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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31345 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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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:

[...] Further, agents should not place themselves in the path of a moving vehicle or use their body to block a vehicle's path.
[...] Agents should continue, whenever possible, to avoid placing themselves in positions where they have no alternative to using deadly force.

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.

Further, agents should not place themselves in the path of a moving vehicle or use their body to block a vehicle's path.

The agent did not do this. The agent was there before the car started moving.

That is exactly my understanding of what "use their body to block a vehicle's path" means.

It's possible, but I don't even think he was doing that. I'm not sure he was involved in her arrest at all, he was walking down the street, not standing to block her as I initially assumed.

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