Looking [1], it does appear that Renee attempted to run the car right into the ICE officer, the wheels were still pointing slightly left, and the officer was still in front of the car. Also in [2] you can see that she was looking directly at the officer during this initial acceleration attempt. The only thing that saved the officer in that initial attempt was the loss of traction due to the icy road.
After that, indeed the wheels were pointing away from the officer and arguably there was no more danger to him, but after the clear attempt to hit him, you cannot realistically expect the officer, in a split second, to re-evaluate if her intentions to hurt anybody changed or not. At this point his life was already threatened. He doesn’t know what she is doing and waiting to find out could mean that he is dead.
1) Make the PO a regular human without a gun and you can imagine, that any normal person would have made just a quick sidestep to avoid collision, like most of us have experienced in person too. Use of force was totally unjustified, esp. when you combine it with:
2) Change the intetion of the driver to really want to harm the person ~2m in front of the car. Cop get trained, that you should not use your gun on close encounters with knives, bc the short distance <5m will give you not enogh time to stop a knive attacker reliably. If you stand that close infront of a car, a short but strong tab of the pedal would have been enough to get you, no matter how fast you draw your gun or how good your aim is. To me, it is clear that she never ment to hit anybody, the acceleration does not indicate it.
It is _very_ obvious. 2/3 shots hit the side of the car and the front wheel _never_ pointed at the PO.
Real police officers [0] are trained to deescalate situations. Because needlessly turning up the heat results in very bad outcomes for everyone involved.
Meanwhile, these ICE "officers" aggressively created and violently escalated a situation arising from a traffic infraction at best [1]. They didn't even follow their own procedures, crafted not out of any type of restraint with concern for the public, but merely pragmatism whereby shooting someone does not stop a moving vehicle.
Thus, responsibility for how the victim reacted in her moments of panicked terror rests completely on them - and it's perfectly understandable that when a bunch of masked armed thugs are trying to carjack you, the natural response is trying to get out of there as quick as possible regardless of if that means hitting any of the attackers.
[0] as much as they themselves are statistically quite trigger-happy and are often criticized by actual soldiers who are used to stricter rules of engagement,
[1] ignoring the equity of a citizen exercising her natural right to observe and document the activities of her government, and the fact that ICE has no mandate to police traffic infractions
People should protest but there are clearly very stupid ways of going about it.
[1] the streets are not the place to decide whether that authority is legitimate, ethical, moral, etc.
I've avoided watching the videos because frankly I've got more pressing things I need to get done rather than frying my nerves for several hours from watching someone get assaulted and murdered. I'm open to the idea that the media hides inconvenient details, but it's an awfully large distance to clear to go from something that sounds like civil Constitutionally-protected observation and criticism of government agents, to she was actively physically obstructing them. So I'm skeptical of such claims, especially given this administration's tendency to disingenuously characterize things like mere filming as a type of obstruction.
(also please elaborate on what you mean by "the first life threatening action". Did she do something violent before the masked, armed, and aggressive gang (with no lawful jurisdiction over US citizens) surrounded her and attacked her car?)