But the video clearly indicates that they all tackled him to the ground and were wrestling him maybe 4 vs 1, before they all shot him together. I'm not quite sure how a gun can have come out of this. Maybe the guy while struggling on the ground happened to reach in the direction of someone's gun while getting curbstomped, I dunno.
What I'm most worried about is that Pam Bondi / Department of Justice refuses to investigate these or properly prosecute these cases. IE: The Renee Good case has a ton of FBI agents resigning because they've been told to focus on Good's "misbehavior" rather than the ICE Agent's aggression.
It will be up to the Minnesota police and justice system to investigate. We cannot expect anything from the DoJ/FBI here. As such, the prosecution case will be gimped, and I fear we will have nothing resembling justice in this case (or Renee Good's case either).
The DHS public statement that the victim was going to “do maximize damage and massacre law enforcement” is outrageous…
The checks and balances at the federal level are all captured. Support Minnesota in this troubling time.
Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Much of the time they seem to believe trying to bait folks into an encounter
https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Raids/comments/1q7u4kz/ice_agen...
https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1q7y43s/cbp_poin...
In my area all the non white folks don’t come to the bus stop anymore to pickup their kids. Their kids are instructed to race home after school. The schools now have lockdown protocols for ICE. Family businesses opened for decades closed because employees are afraid to come to work.
> O'Hara said the man was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit. Records show that Pretti attended the University of Minnesota. State records show Pretti was issued a nursing license in 2021, and it remains active through March 2026.
Minnesota permit-to-carry requirements: https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/public-services-bca/firearm...
> Q: Do I have to disclose to a peace officer that I am a permit holder and carrying a firearm?
> A: Yes, upon request of a peace officer, a permit holder must disclose to the officer whether or not the permit holder is currently carrying a firearm.
So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process. (The penalty for permitted carrying without possessing the physical permit card is $25 for a first offense and forfeiture of the weapon; it would've been his first offense per Minneapolis police.)
If ever there was a 2A violation, it's a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.
Law enforcement above accountability is a hallmark sign of “too far gone”.
When it's over, and it will be, Americans need to start from scratch, iterate and write a new constitution, create new institutions and build a new system.
It seems like a foolish choice for them to reneg on this. They are essentially signaling that you are a trapped rat with no way out.
1. Only had parking tickets on his criminal record. No other criminal activity.
2. Owned a gun with firearms permit.
3. 36 Years Old, male. EDIT: I misremembered. Its apparently 37 year old male.
Minnesota Police only have jurisdiction inside of Minnesota however. So those four+ ICE shooters just need to leave the state and they're safe. The FBI is required to pursue across state lines.
Oh, wait, you meant the victim.
When those people are ICE it definitely is. I think those motherfuckers should be wearing straightjackets
This completely misrepresents what happened.
Another source (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/man-tackled-by-ice-in-chao...) gives another claim from the same police chief:
> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
And then, from the DHS:
> ...when a federal agent feared for his life, "an agent fired defensive shots." ... Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said that the officer involved in the shooting "has extensive training," and that "the situation is evolving." Bovino added that the incident would be investigated.
(TFA includes the claim of self-defense.)
"Summary execution" and "without due process" is emotionally manipulative phrasing. It falsely implies that LEO use of lethal force is about punishment. It is not about punishment. It is about responding to perceived threat.
All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
The 2nd amendment was more about suppressing slave revolts than liberating slaves.
This has already been proven to be a lie thanks to the five different videos of the incident in question. They shot him after removing his legal weapon for concealed carry that he was permitted to have on his person.
>> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
You've misread your link. The "violently resisted" quote is from a tweet by DHS, not local police: https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2015115351797780500
Cliven Bundy is still grazing his cattle on that BLM land to this day.
I’m not sure how you can possibly make that assertion. They disarmed him and then they shot him.
if the day ever came for ICE to breach a locked down school, and extract minors, that could be a tipping point.
> Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on. The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it. The people "simply recording" are physically interfering with ICE going where they need to go to do what they're there to do. "Walking away" doesn't remotely describe anything I've seen.
As for the race issue, the ICE officers I've seen have been considerably more racially diverse than the protesters.
But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice. All of this is extremely clear in law. Please have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NosECXHMGFU.
----
This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that. There's nothing objectionable or counter to guidelines in the above, and all of it reflects my true thoughts based on my actual experience of the discourse, the evidence available to me, the legal code I've researched, etc.
It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
> The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on X further details about what led up to the shooting. "DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here," the post reads.
> O'Hara said that Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit.
> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
> The DHS wrote that when a federal agent feared for his life, "an agent fired defensive shots." The post also noted that the "suspect" had "2 magazines and no ID."
By any ordinary reading of prose, the article is attributing the quote to O'Hara.
