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There is literally no reason to believe this. These lesbians were there specifically to obstruct ICE, there is no reason to think a little politeness will suddenly make them compliant.
She was there specifically to obstruct law enforcement. She ignored their orders to get out of the car. She tried to flee straight through an ICE agent walking directly in front of her car. On what dishonest leftist planet is ANY of this blameless?
It is shocking to me that even on the sacred Motte, of all places, even in the face of incontrovertible video evidence we still have to deal with insane leftist sophistry and blatant lies.
One is reminded of a certain relevant quote:
To be clear, when I say "in this video", I mean that she did nothing to escalate the situation in this video, up until the point where she had both the agent and her wife yelling at her. As I say, your opinions on ultimate blame will somewhat depend on who you think is responsible for creating this conflict in the first place.
I do not feel like you are viewing this person as a fully realized human rather than an undifferentiated member of your outgroup. Normal, well-adjusted people don't generally ignore polite but firm requests from cops, and I have no reason to think she was anything but a normal, well-adjusted person who made a dumb decision in a moment of panic. Honestly I find it pretty ludicrous to imagine that this situation would have ended up with someone dead if the agents had behaved like normal well-trained cops, and I think you should re-examine your biases if you believe otherwise. Leftists are not generally crazed lunatics who are unable to respond to incentives.
I do not understand how your reaction to my post where I state that the agent was probably justified to shoot her is to start ranting about insane leftist sophistry and quoting Hitler. Good to see the Motte hasn't changed since I used to post on Reddit.
Going to a 'protest' to blockade government activity is not the action of a normal, well-adjusted person. You may think it's a good thing! Necessary, maybe even sacred, whatever. But not normal and well-adjusted.
Situation much like this one have happened possibly dozens of times, maybe hundreds or thousands if we broaden the category, over the last 10 years in this country, and very few of them end this way. It's less about the specific training (even if it was inadequate) and that every such interaction is rolling a handful of D20s: how does the subject react, how does the officer react, what are the environmental factors making them react better/worse, etc. This encounter rolled too many 1s.
If you expect perfection in every single encounter, you are not living in reality.
Likewise, living in Minneapolis, the victim of this tragedy was not living in reality.
Not sure I understand what you're saying. Of course this situation required a confluence of factors to end how it did. But I believe one of those factors is that ICE agents are regularly escalating situations that could be deescalated (many such cases in videos coming out of Minneapolis). I assume this is some combination of top-down direction, poor training, and internal culture. It would be better if this wasn't the case.
How often are agents provocateurs interfering with ICE? How often do cops have to restrain drug-addled subjects resisting arrest? Both occur pretty regularly, right? Most of the time both situations end up with no consequences; very rarely something bad happens and then it's the cause du jour for a round of mass stupidity.
No amount of training gets you perfection.
How exactly does one deescalate against people wanting escalation, short of giving up and unilateral disarmament? That's what I mean by expecting perfection.
It would be better if protestors didn't interfere. It would be better if we hadn't spent years ignoring the border. It would be better if men were angels and we didn't need government at all.
Alas, people Will Not Just.
If someone is not being violent, you make sure they are doing something that warrants arrest, you tell them they are under arrest or otherwise make it clear they are being arrested, and you give them a chance to comply before assaulting them. But that is clearly not happening in many cases. Here's a couple more that could very easily have also resulted in someone dying:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1q9xczh/ice_pushes_man_into_oncoming_traffic/ Shoving someone into traffic is clearly not the appropriate response here.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ICE_Watch/comments/1qc21p8/ice_abducted_a_woman_trying_to_get_to_a_doctors/ Hard to know exactly what's happening here, obviously the headline on that post is overblown. But it sure seems to me like agents are telling her to get out of her car and to keep driving at the same time. Most blatant though is at 43 seconds where an agent smashes her passenger side window for no reason. Exactly how is this supposed to help things?
https://old.reddit.com/r/ICE_Watch/comments/1qavmee/ice_in_minneapolis_ramming_civilian_cars_through Again, an overblown headline, and I'll admit that there's no proof this is actually ICE although it seems likely. But the correct response to someone blocking you is to ask them to move, and to arrest them if they won't, not to push their car out of the way.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QZTxiBQOnZ4 Agent attacks someone for no reason.
I don't doubt that it is difficult for ICE et al. to accomplish their mission while respecting the rights of protestors, and only acting against those who genuinely step over the line. I guess I would just say "too bad". There are many different levers in politics, law, and society, and if you don't control enough of them, you don't get to accomplish your goals. If you don't have buy-in from the local populace, police, or political system, it's a feature of the system that that makes things difficult, not a bug.
The response of an authoritarian to this problem is to send in the jackboots. That is genuinely what this feels like to me.
Is obstruction a protestor's right? Are they truly that protected of a class that they can do basically whatever they want? The whole conflation of action and speech really went off the rails somewhere along the way.
We should build a wall around Minnesota instead of Mexico.
Also the results of the last event of insufficient buy-in from the local political system was putting them down by the hundreds of thousands and telling states' rights to get fucked. Federalism won the day, baby!
Was Eisenhower wrong to federalize the guard?
Yes, obstruction for political purposes is something you have a right to in my opinion. That doesn't mean you can't be arrested for obstruction. But they should not be pushed in front of a bus for obstruction when there is a clear alternative.
As for the second part, fair enough, that is indeed not a general principle I actually hold, I'm just judging things based on the object-level morality. It fundamentally just seems clear to me that the behavior of agents on the ground and of federal leadership is just as much about intimidating political opponents as it is about accomplishing their stated goals (I mean the president has said this more or less explicitly).
The same being true of the protestors [and the federal faction they prefer], of course. It's not possible to vote for a party promising not to do this.
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