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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.
Classic noncentral fallacy. When you say "fleeing the police", the audience imagines an unarmed person running away, not a person trying to run over a policeman with a giant hunk of metal. Sure, fleeing the police alone should not result in deadly force, as it is not imminent danger to the policeman. "Fleeing" in form of ramming the policeman with the vehicle should elicit immediate deadly response, as it is a deadly threat. If you can not flee without threatening deadly harm to the policeman - well, you are fucked, do not flee, or try and eat the bullet. It doesn't even have to be the police - if you try to murder anybody with a vehicle, they have obvious right to self defense. The victim being the police just aggravates it, because the criminal must have known attacking the police is a crime - any sane adult does - and did it anyway.
I think it's worth noting that even if she did not intend to kill or harm the officer, at a minimum (1) she was driving recklessly; and (2) attempting to flee the authorities. I don't know what the law is in Minnesota, but I think that in most jurisdictions if you are fleeing the authorities, drive recklessly in doing so, and kill someone in the process, you are guilty of murder, or at least some kind of aggravated homicide.
And, on top of that, the whole event was following at least two crimes already committed by her - intentionally impeding a law enforcement action (that's why she was there at the first place) and refusing to follow a legal order of a law enforcement officer.
Yeah, and that raises a whole other issue. As a democratic republic, we have a system in place to decide on our public policies. People vote for elected representatives and an executive who respectively make and enforce the law. In this case, congress has decided that it should be illegal for non-citizens to enter into (or stay in) the United States without a proper visa. And the president has decided to make a priority of enforcing the law.
Having lost at the ballot box, these activists have decided to play the role of the sore loser, breaking laws that are reasonable and fair and obstructing the enforcement of other laws that are reasonable and fair. Which isn't to say that what they are doing is per se immoral, just that society should not be overly accommodating of these sore loser types.
Interestingly, Leftists showed that they were aware of this principle when they repeatedly (and falsely) accused Kyle Rittenhouse of violating gun laws to show up at protest in Wisconsin with a semi-automatic rifle. And to the extent they have a point: A person who decides to take the law into his own hands and shows up aggravates an already tense situation had better be on his very best behavior. Which Kyle Rittenhouse was, but this Good woman was not.
I already see here leftists comparing Good to the American revolutionaries attacking the redcoats, so it looks like they do not see themselves bound by any social contract or agreements when they are on the losing site. If they win the elections, then it's "remember our democracy, you should submit to the will of people!" but if they lose, it's "we do not have to follow a bunch of Hitlers, we are the resistance!".
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