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
