically restrain the car, and they very dearly hope they don't have to try. If they did not have a gun or were not allowed to use it they wouldn't stand there in the first place because they're not stupid and they don't want to die. The only reason to stand in front of a car is to threaten the suspect with a gun. It is not a restraint it is a threat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But they do this all the time, when cars aren't involved. If they're raiding a building they'll have police blocking all the exits.
More options
Context Copy link
We need to talk about entrapment. Why is entrapment illegal? Simply put, it's because justice usually requires that we judge people on actions they take in and of themselves. NAL, but Wikipedia cites the following from Sorrells v. United States as a definition:
It's worth noting that entrapment's definition and how it bears on the legal system varies substantially state by state (is it a complete or partial defense against liability? what's the standard of proof? etc) but the concept seems pretty fair, and that goes equally for both general moral fairness viewpoints and practicality-based ones.
IF an officer deliberately steps in front of and blocks a vehicle, especially an already moving one, I view it as legal as well as moral entrapment (with the caveat for of course violent offenders who if they escape might hurt badly or kill someone, that sort of thing which already exists as a caveat in similar situations). I'd welcome laws that make this point more explicit, and feel like they might be needed (thus making it more clear that choosing to stand in front of a car is a choice with legal consequences to be aware of, not just something happening semi-naturally). While the officer isn't exactly participating in a new crime, they do enable it pretty straightforwardly. The car is always in some sense a deadly weapon, but it isn't treated as one until the officer, by their position, converts it into one (and on a hair-trigger too). I'm not completely sure it fits neatly within the definition above, but the spirit of the idea seems applicable? Especially if we're now allowing split-second evaluations with no take-backs, it seems wise and fair to prohibit police from standing immediately in front of vehicles as a course of deliberate habit.
As far as I'm aware, entrapment has a much more narrow scope that I think you believe it does. Entrapment is meant to encompass actions where the police convince someone to do a crime when they would otherwise not. For example:
Presenting an opportunity to do a crime is definitely not entrapment; otherwise, hitting someone crossing the street would not be a crime (as they presented you with the opportunity to commit vehicular assault).
More options
Context Copy link
I don't understand why this logic wouldn't apply to any interaction between police and civilians. E.g., you can't participate in resisting arrest if you're not being arrested, therefore police should not arrest people. You can't participate in obstruction of justice if you aren't asked to provide your license and registration, so we shouldn't allow officers to require that either. This is the path of sovereign citizen madness.
We do, however, require that police don't randomly go arresting people. We do, however, require that police have better reasons for asking for license and registration than just randomly coming across someone in the street. The law regulates, and public order and fairness demand, that police pursue their trade with at least some degree of narrowness to avoid excessively harming or inconveniencing otherwise law-abiding people. This is a tradeoff, and one that should swing more decisively on behalf of the average citizen and their right to life in these circumstances. I thought this was somewhat self-explanatory. Obviously I'm not saying that police can never enforce anything for fear of bad things happening.
What makes this type of scenario more urgent to address is how swiftly the pendulum swings. The very fact that some people are radically changing their views based on a difficult-to-judge assessment of 1-2 feet in one direction or the other is a warning sign that this situation might need better guardrails. We obviously cannot prevent all difficult borderline scenarios, but to me it seems that fairness and justice is not being best served by current laws and policies.
I recognize that some people on here take the view that if a cop arrests you, you must comply. I whole-heartedly agree! Some people then go one to say that it follows that somehow it doesn't matter if or in what manner or how often cops arrest people. I very strongly disagree. Conservatism and its emphasis on individual choices does not necessarily mandate that "systemic" issues be ignored as context in all cases. Clearly some liberals believe that severe systemic issues mandate ignoring individual choices, and I equally despise that viewpoint. Reasonable people may disagree on the balance and weighting of factors, but to claim that no balance exists at all is madness no matter which direction you are on. That's especially true with the issues of policing!
So yeah, in this case, no backsliding into sovcit stuff implied. I'm just saying that there's a minimal gain from an officer standing in front of cars as a matter of course compared to the potential for escalatory behavior, that feels similar to entrapment.
(edited for additional clarity adding a paragraph before seeing reply, sorry, bad habit)
Sure, and I suppose I would be fine with a policy that officers may not randomly stand in front of vehicles and play chicken with them. But contingent on there being a lawful vehicle stop, I don't follow the logic that it is entrapment to raise the severity of fleeing the stop unlawfully.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do think there's a difference between a cop stepping in front of an already moving vehicle (this should be banned by departmental policy for officer safety if for no other reason) and a vehicle moving into a cop.
