In 2013, the federal government commissioned an independent review of its own border agents. The Police Executive Research Forum examined 67 use-of-force incidents that resulted in 19 deaths. What they found was that agents were deliberately stepping in front of moving vehicles to manufacture justification for shooting the drivers.
Read that again.
Federal law enforcement officers were intentionally creating the conditions that would allow them to kill people.
The PERF report didn’t mince words. It noted agents “intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force.”
In plain English: they’d stand where the car was going, then claim self-defense when they pulled the trigger.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection tried to bury it. When Congress asked for the report, they got a summary with the vehicle-positioning findings conveniently omitted. It took a leak to the Los Angeles Times and an ACLU lawsuit to pry the full document loose. By May 2014, under enormous pressure, CBP finally released it publicly.
The agency also issued new guidelines. Agents should not use their body to block a vehicle’s path. They should not shoot at fleeing vehicles unless occupants pose an imminent lethal threat other than the vehicle itself. The policy was explicit: move out of the fucking way.
Now - pay attention to this part.
The Department of Homeland Security has had an official use-of-force policy on the books since 2018. Policy Statement 044-05, signed by the Acting Deputy Secretary, establishes department-wide standards.
It requires force to be “objectively reasonable based on the facts and circumstances.” It cites the Supreme Court cases that set the legal standard. It looks professional and thorough on paper.
But I guess paper doesn’t change institutional culture. Training manuals don’t override what agents learned on the job a decade ago. And the people who were active agents during the period when stepping-in-front-of-vehicles was standard practice didn’t just disappear. They got promoted. They became instructors. They trained the next generation.
How long has Jonathan Ross - the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good - been working for Border Patrol and ICE?
Since 2007.
Oh. And the Department of Justice policy is even clearer.
Firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless no other objectively reasonable means of defense exists - “which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.” That’s the actual language.
Moving out of the way is supposed to be the first option, not the last.
So when a federal agent positions himself in front of a car, pulls out his phone to record with one hand, draws his weapon with the other, and then fires - the question isn’t just whether he feared for his life. The question is why he was standing there in the first place.
Former ICE officials have been refreshingly honest in background quotes to reporters this week. “Why did you put yourself in front of the car? You’re staging the scene.” “At a certain point, you need to understand not to put yourself in these positions.” One veteran agent told CBS News he’d been conducting stops for 25 years and never, ever wanted to be intentionally in front of the vehicle.
Because that’s not tactics. That’s manufacturing a pretext.
The PERF report was supposed to fix this. The policy updates were supposed to change behavior. But here we are, twelve years later, watching video that looks exactly like what the independent reviewers described: an agent positioning himself to create the justification, then using it.
The agency’s own policy says force must be objectively reasonable. The DOJ policy says moving out of the way should be the first option. The 2014 guidelines explicitly told agents not to block vehicles with their bodies.
None of that matters if the people enforcing the policy are the same people who learned the old playbook.
The infrastructure for accountability doesn’t work when the FBI takes sole control of investigations and excludes state authorities. It doesn’t work when federal immunity shields agents from local prosecution. It doesn’t work when the same agency investigates itself.
What we’re watching isn’t a rogue agent or a tragic split-second decision. What we’re watching is a system designed to produce exactly this outcome - and documented evidence that the government knew about the problem over a decade ago.
They commissioned a report. They buried the report. They got caught. They changed the policy on paper. And twelve years later, the playbook is still running.
Here are all of the likely laws Jonathan Ross broke:
Most likely chargeable offenses:
1. Third-Degree Murder (Minn. Stat. § 609.195)
2. Second-Degree Manslaughter (Minn. Stat. § 609.205)
3. Failure to Render Aid to Shooting Victim (Minn. Stat. § 609.662)
4. Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law (18 U.S.C. § 242)
Additional potential charges depending on investigation:
5. First-Degree Manslaughter (Minn. Stat. § 609.20)
6. Evidence tampering (leaving scene with weapon)
7. Obstruction charges if coordination to block investigation is proven
#ratcclips
22 comments:
Now we wait to witness how the fascist regime and its fascist agency handles this. Now that sane people have seen the truth of Goods intentional murder in light of this report.
Seems hard to paint victim Mrs. Good as some foam-at-the-mouth stalker when all the videos show the masked thug swarm doing their thing.
Shaw... I posted this on another thread, but it fits here as well.
Here's how one writer described what happened.
1. Unwarranted violence. Based on all the evidence we have, including voice files from the conversation between Good and the agent who killed her, and ICE rules of force guidelines, the killing was unwarranted and in fact, the use of a firearm in this case, was against ICE guidelines.
2. Lying about the incident. Again, based on the tapes we have, the officer was not run over as Pres Trump stated, was never in jeopardy, as stated by the president and Good was not being violent.
3. Extension of impunity towards the perpetrator of the violence. The Trump Admin has made it difficult, if not impossible for legal authorities in Minnesota to investigate the shooting, taking evidence, and barring the state from investigating.
The agents manufactured a crisis so they could use unwarranted violence, killing a woman who seconds before was talking very politely to them [if the agent's own video is to be believed].
