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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.
Yes, and people could also choose not to drive around in masks, tactical gear, and unmarked cars to intimidate people in a city that the president perceives as inhabited by his enemies. As I say in the last paragraph, your view of this will depend on who you think is acting morally in this situation.
I agree.
Did you watch the same video I did? She was not, as seen by the fact that a car passes during the video, and she tries to wave the ICE truck by. She is blocking one lane of a two-lane one-way street, which would certainly warrant action from a real cop but does not seem to be any business of ICE's. I have no idea what happened earlier (do we have any evidence anything did?), but it was not "all day" as the shooting happened at 9:30 am, and she had already dropped her kid off at school.
This is a long and roundabout way of saying "enforce immigration law," which is not only legal, but is literally the thing that the current president promised to do before he was elected in a landslide. If it's your honest belief that the government has no business enforcing its own laws immediately following an election in which the populace voted overwhelmingly for the government to do more enforcement of those very laws, I'm really not sure what you think the point of democracy is.
She is not a police officer and has no authority to direct traffic, and the convoy has no obligation to trust that she will allow them all to pass without, for example, obstructing just the back half of the convoy to split the convoy in half. If you do not understand why giving a hostile bystander the opportunity to split your convoy in half is bad tactics, you do not have sufficient insight to converse meaningfully on this issue.
My original post was to analyse the immediate events leading to the shooting. I'm not super interested in arguing about which side is more at fault for this kind of tense situation happening in the first place, I was just pointing out that there is possible and reasonable disagreement with your characterisation that it is her fault.
Sounds like you agree then that she was not barricading the road, merely that she could decide to barricade the road.
To be frank, this is Minneapolis, not Afghanistan. Despite what Trump et al. would have you believe, left-wing protestors are not generally violent agitators just waiting for an opportunity to murder federal officials. Even if they decide against all reasonable evidence that they can't just drive by safely, there are many options that do not involve immediately saying "get out of the fucking car" and then trying to tear the door open.
A person manning a barricade can decide to allow passage through the barricade without it ceasing to be a barricade. Please do not argue semantics.
The idea that the police force that is currently being protested by the person who has parked her car across the road, in the context of a nationwide spree of activists using their cars to disrupt ICE operations, can reasonably expect that she intends to behave cooperatively as they pass, is absurd. They absolutely should not expect that she intends to cooperate in their passage.
True, but they do have the explicitly stated goal of obstructing and interfering with law enforcement operations. There have been numerous car ramming attacks by left wing activists all over the country. It's pretty reasonable to treat the left wing activist sitting in her car sideways in the road in front of you as very likely intending to add to that number.
Police are under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to be nice to lawbreakers. Being treated unkindly by the police is a completely predictable consequence of breaking the law, and if you want them to treat you kindly you can simply not do that.
I don't think I'm arguing semantics, I don't see any indication that she ever made any attempt to prevent anybody from driving down the street, which is the core definition of a barricade.
I think this is the crux of our disagreement, I think this is an insane thing to believe. I'm not sure there's much else for us to discuss after that.
So after a year in which there have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ICE agents, you don't think it's reasonable to believe that the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and is now parked sideways across the street in front of you, is more likely than not to be intending to use their vehicle to disrupt your convoy?
Exactly what is it reasonable to believe about the intentions of the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and has now parked her car sideways across the street in front of you?
Let me lay it out more clearly.
You are an ICE agent. You are in a city whose governor and mayor have stirred up resentment against your lawful activities, in which activists have been organizing to oppose you.
A woman and her wife have been following you all morning, antagonizing you as you go about your work.
Later, as you drive down a street, you come across these women, with their car parked sideways across the street. You recognize them as people you have been having hostile interactions with all morning.
There have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ice agents in the past year.
Given the facts above, what is it reasonable for you to believe in this moment?
I do not believe it is possible for someone whose brain has not been swiss-cheesed by ideological capture to answer "actually I think it's most likely that she has totally legal reasons to be doing that which have nothing to do with me." If that's your answer you are an NPC, you have no theory of mind or independent opinions of your own.
I would be surprised if a single one of those attacks was committed by a protestor who was not actively being arrested. And given how much federal officials have lied about the circumstances of this incident, and even more flagrant lies about things such as why innocent people were sent to a foreign torture prison, I put very little stock in those numbers. Presumably the ICE agents believe them though.
Ah yes, the classic method of productive conversation, where you put words in someone's mouth and then call them names based on the opinions you made up for them. Surely you understand that the only two options are not "they are just there by coincidence" and "they are waiting to murder you"?
The couple were obviously there to document, protest and/or obstruct ICE activities. But I maintain that nobody would have been hurt if the agent had made the slightest attempt to act like a responsible authority figure and deescalate the situation, or if he had given her a chance to follow his orders in order to arrest her.
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