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He wasn't, but the point of discussing whether what he did was optimal in hindsight is, IMO, to come up with a consensus that can be drilled into other LEOs so that they act more optimally if they ever find themselves in an analogous situation in the future. This is a high-profile case; whether the consensus emerges as "it was a good idea to shoot Good" or "in an idea world he should have jumped out of the way/whatever" can be expected to have some influence on cops' gut reactions when they find themselves in similar predicaments.
There is no such thing as “optimal”. It comes down to whether you think obstructing ICE is good.
I am pro-shooting because it reduces obstruction and reduces future crime.
Well, no. By "analogous situations in the future" I meant things of the shape "armed LEO thinks that a hitherto-non-murderous civilian is suddenly about to ram them with a car", whatever the identity and motivation of the civilian (and indeed, whichever law-enforcement unit the officer belongs to).
Also, with respect, you reasoning seems like a textbook example of terrorism in the original French Reign of Terror sense. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the state was justified in killing this particularly citizen; so long as the killing frightens other civilians away from non-lethally obstructing state action in the future, then it was justified" is a very dark road.
I prefer my dark road to anarchy. Not taking the dark road means 1% of the population deciding they don’t want something can cancel the ability of the government to do anything. A hecklers veto.
And we are struggling with this in a lot of places. Shooting one blue haired lesbian now lets ICE do their job. Honestly probably saves a billion in lost ICE man-power hours. It’s just a good trade.
This is a very silly false dichotomy: you are assuming the conclusion that "kill Mrs Good, possibly unjustly" is the only way to curb the problem of excessive obstructive protesting, creating a binary choice between human sacrifice and anarchy run amok. In fact, I don't believe that killings intended to create mass terror are the only way to curb obstructionism, if that is what you want to do - let alone that it is the most effective one. That's the whole crux of the debate, and you just whizz past it.
What are my other options?
Killing a few obstructors feels like it will solve the obstruction problem to me. Honestly there is a meme going around now where a “solves the problem button exists” and then everyone says these reasons I don’t care about will be a problem for not pressing it. I think I can just press this button.
Yes, well, ask Robespierre how that went. He might find it difficult to answer without his head, but you could ask. Ruling through fear - through actual fear, as opposed to reliable justice where punishment is meted out to the guilty in a predictable and orderly way - has not historically produced stable, long-term outcomes. If you make your government out to be made up of loose cannons who just might go nuts and kill you for sneezing at them, so watch it… you will only succeed in incentivizing the population to stay out of your way in the short term while plotting their very best to remove you ASAP.
If you want to solve the obstruction problem, you can actually arrest and prosecute people for obstruction, en masse, in an orderly, lawful, consistent way. A government which gives in to the temptation to murder random dissidents pour encourager les autres loses its mandate in a way that one which simply prosecutes crimes that are actually on the books in a scrupulous way does not.
(Of course, all of this is without getting into the thing where killing random people to create a state of terror, you know, falls petty squarely within what 99% of human beings would consider evil. I don't feel like getting into that would be a useful direction for this conversation, but it bears repeating.)
America doesn’t have the technology to run a process. Even if it was a 80-20 issue. The court dockets would be clogged for years. Soros would donate billions funding lawsuits and defenses. But outside of this case America just gets clogged in process. It’s why we are governed by executive orders now instead of congress. It’s why California funded high speed rail 20 years ago and now no high speed rail. We both know doing things this way is a strategy that won’t win.
So yes the only way to deal with obstructors is to just shoot them when you have plausible deniability.
Even accepting that premise, it doesn't really matter what percentage of arrests would lead to actual convictions for obstruction. The process is the punishment. Even making suspects spend a night or two in jail before letting them off with a warning would have significant deterrent value for dilettante protestors, never mind the prospect of a court-case-shaped millstone around their neck for the next two years. If they want to obstruct lawful operations through childish inconveniences like blocking roads with their cars or shouting "SHAME!" very loud, then inconveniencing them back, only harder, seems like the proper response.
Mrs Good may not have been some innocent bystander who wound up at the protest by mistake 'on the way' to picking her children up from school - but it is AIUI seemingly absolutely true that she casually thought she could maintain a schedule that went "3 p.m. - obstruct ICE raid, 3.15 p.m. - pick the kids up from school". This is the kind of attitude that you are up against. The prospect of handcuffs and a night in the slammer would be enough to cool down many tempers.
Even if you want to be meaner - even if you absolutely insist that extrajudicial violence is needed to get the point across - things like deploying tear gas into a rioting crowd still seem like a good bet that's far more ethically justifiable, and far less likely to result in a loss of perceived legitimacy for the regime, than jumping straight to murder.
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