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
6 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.
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.”
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