Just visit the link I posted, this will take you two seconds to verify.
So you're saying you can show me a video where it's clear that the gun is in an LEO's physical possession, everyone involved clearly has time to update on this information, and someone makes an evidently conscious decision to shoot him anyway, despite him clearly no longer posing a physical threat?
Really?
Because otherwise, it is not about punishment.
There’s a lot to be worried here, but I’m surprised that’s what you are more worried about
There is no doubt in my mind that the the current DOJ won’t lift a finger against any of the agents involved
I am not watching your videos just because you said this. I approached the situation with a respectful disagreeing opinion and the information available to me. Everyone else here is being unreasonable and completely in violation of commenting guidelines.
No need to read press releases, your own eyes and ears.
Because Pam Bondi/DoJ refuses to prosecute these cases, this will _keep happening_ for the foreseeable future. There's no reason for ICE to stop this behavior.
Its not today's crime that scares me most. Its the easily predicted future where this gets worse by next month.
The converse is the rise of the far-left. We're already seeing Black Panther patrol with long-guns rise up in these times in response to this. I expect more guns and more deadly force, and no one is doing anything to put a stop to it.
--------
The left is losing faith in strictly peaceful protest. At least some of them (ie: the Black Panthers forming patrol militia).
The right refuses to prosecute murders. This is the worse problem.
Where does this lead? Is it too late to stop? Its easily stopped if Pam Bondi simply did an investigation into the use of deadly force. That's the saddest part of all of this.
A previous example:
You can watch the video for yourself of an ICE masked thug grabbing a man's carotid artery, when NOT facing a deadly threat, against DOJ rules. You can watch him seize and his eyes roll back. And you can choose to believe your eyes or DHS' lies. What do you think, zahlman?
See full context here: https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio...
> In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
If Trump can incite violence then he can invoke the insurrection act, or perhaps declare some form of martial law to seize more power. Perhaps even parlay this into cancelling the midterm elections.
Look at the gray agent taking the victim weapon, that had just been pepper sprayed. He was disarmed before being killed.
"Footage of the grey coat officer retrieving the gun" - https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
It's exactly what this was, though. He was disarmed before being shoved to the ground and beaten with a gas grenade. There is another video which shows that his hands are on the ground or in front of his face, the entire time he's down, long before he's shot.
Watch the fucking videos.
If anyone views the current situation as a problem, there is no viable solution that doesn’t involve removing MAGA from power.
One video [1] shows someone walking away from the scene with a gun a fraction of a second before the shooting begins. But I can't see that the gun was removed from the protester.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
Here's the facts as I see them: A protestor who had a gun he was legally allowed to carry got involved in an incident with ICE/Border Patrol. The protestor was interacting with the agents and other protestors, at which point BP or ICE pepper sprayed him and took him down to the ground. At least 4 different federal officers were physically holding him. at this point it appears they disarmed him (unclear) and then shortly after, shot him.
At no point did the protestor hold the gun in a threatening way while approaching, when he was taken down he did not have a gun in his hands, and while down, it's very unlikely he could access the gun and use it in a way that any reasonable officer would feel unsafe and be required to shoot the protestor.
Based on the videos I've watched, the protestor made some ill-advised choices getting physically involved, but there was no reason for him to be shot. I read various online conservative communities (to try to understand their reasoning) and nearly all the posts I see seem to think that ICE/BP truly made an error here, possibly due to poor training.
I understand your point about the use of emotional terms, I try to avoid them and instead focus on facts and known unknowns, but in this particular situation, it's pretty clear that ICE/BP made an egregious error in a way that is clearly obvious to everybody (even those who would normally support the federal officers) and in denying this, the federal leadership is undermining itself. This is a situation where they could de-escalate and not immediately blame the protestor, while focusing on increasing the training of the ICE/BP officers, rather than taking an aggresive posture.
These investigators are not amateurs, and that’s putting it lightly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat
You refuse to watch the videos, but you're still defending the regime. Why?
I question the moral integrity of anyone who would defend this administration without all the available info.
I'm glad you're being flagged, because I've been disappointed with how folks here have been surprisingly flaccid when it comes to condemning this regime. The day that I come here and find posts like yours in the majority will be the last day I visit.
Here is a stabilized version: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlyj9h/i_did_...
After that agent takes the gun, the agent standing immediately to the left draws and fires into Pretti's back.
I don't mean to diminish the importance of the shooting, which is horrific no matter what one makes of the photos.
All the blathering about "freedom", "democracy", and "constitutional rights" is just propaganda you've been spoon-fed since you were a child. The USA has spent the last 80 years riding the wave of contributing to the victory in WWII and therefore being the "Good Guys", and most of the Western world happily played along as their political goals aligned with it.