And conveniently as a general rule you can replace "cop" with "person" and the result and rules are the same.
In this case the vehicle was "in motion" more generally (reversing first) and so I feel like more latitude is wise to extend.
Generally in life I've observed that cars have a pretty strong "bubble effect" when you're driving, where psychologically you feel separated from the world. Ever tried even something simple like staring at someone through the window? They get abnormally bothered, because mentally they aren't fully "in public" in that moment until the wall is broken. Until then you feel somewhat inviolate. Assessing the situation ought to take that at least partially into account. I mean, look how resistant people are even in normal, fully and obviously justified, clearly signaled stops to getting out of the car!
In some sense it feels wrong to take that into account because it's at least somewhat psychological, but that doesn't really make it less real an effect.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Good morning, how can I assist the police today instead of running is not hard. You have a lot of rights when it comes to police, fleeing doesn't seem to be one of them.
I'm not saying people actually have a right to flee. They're still breaking the law. I'm saying their fleeing is not equivalent to violence and deliberately booby trapping their flight path to be deadly is wrong. Ie, imagine the police officers were going to bust into a drug house but, before entering, they stick landmines at all of the doors and windows so anyone fleeing gets blown up. Yeah, the drug dealers should get arrested and don't deserve to escape. But if they try to flee they shouldn't die for it. I'm pro-death penalty for especially horrific acts of villainy. I'm pro police officers killing people if forced into a dilemma where it's their life vs the life of a criminal threatening them. I'm not pro killing literally any criminal for literally any crime. Consequences should be proportional. Fleeing is not proportional to death. Police officers endangering themselves in order to create an artificial escalation so that fleeing is proportional to death is not the fleeing criminal's fault, but the police's, so does not change the moral calculus here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Uh... sure, if the officer had the perfect opportunity to restrain a suspect, but instead chose to arm them with a deadly weapon, the use of which completely depends on the officer willingly exposing himself to it through a series of convoluted steps, I'd say any pretense of feeling threatened is illegitimate.
I fail to see how this is a useful analogy for a case where the suspect is already in possession of a deadly weapon, prior to restraint.
It's the far extreme on a spectrum of "deliberately put oneself in harms way that the suspect did not themselves intend to put you under". If you barge into a restaurant kitchen and the chef is holding a knife and you dive underneath him, he is not threatening you with the knife. You threatened yourself. Millions of people drive cars. Technically they are deadly weapons but they aren't generally going around threatening people with them. If you jump in front of a moving car then the driver is not threatening you, you are threatening yourself with it.
If you jump in front of an unmoving car then there's some ambiguity there. But if your goal of moving in front of it is with the purpose of threatening yourself with it (the police don't expect their body to stop the car, they expect their guns to stop the car) then something fishy is going on. From the misbehaving police officers perspective, the car's status as a weapon is a feature, and the policeman's vulnerability is being leveraged this way. If the police had magical invincibility powers that made them unharmed by getting hit by cars the strategy would no longer work. We want to incentivize police officers to keep themselves more safe, not incentivize them to endanger themselves to exploit laws intended to protect them. Clearly something has gone wrong when that has become the case.
That would be a great argument, if she was just driving her car, minding her own business, they jumped out in front of her, and shot her. When the car is stopped, and she's surrounded by cops trying to detain her, the correct analogy is the police busting into a kitchen because the Chef is a suspect, and him charging at the only exit, which is blocked by an armed police officer, while holding a knife.
There are a number of differences. First, the car is both the weapon and the means of transportation. The chef could easily drop the knife and then charge the police officer which, while they definitely should not do, would not be deadly force and not deserve death, even if it does deserve harsh punishment.
Second, the police officer has a legitimate means of stopping the chef by physically blocking the door. Because people can stop people, but people cannot stop vehicles. The police officer fully expects that if the chef comes at him he can physically restrain him. The police in front of a car does not intend this. The officer does not have any means of preventing escape other than their gun. Their body is not going to stop the car, they don't expect their body to stop the car. They do not intend to physically restrain the car, and they very dearly hope they don't have to try. If they did not have a gun or were not allowed to use it they wouldn't stand there in the first place because they're not stupid and they don't want to die. The only reason to stand in front of a car is to threaten the suspect with a gun. It is not a restraint it is a threat.
