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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.
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.
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 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.
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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?
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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.
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