Then the state apparatus, in this case, the Feds, swung into action, lying about what happened. The agent was never injured, he was never run over, the lady did not try to kill him. Multiple witnesses can testify to this.
Now the feds refuse to share even basic forensic evidence with state investigators, resulting in impunity for shooter, his government agency, ICE and the president.
As Anne Applebaum states, these are the three steps for a government to slide into fascism.
Sliding? Read today’s NYTimes and its report about the appellate court judges Trump’s appointed. We are already there.
The Trump fascists are now manipulating our history. Fascists do this all through history.
“Smithsonian Removes Label Noting Trump Impeachments
When the National Portrait Gallery replaced a portrait of President Trump this week, it took down a biography of his first term.”
The fascists have also begun rewriting of the J6 insurrection, as the fascists are manipulating and changing the Renee Good murder.
We’re not “sliding,” we are there.
We have been on the sliding chute since January 2017. As you point out Shaw we have arrived. The intensity will increase as we approach the 2026 mid terms. The regime of terror will likely creatre the conditions to implement marshal law and cancel the mid term elections. If that happens, a different likelihood, we will be at fully blown fascist authoritarianism with a dictator controlling everything.
David French:
“…Trump isn’t a responsible leader, and he’s at his absolute worst in a crisis. He lies. He inflames his base. And — most dangerous of all — he pits the federal government against states and cities, treating them not as partners in constitutional governance but as hostile inferiors that must be brought to heel.
That’s exactly what has happened in the hours and days since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on the streets of Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Instantly, the administration’s narrative locked in. In a Truth Social post published mere hours after Good’s death, Trump said that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” He said that it was “hard to believe” that the ICE agent (who was recorded walking around after the incident, apparently unharmed) was alive.
Statements from senior administration officials were even worse. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said that Good committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, referred to Good as a violent rioter and said she “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”
I call on our conservative friends and fellow Americans who post here to show up. Come on guys. Each of you.
The president has lied to the American people, not to theoretically keep us safe as Johnson supposedly did in the Turner Joy BS incident, but to incite us. Not to calm the waters and promote the general welfare, but to cause strife. Not to appeal to the law, but to subjugate it.
Your silence is your acquiescence, your approval of his actions, your view of how America should be. Your vote for our Congressional leaders who are too timid to fulfill their Constitutional duties and challenge him is just as bad.
I get people were/are pissed. Fine. But anarchy is not the solution. Yet that is where we are sliding and some of you have even posted that is your hope, a hope to burn down the house so it can be rebuilt.
Well guys, here we are. You've got your wish.
What's next? What's the plan?
Authoritarians have the largest egos on the planet. Their extremely dualistic mindset allows them to see themselves as infallible. They believe their own propaganda and lies. Anything in opposition to their beliefs and actions is evil and must be subdued and eliminated. Trump is among the world's most deluded and therefore most dangerous of the authoritarians.
America is now a fascist state led by a deranged deteriorating idiot, supported by a fascist scotus and a facist republican congress. The roads back to sanity and democracy are being methodically closed off.
This nation is becoming Germany, circa 1930's and early 1949's. As Trump and MAGA minority rule takes us further away from our founding principles and deeper into authoritarian fascism.
True History is being rewritten to serve Trump and the fascist state he is building. The playbook of fascists (and the Christian religion going back to 325 CE) has always been the same. Only additional chapters keep being written.
David, For every action there is a equal and opposite reaction. That does not seem to apply in this case because one president let in millions of illegals for us to feed, house and clothe. The the next president reacts by allowing a government agency to use force to extricate the illegals out by any means necessary. Neither of them acted in the best interest of the country.This was not a equal and opposite reaction because one ignored the problem and the other saw it as a call to arms.
Good was a activist against ICE but that doesn't mean she should have been shot for attending a protest. Even if she was using her vehicle as a battering ram she did not deserve to be killed. He should receive the punishment prescribed under the law. The self defense argument just doesn't fit the facts. They were both wrong but only one is dead.
Two jobs in this country have gone from desired to dismal because the lack of respect and that is law enforcement and teaching.
Dave,
I've been inviting MAGA people to set me straight with the facts for a long time.
None have stepped up.
So, I went to visit the popular MAGA blog authored by Ed Bonderenka. Yes, I went over the rank and file dupes at the Stench Trench and Mothership to one of their "thought leaders".
Bonderenka is one of the few who can string more than two sentences together, although just as full of disinformation and fealty to Trump.
Our exchange will be the topic of my next post.
Skud,
What kind if idiot can't step away from a car moving at one mph? (He did, but they LIED about it.)
He was clearly provoking for an excuse to shoot her. The shot through the windshield was NOT from directly in front of the car. Then he shot her TWICE through the side window.
If she was "ramming people" then lethal force would have been appropriate.
Teachers aren't killing anybody.
Skud wrote... Two jobs in this country have gone from desired to dismal because the lack of respect and that is law enforcement and teaching.
Let's think about law enforcement. Police across the country have systematically, for decades, not policed POC with the same deference as whites. It's just a fact, supported by voluminous data.
i'll just give you this once tidbit... Here's a direct quote from former Nixon Admin CoS...
