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Notes -
New footage of ICE shooter
Forgive another high-level post but the body cam (or cell phone?) footage of the cop who shot has been released by AlphaNews and this may significantly change perceptions of what happened (to those willing to have perceptions changed):
https://x.com/alphanews/status/2009679932289626385?s=46
To my eyes it appears that:
The ICE agent is clearly hit by her car and goes down
The ICE agent was not standing in front of her car but walking from one side to another
The driver’s wife is not passively observing but actively shouting at the agents (this should undermine the idea that the driver and her wife were somehow neutral people accidentally caught up in everything)
Perhaps most importantly, but maybe most open to interpretation, it appears to me that the driver looks directly at the ICE agent before driving forward. From this bodycam angle, her face is clearly shown looking directly ahead where the officer is seconds before she moves her car forward.
I suppose a lot of new interpretations are possible, but to me this video footage clearly debunks several going interpretations I have seen proposed. At the very least, maybe reasonable people can agree that the cop did not shoot the driver in cold blood from the side window.
I would also not be surprised to see the idea spread that this new video is AI.
Edit: per corrections from others below, this is not bodycam but cell phone footage (my mistake as it’s clearly even labeled as such) and this explains why it tumbles at the end of the video. Thanks!
Illuminating video, in how an angry but non-violent situation can suddenly become a violent one.
I think it's helpful to look at this from the perspective of the four main people involved.
Good: within a couple seconds the situation goes, through no action of your own, to one where someone is trying to open your car door while telling you to "get out of the fucking car" (unclear if he is grabbing her with his left hand or just the door?), and your wife is yelling "drive, drive". I think this was an insanely stressful situation, and she is completely blameless for the actions she took in this video.
Shooter: somebody mad at you suddenly starts driving towards you. In retrospect clearly an unnecessary shot, especially continuing to shoot once they are not aiming at you, but probably falls within reasonable discretion in the heat of the moment. I think essentially blameless for actions in this video.
Wife: government agents suddenly start trying to pull your wife out of the car without warning. Yelling "drive, drive" is clearly bad in retrospect, but I understand where she's coming from. Still, not an appropriate reaction, and she certainly deserves some of the immediate blame for how this situation ended up.
Second agent: pulls up, and immediately marched up to the car, saying "get out of the car, get out of the fucking car". I'm not sure whether he starts trying to open the door before or after he becomes aware that she's going to reverse. Either way, completely ridiculous behaviour. If he had just walked up and said "ma'am, can you please get out of the car" none of this would have happened. If he hasn't asked her to get out of the car none of this has happened (why and under what authority is he asking this? As far as I can tell he has not seen or heard her do literally anything at this point, and she is not a target of his immigration enforcement activities). If he had just driven past like she was explicitly letting him do, none of this would have happened. The lion's share of the immediate blame rests on this officer. Unclear exactly how much he even knew about what was going on when he pulled up, but either way he turned up the temperature on this situation hugely for no apparent reason.
Beyond that, there is of course the question of who is responsible for starting this confrontation in the first place. My biases are that that is basically 100% on Trump et al. for pursuing immigration enforcement in a way that is prioritizing intimidation over both civil rights and actually targeting the bulk of illegal immigrants who are working in agriculture etc, and on the agents who choose to work under these conditions. But obviously others will disagree and I've tried to keep these biases out of my analysis of the immediate situation above.
If being confronted by a police officer stresses you out that badly then you probably shouldn't make it your hobby to go out and antagonize cops. This is a decision that was entirely under her control before she deliberately created a situation where she would inevitably end up confronted by a police officer. You can just not do that!
While the wife is clearly an accomplice, the only extent to which I would find her responsible is the extent to which she participated in the decision for the two of them to go out and antagonize cops despite being clearly unprepared for the full implications of doing so. I don't think this is criminal. I don't think she bears any real responsibility for the stepping on the gas. A driver is responsible for the trajectory of their vehicle, nobody else.
She was barricading the road with her car, and had apparently been antagonizing them all day. Barricading the road was the last straw. ICE can arrest people for crimes, such as obstruction, committed against them.
Given a car literally drives right passed her, this clearly wasn't going very effectively
And if it turns out she actually was pretty effective, and this moment wasn't representative of her activities on that they, will that change your mind about anything, or will we just move on to the next bowl of spaghetti to throw at the wall?
Yeah I don't really have a dog in this fight
I think the high level goal of ICE is justified, I think it's execution is deliberately inflammatory and thus stupid.
I dislike the fact that people are fucking with ICE such that situations arise where citizens get shot, which is a tragedy.
I also have some sympathy for those getting baited into protesting ICE, as I believe ICE has been designed to create flashpoints such as this. So they're taking the bait, which I personally would not, but I see why they do.
So does an eyewitness describing her as "very successful at blocking traffic" move the needle for you in any way?
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