The car being the means of transportation is irrelevant. Like I said in the other post, there is no right to escape from cops, so she's not entitled to use the most efficient means of escape possible. From there it follows she could just get out of the car and make a run for it, the same way the chef could drop the knife. So choosing to escape by means of driving at an agent is roughly equivalent to charging at them with a knife
This is a completely dishonest framing. Nothing short of an execution-style shooting implies that a death is "deserved".
I can agree that detaining a suspect by standing in front of a car might be a bad idea, but I don't see how it nullifies the suspect's free will, or the agent's right to self-defense.
I'm not going maximally extreme and saying it "nullifies the agent's right to self defense". But I'm pointing out that they seem to be deliberately exploiting the right to self defense by putting themselves in danger in order to be allowed to defend themselves. There's circular shenanigans going on here where they make themselves less safe, going against the spirit of the law (which is intended to protect them) in order to trigger the letter of the law and get what they want (the right to shoot the criminal if they try to flee, which the law ordinarily does not give). The agent violates their own rights in part in order to then recover them in a manner with useful side benefits. I'm not saying the law should say "if an agent stands in front of a car oops I guess they have to let themselves die now". But clearly something has gone wrong if the law intended to make them more safe is encouraging them to make themselves less safe.
That seems like assuming the conclusion to me. It was a chaotic situation, and I doubt Agent Chud was scheming to manipulate people into suicide-by-cop. If you want to make that argument, you'll have to point what, specifically, implies this was all deliberate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think grouping cars, which most Americans have, in with deadly weapons for this purpose, while technically correct, is a good example of the non-central fallacy. "In order to make a living in this country, you need [thing]. If you have [thing], then police are entitled to kill you if you try to escape arrest" is rather Catch-22-adjacent.
The most dangerous thing the average person does in any day in America is get on the road and trust other people to do a good job driving. Adding an additional element of some miscreant going 90 MPH in a 30 and blowing multiple lights/stop signs so they can avoid a petty traffic, misdemeanor, or warrant is not something I would encourage the legal system to incentivize.
And also, when did this trend of people just basically saying civil disobedience = no consequences thing happen? You can protest the law peacefully and boringly with a sign and a lame chant. Going out and stopping cops from arresting rapists because you think rape is good doesnt mean you get a free pass just because you cast a frame. In civil disobedience you serve your time, then convince the public and win a later victory as part of the sacrifice of substantial portions of your life.
Otherwise, everyone could claim to do this and face nothing. Maybe Timmy McVeigh's complaints about the Feds were legit. Why dont we just let him out on his own recognizance for a few decades and then arrest him when he is 99 and we have, as a society, finally determined his cause was bunk.
More options
Context Copy link
This is pretty silly. The thing that makes a deadly weapon a deadly weapon is "will it kill you if used against you". In the case of cars, they aren't considered deadly weapons until they are being used in a potentially deadly manner, which makes perfect sense. ArjinFerman could have better phrased it as "already in use of a deadly weapon", but the fundamental fact remains: her car could have killed the guy had this gone slightly differently.
More options
Context Copy link
What do you make of knives? They're pretty uncontroversially deadly weapons, also have non violent uses and I would guess more Americans have at least one than cars.
I think the differenciator for deadly weapon shouldn't be whether there is a non violent use for it, but more what the likely intent is if someone attacks you with that object. If someone attacks you with a knife, or a car, you can surmise the intent is deadly, or at least the attacker has little regard whether his attack will cause death. Unlike a taser, or some blunt weapons (like a baton; a hammer I would probably consider lethal).
If a cop walks up to you as you are holding a knife for whatever reason, grabs your hand and yanks it to have the knife at his own throat, I also do not think that this should generate a right for the cop to then kill you in self-defence if you try to pull the hand away (in a way that might slice the cop's throat in the process). Actually this seems like another good example for my viewpoint.
More options
Context Copy link
Example legal wording from a cursory search:
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Setting aside the question of the appropriate response to a fleeing suspect, this (and a lot of comments here) seem to be glossing the fact that fleeing the cops in a motor vehicle is a choice, just as much as fleeing the cops with a gun is. You can always attempt to flee on foot if you decide to flee.