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
So maybe attitudes like this, combined with the Trump lies about Jan 6 and how the police caused it, are part of the problem. We can also add that during the 1980's and the Reagan Admin, according to "San Jose Mercury"... "drug rings in the San Francisco Bay Area—led by Nicaraguan nationals Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon—sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs to fund the CIA-backed Contras."
Interesting that all of these examples happened during GOP Admins, which you and our other MAGA fans generally, if not exclusively support, at least at the presidential level.
As for teaching... California is a good example. In the 1950s and 1960s, CA was the golden education example in all of the US. best public universities, best public colleges, best public schools. Bar none, not even debatable.
What happened?
1970's Reagan backed Proposition 13 policies which changed the property tax was calculated resulting in dramatically lower taxes that had been used to fund, wait for it... mostly free education to all CA residents.
You see Skud, education systems, like any other, suffer and decay when they are not funded.
But hey, those tax cuts.
And skud does not disappoint with their calls to "look over there" and blames the victim for her own death.
Yes, Renee Good was an observer of ICE. Yes, she'd just dropped her kid off at school and stopped to help her neighbors (Minnesota Nice is more than a slogan) because ICE was violating the 4Th Amendment by going house to house to do unlawful searches. Now skud doesn't say she should be shot but he repeats disinformation by stating she used her vehicle as a battering ram. If that happened skud where is the video evidence? You have some proof other than your favorite voice of authority told you so?
I don't expect an answer or any evidence from you skud because you aren't that sort of stand up human. I'd love for you to do better especially as the times demand of to be better humans. Alas, you've shattered my hopes too many times to believe you will do better skud even as I remain hopeful that you might.
Dube, I can't provide any answer to your comment because you responded to a question not asked or answered, not unusual.
Grey, Where did I blame the victim for her own death. You just answered something that wasn't said because it fit your narrative.
David, I was raised in a time when you respected the police and teachers. Now you can harass the police and attack teachers with impunity. It has come that the best and brightest don't seek either one as a career and not because of pay but because of respect. Your answer seems to be throw money at it but don't seek a solution to the problem because then what political side do you blame.
The illusions and delusions of the rancid MAGA right represents the minority of Americans. Yet they are in power. That is the fault of the correct thinking Americans who chose not to show up at the polls.
Well Skud... we could chart the drop in education efficacy and the lack of resources and the approval ratings, etc would track pretty closely.
I agree, teachers get no respect. But a lot of that is because of the helicopter syndrome and parents worried about bad grades and their kids college chances getting dinged.
Both of these issues are multilayered with problems. Not a lot of easy solutions.
But you can objectively see, OK, maybe not you, where a lot of the problems come from...
David,
We agree on this and most of the problem comes from the parents lack of participation. Not everything can be blamed on politics and the republicans.
PRK's problems can be placed at the feet of politicians. RE taxes fund schools and to limit raises to 1% per year for almost 50 years was insane. This is one time the overwhelming majority of voters got it wrong, 65% voted for it.
skud, my narrative? You mean facts? I based my comment on the quoted phrase from you skud which might be the most both sides are at fault thing I've read from you.
"Good was a activist against ICE but that doesn't mean she should have been shot for attending a protest. Even if she was using her vehicle as a battering ram she did not deserve to be killed. He should receive the punishment prescribed under the law. The self defense argument just doesn't fit the facts. They were both wrong but only one is dead."
One, Renee Good was an ICE observer, meaning she observed. That was her job, to ensure the actions of ICE didn't happen in a vacuum. Two, she never used her vehicle as a battering ram. You say she did, so where is the footage proving it. Three, please explain what actions Renee Good performed that were, in your words, wrong.
Come for me skud and you'd better have more than talking points. I have facts, a lot of them, so... just letting you know.
I was feeling all kinds of depressed, hormonal, and just out of sorts when I fell into a meditative state. Wait a minute, I told myself, you know these emotions. They remind me.... augh!! adolescence! No!!!! No, it was horrible the first time, let's not do it again. Ever.
And I came back fully informed and ready to do battle again for the continuation of my favorite country.
Fascism won't last. How do I know? Well, it's very predictability allows those of us who aren't fans of fascism to find ways to trip them up, make their lives difficult, and put sand in the gears of the machines they depend upon.
Also, fascism is practiced not by adults who are adulting but by mental adolescents who wanted what they wanted when they wanted it but didn't get it, for reasons (usually their own) so they decide to take it out on the rest of humanity instead of accepting personal responsibility. Or at least that's how history tells the tale. Usually longer, more paragraphs, and lots of names. So many names.
I am cautiously optimistic that yeah, things are going to get bad just as they always do when bullies are in charge. But bullies aren't invincible and afterwards there is the rebuilding and elevating of communities and feasting... I can see it happening and better yet I feel it happening now.
80 million bullies are hard to overcome.
Not if they are fighting each other, just saying.
Knowing the Lawz o' Combat as I do and knowing my Sun Tzu it's not that hard to get a fractious group of folks to decide their neighbor isn't as pure as themselves. Purity tests are gruesome and couldn't happen to a more deserving group.
Post a Comment