Before and after the trigger press that killed Renee Good

An incredibly in depth article about the legal circumstances and usual law enforcement procedures relevant to Johnathan Ross's shooting of Renee Good. I highly recommend reading the full article. My "taste" here really only shows how much analysis there is.

Regardless of whether deadly force was legally justified, Renee Nicole Good’s death was preventable.

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Whether Ross violated Homeland Security’s deadly force policies—and thus also potentially Good’s Fourth Amendment rights—is certainly one of the most important questions to arise out of her death. But amid the high passion and tumult of the debate, other, equally pressing issues remain largely unaddressed: Namely, what do the events which occurred immediately before Ross took the slack out of his trigger, and the response of him and his colleagues right after the final press, tell us about how ICE is conducting itself as it executes the largest apprehension and deportation operation in the history of the United States?

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At every step which led to the fatal trigger press, ICE could have behaved differently. It could have behaved more tactically. It could have behaved more humanely. The nation—to say nothing of Renee Nicole Good’s family—deserves an honest accounting of why it did not.

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Why was ICE interacting with Good in the first place?

The question isn’t rhetorical. Video footage shows that she was clearly—at least for a few moments, if not longer—blocking traffic by positioning her car in the middle of the road; furthermore, she was doing so while in the presence of law enforcement vehicles with lights and sirens activated. Such behavior would appear to be a prima facie violation of Minnesota Statute 169.20 §5, a misdemeanor punishable by a $300 fine, and perhaps diversion to a remedial driving school. If a peace officer with the appropriate authority ordered her to move, and she chose not to comply, she also may have been violating Minnesota Statute 169.34 §1(11).

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Minnesota defines a peace officer as “an employee of a political subdivision [i.e. a local municipality] or state law enforcement agency,” and only grants their federal counterparts arrest authorities for the purposes of state and local violations when a number of conditions are met. The most important of these prerequisites requires that the federal officer be on duty, acting at the request of a local or state officer, and operating pursuant to the supervision of that local or state officer. At this point, neither ICE management nor any executive branch officials have argued that these conditions were met; indeed, the tenor and tone of statements by the Minneapolis mayor and Minnesota governor would certainly suggest otherwise. The proper remedy, then, for Good’s obstruction of traffic would have simply been for the ICE officers to request that local police join in the response and facilitate the movement of her vehicle.

But let’s put this argument aside, for the moment.

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But let’s put this argument aside for the moment as well.

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But let’s put aside this argument, too, for the moment

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But let’s also put this argument aside, for the moment

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But let’s put this argument aside as well, for the moment

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At this point, we have run out of arguments which we can momentarily cabin. As videos of the incident show, as Renee Nicole Good turns her steering wheel to the right and begins to drive away, three shots ring out, her vehicle careens into a parked car and light post, and the assembled bystanders scream.

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Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and within hours of the event, Secretary Noem—whose own deadly force experience recalls nothing so much as the finale of “Old Yeller”—quickly pronounced the shoot justified. The vice president and president of the United States followed suit. And to be fair, many critics of ICE have come to the opposite conclusion with similar alacrity. But this article is not about whether deadly force was justified at the moment Ross let loose with three rounds of ammunition; it is simply a series of observations about steps that could have prevented the need to even make that choice.