Just One Thing: ICE agent kills protester who was almost driving at him
There's nothing good about this story and, frankly, no good guys in it.
Here's one video of the event. It's hard to see everything clearly here. I'm told there's a video that shows that the SUV hit the officer though I expect it's a very glancing thing as he seems to be out of the way as he fires. I also note that the driver is consistently turning her wheel to the right from the moment she starts moving, not moving straight in what would seem to be an effort to hit the federal agent.
I recorded a video of some thoughts: ICE Agent kills protester who almost drove at him
Just a couple of quick additional things: ICE has a right (and even a responsibility) to be there enforcing the law. Protests against ICE activity have gotten out of hand in wild-eyed leftist places like Minneapolis. But even poorly behaved protesters, even a lady who puts her car in a spot that the agents don't like and refuses to get out of the vehicle and even one who maybe strikes a glancing blow on an agent as she's trying to drive away, do not deserve to be shot in the face and leave a motherless child in the wake of an ICE agent with an itchy trigger finger.
By way of slight mitigation, and I don't know if this is true, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press conference that that same agent had previously been "drug" by a protesters vehicle and that he suffered some injuries at that time. If he had any sort of injury yesterday, it was exceptionally minor because he went to the hospital and was quickly released and sent home.
Noem does herself and ICE no favors by calling the driver's action an example of "domestic terrorism". No rational person believes that.
This is a terribly difficult situation, and just a terrible situation. The officer MIGHT have thought he was in danger though it also seems like he put himself in that position unwisely. It seemed to me that he was clearly NOT about to be run over when he fired. Did he truly feel a need to use lethal force in self-defense? If so, is that how a well-trained agent should have felt?
I want to be very clear here: I don't believe this agent will be charged with a crime. But just because the government will protect their own or, less cynically, just because you can't get a conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't mean that the actions were acceptable. A woman is dead. I'm sure she was one of those crazy TDS anti-ICE leftists. But that's not a death-penalty eligible crime and I don't think what she did rose to the level of justifying having her brains blown out. I say that as someone who's mostly supportive of ICE's newfound commitment to enforcing federal law even if I think they overdo it sometimes. They do what the president tells them to do. That's the job. And there is real work to do after Joe Biden let in millions of illegal aliens, of whom some have committed crimes while being here. So my reaction to this shooting isn't some sort of blanket disdain for ICE or for the mission.
I think that the shooting of this woman wasn't murder but also wasn't actually self-defense. It was somewhere in between. That officer should never be working the streets with a firearm again.
Lastly, I don't know if the agent was consciously or subconsciously looking for the chance to shoot someone. He was probably pretty angry with the protesters if a vehicle did indeed previously drag him some distance and injure him. In that case, he shouldn't have been assigned to a job that would have put him in the position he was in. Still, if he's even a half-decent human, and he probably is because most people are, today's events will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. That's a sad thing, too, but not as sad as a mom getting shot in the face for being slightly badly behaved.
This is how ridiculous America and Americans are right now. These are back-to-back responses I got to a post on X/Twitter saying roughly what I just said about the MN shooting:
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Today's Guest
Paul Mauro is a former NYPD inspector, as well as an attorney and Fox News contributor. He's the proprietor of the excellent OpsDesk substack. We'll certainly talk about the Minneapolis shooting and, if we have time, touch on some of the legal issues surround the arrest of Nicolas Maduro and the potential indictment of Biden's CIA chief John Brennan, a man who I think was the most egregious among all the badly behaved elected or appointed officials who claimed to have information about Donald Trump working with Russia to steal the 2020 election. Brennan deserves serious punishment, as far as karma goes, but as far as the law goes it's gonna be very difficult to convict him of lying to Congress. Just as it will be to convict Jim Comey if they ever resurrect an indictment of him, which seems iffy but not impossible at this point.
The Ops Desk | Paul Mauro | Substack
Minneapolis driver shot and killed by ICE officer during immigration-related operation, DHS says
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Today's Video
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