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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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Indeed, if she hadn’t hit the ice, she would have hit the ICE. So to speak.
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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.
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