Responding to you and @ArjinFerman simultaneously, the premise here is that more than one choice has been made: yes, the person the cops were trying to arrest chose to try to flee with a motor vehicle (resp. with the wire/handcuffs), but the cops previously chose to position themselves in the way of the car such that fleeing would entail driving the car at them, resp. chose to attach the wire. One can take the contrived example further - what if the cop holds a gun to their own head and says, "I will kill myself if you escape"? What if they do this using some scifi commitment device that forces them to follow through on this promise? (Is creating exploding collars for that and marketing them to police the next big startup idea?) What if the cop's on a PIP and will get fired if he makes another mistake and is known to be depressed, so the person who is getting arrested knows that the cop will likely kill himself if he gets away?
Like I said, this is not a valid analogy. The reason they'd be wrong in the "attaching the wire" scenario is because they had the chance to restrain the suspect and chose to forgo it in favor of putting themselves in danger, not because they put themselves in harm's way in an attempt to restrain them. The latter is a completely normal part of police work. If it was somehow wrong, the police wouldn't be allowed to attempt to restrain any armed suspect.
More options
Context Copy link
Those contrivances all rely on the police being able (or willing) to do something that is extraordinary. Standing in front of a stopped vehicle is not extraordinary. It is something that an ordinary non-police person is allowed to do, for brief periods of time. It seems unremarkable that what an ordinary person is legally entitled to do, police should be legally entitled to do as well. Whether it is a good idea? Highly contingent, which is why I think broad policies either prescribing or proscribing are unwise.
Surely intent matters. Standing in front of a vehicle with evident intent to stop it from driving away, or even with intent to do a thing that you expect would make the driver want to drive away (think those people non-consensually starting to clean your windshield at traffic lights, or panhandling), I think, should be treated differently from just finding yourself there for unrelated reasons. I do not think a windshield hobo with a weapons license in that situation should get to shoot the driver in self-defense if the driver starts driving, either.
Intent does matter, which is why it matters whether it's someone who has the legal right to keep me there versus someone who does not. If two large men with guns come to my (home) door and ask to "have a chat," I'd be justified in stabbing them to escape if they're randos, but not if they're cops.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Supposing instead of any of these Rube Goldberg machines the person fleeing just decides to point a gun at the police and tell them he will shoot if they get any closer. Shouldn't the cops back off?
That's presumably different, because in your setup the police did not set things up in such a way that you physically need to point a gun at them to attempt to escape [do something that is not normally taken to be punishable by death].
All right, supposing the police have someone cornered and his only plausible way out is to point the gun (he doesn't know movie karate that would allow him to defeat half a dozen cops unarmed). How is this different from the police having someone cornered and their only way out is to point a vehicle at a police officer? Shouldn't the duty to retreat be roughly analogous in both situations?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The "non-central fallacy" is a pretty dubious construct to start with, but in any case: no it's not. You can apply the same reasoning to the convoluted contraption from his scenario: handcuffs are not a deadly weapon, and neither is a wire, but they become one when the wire is wrapped around your neck. A car, by itself, is not a deadly weapon, but a car driving at someone is. There's a reason why they became so popular with Muslim terrorists.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where did you get that idea? That's what arresting someone is.
Are you making a legal point or a philosophical one? Police are not allowed to shoot at a fleeing suspect. (Barring extreme circumstances, I assume.)
Not that extreme. The precedent is Tennessee vs Garner. Prior to that police could use deadly force against any fleeing felon. The decision made it such that the officer must have probable cause that the fleeing individual poses a significant risk of seriously injuring or killing others.
If a person has shot at someone then they can be shot while fleeing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
An officer can put himself in the only exit and if you make any movement towards the exit just shoot you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This puts a lot of new protesting innovations into question though.
Is the driver of a car justified in trying to run over a person standing in their way if they feel threatened?
“I’ll block you and if you drive into me I’ll retaliate violently and be justified” has been a leftist protest/escalation tactic since at least 2020, probably longer.
I had the same thought when i saw this. Do people think standing in front of traffic is an idiotic thing to do, or stunning and brave? Further ironic if, like i heard, this all started because the lady parked her car in a way that intentionally disrupted traffic.
Its people confrontationally standing in front of stuff they dont need to be and feeling threatened in both corners!
my question i guess, why are ICE agents fucking with sideways cars, is that part of their job? If this was normal uniform city cops i feel like this would have a much better chance of not going so sideways.
More options
Context Copy link
That’s not a new innovation in protesting or in self-defense law.
Driving at someone with your car is absolutely considered deadly force. State-specific laws about deadly force apply. Texas allows it, for example.
