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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.
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.
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