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After a day of reading and watching videos of the woman killed in Minneapolis yesterday, here are some thoughts:
This iceman was hit by a different car previously.
The woman was cosplaying resistance fighter, not really realizing how dangerous what she was doing actually was.
It is unambiguous given the videos that she did try to hit the officer with her car, but just barely, and seems to have backed off immediately when her tires slipped on the ice.
it seems reasonable to me that the iceman was looking for retribution for the previous car strike, and she gave it to him.
Shooting her would have had no effect on his safety, even if she had gotten traction. They were at “point blank” range.
All in all I think everybody here is a victim of the current evil in our society. A woman in a gay relationship with a recently deceased husband, in a new city, is being fed a constant stream of propaganda. I can imagine the state of mind if this person, and it isn’t pleasant.
She decided to try and help, which is good, but was essentially a pawn, or unknowing martyr for political power struggles I doubt she understood. A comparison could be a child soldier/suicide bomber.
The iceman: I expect better than this. Unlike the woman, acting on pure propaganda fueled adrenaline, he is supposed to train for this. He also interacts with these people daily. He should be thinking rationally here, and the rational move is to just get out of the way, not walk in front of the car of a neurotic woman screaming at you. He is legally, technically in the clear, but this was immoral. Hes basically exploiting a series of laws and norms to allow him to “innocently” kill a woman as a form of retribution. This is akin in my mind to entrapment of some form. The iceman sets up a series of traps, and just waits for an untrained, trigger, fight or flight woman to fall into one of them. He shouldn’t be setting traps, he should by building golden off-ramps to de-escalate.
Unfortunately the same which gripped both the woman and the shooter is gripping everybody forming an opinion online around this. nyTimes put out am [absurd] “forensic analysis” and determined she was trying to escape, which will never be questioned by the blue tribe ever. We will forever live in the reality where an iceman killed a woman in cold blood on Jan 7th 2026 in Minneapolis.
I don’t think this will metastasize into Floyd 2.0, mostly because the woman was white, but also because of the weather. We’ll see how this weekend plays out though.
A final question: will the shooter be charged with a state crime in Minnesota and will he be able to avoid that charge? Could we run into a Chauvin type situation here?
Simplistically I voted for this. We won the election. I got ICE to enforce immigration law. As you said he’s been run over before. I don’t want my tax dollars going to him trying to be nice to people obstructing him from doing his job. I voted for ICE enforcing immigration law which includes using deadly force with people obstructed him from doing his job. One dead obstructor should eliminate thousands of others from obstructing. FAFO.
This wasn’t cosplay. I even read an article where an obstructor remarked what are they using real bullets instead of rubber bullets. Believe it or not but ICE are real policemen doing a real job of deporting millions of people unlawfully in America.
If the issue was the woman obstructing a law officer, then surely arresting her would have been an appropriate and proportional response? I doubt this would have become a viral story if that was all that ended up happening.
Most people who find the situation outrageous seem to think so because they believe the suspect was truly trying to flee and not hit any of the officers, and they therefore think that the use of deadly force was not appropriate. Separate from any of the facts of the case, is it your position that merely obstructing law officers or fleeing law officers should be punishable by immediate death?
Because I can say that sounds like a cure that is worse than the disease to me.
I disagree. Getting rid of obstruction is a cure that I very much want to solve the disease.
To your question. Yes. I think the police can kill to enforce the law.
This sort of doesn't answer my question. I think everyone except for the most committed anarchists believe it is appropriate for police to kill to enforce the law in at least some circumstances.
What I am interested in is what the limits to your position are? For example, you mentioned voting in your original post as a possible source of law enforcement legitimacy. Given that there is a fair argument that Donald Trump would have won the 2020 elections if not for COVID, and thus it was the democratic will of the people to have harsher lockdowns, under what circumstances do you think it would have been appropriate for law enforcement to kill people who violated curfews or lockdowns in 2020-2022?
I guess I'm curious if you recognize any limiting principle on law enforcement's use of lethal force? Do you hold democratic will above constitutional limits? Do you bite the bullet when your political opponents are in power, and accept that they can pass and enforce laws that might make you a criminal under the right circumstances?
We already crossed this rubicon. Yes they can and did in 2020-2024.
They did. I wasn’t allowed to work or travel to weddings during Covid. They won the election. They enforced their will.
But this situation is different since the person who died used physical force on an officer. I guess I shouldn’t get shot on the street for violating Covid rules but if I hit an officer while violating those rules I am at the mercy of the regime.
I understand that they did that. I'm asking you if you consider that legitimate within your own political beliefs?
Is it just might makes right, and the will of the people as interpreted by whoever is currently in charge, or do you believe that the law or its enforcement can, in principle, be wrong or invalid for some reason?
As another set of examples, do you consider the American Revolutionary War or the American Civil War to be just wars? Is it ever correct to rebel against the current authorities? If so, what circumstances make it correct or legitimate?
Yes. Might makes right. I don’t believe multicultural societies and Democracy are compatible
Revolutionary War from a moral perspective was not just.
But if you win then you win.
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What an interesting question. What do you see as the implications of that statement being either true or false?
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