I think the irony is:
Scenario 1: Protestor stands in front of a car. Stunning and brave. Not escalating in itself to deadly violence. Does not deserve to be run over. The protestor's cause of the week is more important than the driver getting to where they want to go.
Scenario 2: Cop stands in front of a car. Boo, hiss, they must want someone to be killed. What right do they have to escalate a situation like that?
This does not seem like a consistent worldview, but I suspect that swap the roles and Conservatives would have similar responses. So what's up? I think liberals trust protestors more than cops and conservatives trust cops more than protestors.
I think one important difference is that the police are privileged to detain and restrain people. That being said, it does not appear to me that the officer in question was attempting to block the person's car with his body. Rather, it appears that he just happened to be standing there.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this phrase does a lot of the work here to create the irony/inconsistency. Your phrasing about an issue of the week invokes a dismissive attitude; would you feel the same if it's like, an MLK-importance event? While the ICE debate is subjective in its worthiness, some causes are more important than the driver getting to where they want to go.
I should say that MLK here deserves credit because a lot of their stuff was specifically calibrated to strike some kind of balance between inherent non-violence and visibility (partly stemming from inconvenience), and their cause was an excellent society-level one. Furthermore, the protests were designed to specifically appeal to the general moderate public. It's not at all clear to me that modern ICE protestors really know what they are doing nor if they are accurately assessing the scale and relative importance of their cause. In fact I have big doubts. However, the more excitable of them do seem to genuinely believe that 'stopping ICE' is a societal-wide values thing and a battle for the soul of America. Ergo, more flashy and obnoxious actions are justified.
Conversely, Scenario 2 hinges on an implied valuation of "rule of law" with which the worthiness of it determines how justified escalation is. Big importance? Bigger escalations. The law already recognizes this spectrum, if unevenly.
Now, even a protestor is to some extent engaging in a game of chicken with the cops: arrest me if you dare, but if you do (or are violent doing it) you'll look silly or mean and lose the PR war. It's important to realize that that's a feature, not a bug, of the game. I'd actually go farther and say that morally a protestor has good reason to oppose stupid fellow protestors who might lose them PR for various reasons (mostly misjudging the balance of importance). That modern leftist protestors in the last decade or so often seem to recently misjudge these situations does not in my eyes discredit the entire ethos and justification of protest - it just means the protestors are stupid.
So yeah, although I'm sure institutional trust in protestors or cops plays a role, I tend to view it through a "values" lens and with that lens there's nothing incoherent going on. Conservatives highly value rule of law and respect for authority even if unearned, and liberals highly value not being mean to immigrants and uphold annoying protest as a core American value.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Saw a report that one or more of the agents were injured in the incident. Of course it could have been after the shooting and the person losing control of the car, but it does indicate that the person was driving towards an agent at the time. On the other hand I don't see anyone getting hit in the videos. Either way driving directly towards an agent seems like a very FAFO moment.
After zooming and enhancing the video, you can see that the wheels were turned at an angle, so the driver likely intended to drive around the agent, but the agent probably didn't know that. You can also see the agent stagger and lose is footing for a few steps, so even though you can't clearly see a hit, it's likely that the car made contact. There are also pictures of a bullet hole in the windshield, so the agent was in front of the car when the shots were fired.
Also imagine if the roles were reversed. If instead a normal guy was trying to get away from some anti-ICE protestors and got gotten, I'm sure the enemy would be all over it calling the driver an evil nazi and whatever.
im not like, a firearm forensics guy so someone may be able to tell from the photos we have, but from where he was standing when he shot it makes way more sense to me that the bullet went in the drivers window and out the front windshield.
There's a better angle of the incident than what's been linked here (which I can't link to because I do stupid things to try to limit my time wasted on these topics). The guy standing by the driver's side door in the beginning is not the shooter. The shooter, at the time he pulls his gun, is fully in front of the vehicle with no angle to any other window. It looks like the last shot may have gone in the driver's side window, but it's all happening very fast.
I take umbrage with the term "fully in front" but share your interest in not wasting time caring about this, so in that spirit i'll agree that it did all happen really fast
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We already had that. In Charlottesville.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, my take is that decision to open fire was probably reasonable under the circumstances. It does seem that the shooter was standing roughly in front of the car and the car started accelerating. In terms of what's justified, presumably what matters is what the shooter perceived, not what the shootee intended.
Edit: I imagine more footage will become available and shed more light on the situation.
Well of course, it's kind of a given that partisan hacks on both sides will automatically side with their tribe.
More options
Context Copy link
This is de rigeur for police reports. These statements are issued reflexively as a means to pre-empt possible future negative consequences for police officers. Often it's a detail that is simply later dropped if it is no longer required. It only gets media attention if it happens to someone famous, like when Scottie Scheffler ruthlessly dragged a noble policeman dozens of yards the other year.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Part of the bargain we make with the state is that the violence is structured, measured, constrained, fair, etc. right?
To play with the argument a bit, standing in front of the car feels like the officer is responsible for escalating the situation since now there’s a deadly weapon in play.
Presumably he stands in front of the car to make it less likely she’ll drive away, but the stakes are now higher than they probably needed to be, right?
Like imagine a police officer talking to someone ten feet away and throwing a knife on the ground in between them. The person then takes a step forward towards the officer and oh my god he’s going for the knife!
Edit: having actually watched the videos now I’m much more sympathetic to standing in front of the car—it seems like he’s walking over to the driver side to potentially help when the driver exits.
This is absurd. If I walk across the street and a vehicle is stopped for the crosswalk, have I "escalated" anything with that driver? No, there is no point in my walk in front of this car where I haven't been in a place where it is perfectly legitimate for me to be. If they decide to drive forward while I'm in front of them, they are the ones initiating violence, and I'd have a right to defend myself against it.
A police officer standing in front of the suspect's vehicle hasn't "escalated" anything by being there. The decision of the person in the car to accelerate at the officer is completely responsible for the violence that follows.
You’re right and I’ve revised my view after watching the videos. Somehow what I was picturing from description alone was pretty different.
More options
Context Copy link
Walking across a crosswalk is totally different to deliberately blocking a car that you know is trying to get away. The intents aren't at all similar.
He ws there before she tried to get away.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah if the officer literally threw himself under a moving vehicle you could argue he'd escalated, but the entire point of the issue was that the woman was conspicuously stopped.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Which means you shouldn't be roughed up for shits and giggles, not that the cops should let you run away or attack them.
No, why?
Because if he’s not in front of the car, her driving forward doesn’t put his life in danger?
He’s escalated it by making escape a threat to his life when it didn’t need to be.
There is no "right to escape from cops", and if she doesn't escape, she won't be putting anyone's life in danger, so she's the one escalating.
I think you’re conflating “made a bad choice” with “escalating.” She didn’t make the options life or death, though she evidently chose the latter (from watching it it’s not clear there was any intent to harm him).
He helped set the terms. I’m not saying it’s all on him but I’d be pretty surprised if he doesn’t regret stepping in front of that car.
The officer didn't. Just standing in front of a stopped car is not a life and death situation, even civillians are allowed to do it, and any driver charging at one, would be found guilty of some sort of a crime. She's the one who made it a lot closer to life and death, which is why she was the one escalating.
You’re right and I’ve revised my view after watching the videos. Somehow what I was picturing from description alone was pretty different.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But there is often a limit to the ability to claim self-defense when you deliberately engineered a situation for the purpose of being forced to resort to self-defense. Standing in front of a suspect's vehicle seems to fit the bill just fine. You are not physically impeding them from driving away.
If you give legal privileges to a conduct, you will see more of it. Standing in front of the car of a suspect to prevent them from escaping is reckless and will often lead to someone getting harmed. So it is logical to set the incentives so that cops will employ safer conduct instead.
I understand this point of view but this seems to amount to “Just let people flee.” If a cop were trying to arrest someone located in a room, it would seem logical to stand in the doorway blocking exit even though this would mean a charge towards the doorway becomes the same as a charge towards the cop. The alternative seems absurd, that cops are obligated to never corner a suspect and always leave an easy and unobstructed path of escape. In my example, is a cop obligated to politely stand aside from the door so as to not escalate? That seems absurd.
The difference between a guy standing in the door and a guy standing in front of a car is that the guy in the door has a good chance of physically stopping a suspect.
Without going all principle of a double effect on you, it seems to me that there is a clear distinction between an action which does something beneficial (physically reducing the risk of a suspect escaping) alongside with something undesirable (increasing the risk of a physical confrontation) and an action which mostly does something undesirable (turning any escape attempt into an assault with a deadly weapon, which can then be answered in kind).
Some Culture Warrior has dug out rules for the CBP:
Now, I will grant you that ICE is a sister agency of CBP, so these rules do not apply to them. If they did apply, I think that the case would be rather clear cut: a fuckwit deliberately engineered a situation in which he could use deadly force while claiming self-defense when agency policy told him explicitly not to do that. Not so different from a cop who decides to carry a bottle of nitroglycerin on patrol so he is justified in shooting any teen who assaults him.
The agent did not do this. The agent was there before the car started moving.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The difference between a guy standing in the door and a guy standing in front of a car is that the guy in the door has a good chance of physically stopping a suspect.
Without going all principle of a double effect on you, it seems to me that there is a clear distinction between an action which does something beneficial (physically reducing the risk of a suspect escaping) alongside with something undesirable (increasing the risk of a physical confrontation) and an action which mostly does something undesirable (turning any escape attempt into an assault with a deadly weapon, which can then be answered in kind).
Some Culture Warrior has dug out rules for the CBP:
Now, I will grant you that ICE is a sister agency of CBP, so these rules do not apply to them. If they did apply, I think that the case would be rather clear cut: a fuckwit deliberately engineered a situation in which he could use deadly force while claiming self-defense when agency policy told him explicitly not to do that. Not so different from a cop who decides to carry a bottle of nitroglycerin on patrol so he is justified in shooting any teen who assaults him.
/images/17678734169278667.webp
More options
Context Copy link
Why not though? They have the cars license plate and can make an arrest later.
What happens when later comes and the person still would rather threaten harm to themselves or others instead of being arrested?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Suppose you are parked next to me at the grocery store, and I am standing behind your car while I hold the cart for another person who is unloading it into the trunk. After 10 seconds of this, you become impatient and attempt to run me over with your car, and I pull out my gun and shoot you. Have I "deliberately engineered a situation for the purpose of being forced to result to self-defense?" My intuition is, no, I'm doing something that is possibly annoying, possibly grounds for being physically moved out of the way, but in no way inviting attempted vehicular homicide.
Now, you might counter that the situation with the police is different, because it starts as a hostile interaction, and the police should intuit that someone might be more likely to take that action in their case. However, this runs directly into the moral hazard that you are now legally privileging the judgment of someone who is at a minimum hostile, probably a lawbreaker and antisocial, over the conduct of someone who might be having a moment of road rage. This might make sense to people are see murderous hostility to the police as the default normal condition that requires no justification, but that's not an intuition that I share.
If you stand in front of a car with the intent of blocking them in, and then shoot the driver when he tries to pull out anyway, that's almost always murder.
More options
Context Copy link
That situation is different, because if you stand in the way of a car while unloading groceries, your intend is clearly not to force the driver to either stay put or escalate to deadly force. Also, it is very rare for bananas to trigger a flight response, while being faced with police arrest will trigger such a response in a small fraction of the population (and possibly a larger faction of the part of the population likely to be arrested) where suspects will risk their lives trying to escape even if they are not currently wanted for a capital crime. It is stupid, but people are predictably stupid in that way.
I would argue that intent matters. Consider the opposite situation. A police vehicle tries to pursue a suspect, but it hampered (1) by an innocent bystander crossing the road who does not realize what is going on or (2) by an activist who is placing themselves in harms way to coerce the cops to stop the pursuit. While I would want the police to try to avoid killing the person in their way in either case, I would cut them a lot more slack for grazing the activist. Placing yourself (and others) in mortal danger to coerce a behavior from others seems straightforward bad. If the coercion was also unlawful (e.g. the activist doing the blocking), I won't cry to much if they break their leg in the process.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, presumably ICE is detaining or arresting her because she's in the way and being annoying; if she's driving away (again, presumably because she decided it was no longer worth it), this removes the annoyance and the obstruction, so it seems extra odd to make it into a life or death situation when essentially the situation is about to resolve itself to almost everyone's satisfaction shortly.
This also doesn't fit your example. Standing behind your car has a clear and temporary purpose: holding the cart for someone. It's not for the purpose of obstructing the car, the car is just inconvenienced as a side effect. A better example would be the escalation into a bar fight. At some point, one person gets super close into the face of someone else. Human nature is to push the person away and out of their 'personal space'. The shove is interpreted as violence, and a punch is (or worse) is thrown. The fight starts. Any number of variants are possible. Now, responsibility for this series of events is rarely clear-cut. I would say that sticking your face a few inches away from someone else's is basically asking to get pushed away, even if the shove is the first physical thing to happen and technically bad to do. This is not a perfect analogy by any means, but the point is that it's usually understood that deliberately constraining the options of someone else brings on some responsibility to go with it. Law enforcement, presumably being trained for situations as it is literally a big part of their job, is not perfectly immune from blame simply due to their law enforcement role, and in fact it might be reasonable to expect higher standards.
Now sure, you can say that once law enforcement pulls the trigger on something, they are justified in following through, but surely not all crimes are worth equal effort in enforcing? Cops and prosecutors themselves don't even believe that as a matter of regular, daily work. There's a sliding scale of seriousness for crimes, and this one kind of seems like it's near the bottom. I'm sympathetic to arguments about avoiding accidentally incentivizing criminals to regularly escape, but obstruction seems like the worst possible crime for that worry to apply, right?
I think this is where I disagree. The officer standing behind the car is also not for the purpose of obstructing the car, it's for the purpose of effecting the arrest of the person inside the car. This is not like a bar fight at all. Arresting people engaging in obstruction of legitimate police activity is something I want more of, not less of. It seems entirely correct that the police are deliberately constraining the options of someone they are trying to arrest. That's what arrest is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you're standing in the way of their car and they attempt to drive out of the parking spot as if you're not there, my intuition is you just walk out of the way. Not pull a gun and shoot. In fact moving out of the way appears to be vastly easier in terms of getting rid of the immediate danger.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I made no mention of a right to escape. I’m just observing that it’s silly to unnecessarily make an escape attempt put your life at risk then hide behind fear for your life when an easy to anticipate behavior occurs.
I think it was dumb to run don’t get me wrong but I don’t see why we should accept “fear for my life” as some kind of blanket excuse.
The police officer changed the outcomes from { arrest, gets away } to { arrest, someone dies }
I agree she chose badly but I still think it was stupid to turn this into a situation where someone might die.
If he weren’t in front of the car and she’d fled would you endorse him shooting at the car to stop her?
I'm saying the only way your argument makes sense is if there was such a right.
By that logic arresting any armed suspect would be "silly" because you'd be putting yourself in the same situation when someone has a gun, and you want detain them.
You’re right and I’ve revised my view after watching the videos. Somehow what I was picturing from description alone was pretty different.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't the wisdom of this contingent on the probabilities?
Suppose we go from {arrest (50%), gets away (50%)} to {arrest (98%), someone dies (2%)}? Are you still confident this is "stupid?"
That said, I don't know what the actual matrix looks like, and it's plausible that the juice is not worth the squeeze, but I don't think you can evaluate whether a particular outcome change is stupid or not without at least considering it. From a game-theory point of view, it can completely change what game is being played.
You’re right the point that out—I’m being brief because I’m on my phone but my full complaint was it seems a bit chickenshit to make the game life or death and then appeal to fearing for your life. If you didn’t want your life at risk don’t step in front of the car.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think framing it purely as 'X right exists [and trumps everything]' and leaving it at that is not a helpful framing, because especially when talking about law enforcement various "rights" come into conflict with each other all the time.
If a right like that existing wouldn't make the argument clear cut, doesn't make that my case, which depends on such a right not existing, even stronger?
...people pretty obviously have a right to not be shot by police unless they've in some sense 'deserved it' or some other interest is served to ameliorate a certain rate of accidents. A "right to life" ring a bell? Tradeoffs exist when it comes to public policy. I much dislike the constant agitation by people all over politics at pretending these tradeoffs don't even exist in the first place because of XYZ iron law or moral stance. In this case, it feels completely beside the point to view police actions as inherently self-justifying. And to be clear, I'm advocating for policy change, not necessarily a specific outcome in this specific case.
You're the one that said "I think framing it purely as 'X right exists [and trumps everything]' and leaving it at that is not a helpful framing, because especially when talking about law enforcement various "rights" come into conflict with each other all the time", so right off thr bat you've originally argued against your case, which was my point.
My case rests on a specific right (one to escape), NOT existing. If the suspect does not escape, by means of charging at an officer with a deadly weapon, at no point is their life in danger, so framing the discussion as a "right to life" id completely absurd.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes- as a political slogan of the pro-life movement, relating to the inherent innocence of unborn who have made no decisions that could warrant killing them.
Secondarily, as a bad-faith attempt to twist that broadly understood meaning into other non-analogous contexts, typically as a poor 'gotcha' intended to imply hypocrisy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link