Meanwhile the USA hasn't addressed its deeply-rooted internal issues which have been festering for well over a century, and the results are now obvious to everyone. It only took Trump a year to make the US an international laughing stock, start a bunch of wars, get rid of the free press, and begin rounding up people he doesn't like.
If the USA you were taught to believe in truly existed, the current situation would not have been possible.
It might be clearer if the agents were wearing bodycam videos and that footage was released.
Tell me the legal rationale for ICE abducting an employee from a Target beating him up and dropping him off bruised and covered in blood at Walmart at miles away.
ICE has been turned into a paramilitary political mafia to harass and harm the administrations political opponents and racial outgroups.
They've repeatedly been found in federal court to have violated the constitutional rights of citizens and non-citizens alike but Congress has shown no spine to reign in the executive which has willfully spurned these rulings.
Turn the blind eye to this at your own peril. History has shown that fascism does not stop acting only against people that you disagree with
The top people in govt all the way down will completely lie about the victim and situation, despite plenty of video evidence that shows them as liars. Absolutely nothing will happen to these scumbag murderers, and another murder just like this will happen again soon.
Many people will be horrified but conservatives will continue cheering this on. This is the country we live in now.
I was 'taught' through experiencing something good becoming more good. Get out of here with your doomerism toxicity. You talk like the non-political Russians talk about their country. The USA is not irredeemable.
Those are kids playing to be cops. If the PS5 was affordable to people with such a low level of education they'd be playing CoD at home.
The greater the force and amount of armament, the worse it can end up becoming.
It wasn't good when it happened in the 19th century either.
https://xcancel.com/adamscochran/status/2015119306086900170
They had him pinned on the ground, then someone takes a gun away from him, and AFTER THAT they put him on his knees and executed him.
Additionally, there are many other videos of the agents, taking phones away from the nearby witnesses who recorded all of this.
But the most disturbing thing is that the claims made by DHS, Trump, and Noem about what happened were completely made up. They are simply inventing a story and getting it out there as quickly as possible to refute any other competing story. It does not matter to them that this is a lie. The idea is to muddy the waters.
The most likely situation is that he actually voluntarily told them that he has a firearm because he is a lawful gun owner with a concealed carry permit. Most gun owners know that this is the best way to interact with law-enforcement, for example, when you get pulled over. But we will not know because these agents do not wear body cams on purpose.
I have the same response to people who ask me why I don’t leave the country since things are going so bad: fuck that, this is my home. I will always love this country. It is never beyond saving. We have been through worse (the civil war at the very most obvious, but there are plenty of other low points.) We can get through this. We can make it better, we can learn to love our neighbor again, we can learn to trust each other again. We can learn to avoid these tendencies towards hatred. We can’t give up.
Local cops dealing with protesters are organized, rarely trying to bait anyone into anything.
It makes sense if making you feel like a trapped rat is the goal.
It's not just that the DOJ won't investigate. It's actively preventing the state from investigating either.
if this continues, it's going to explode, and I think that's part of the plan, to provide cover for invoking the Insurrection Act and imposing martial law
We don't live in the time of Ghandi anymore.
I disagree that it has that effect. With the assumption of good faith, comments like GP aren't fishing around for an excuse; the point is to highlight what's legally relevant and where there is room to disagree with the interpretation of video.
I don't think it's plausible that defense for the agents would clutch for a straw like "maybe he had a second weapon". That seems sarcastic and not interested in engaging with the argument seriously.
I've seen a couple different videos now (not from any links ITT) and the most commonly shown one seems to have something obscuring the camera at a critical moment. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that the man is indeed disarmed well before the first shot. But there will still be more that matters:
* Was the first shot fired by an officer who knew that the weapon had already been taken? In particular, could there have been any miscommunication between the officers?
* Did the victim know the weapon had been taken? I don't think it would be likely to succeed in court, but to my understanding the defense could raise the argument that one or more officers perceived that the victim still intended to draw and fire it.
Ultimately, it boils down to establishing whether there was a reasonable perception, on the part of any officer that fired (I can't tell from the video I've seen who fired or how many shots or anything like that), of a threat from the victim meeting the legal standard to respond with lethal force. This is based on "totality of the circumstances" (as in things the officers knew leading up to the moment of shooting), but specifically based on what a reasonable officer would have been able to deduce in the moment (a high-pressure situation), without the benefit of hindsight.
Most analyses I've seen thus far agree that there was not any solid defense here. Certainly it seems much more likely that someone is going to prison for this than in the Renee Good case. The DHS says they will be investigating.
It is, in fact, possible for shootings by LEO to be justified. And the federal ICE agents are, in fact, law enforcement. Walz and/or Frey are factually incorrect when they assert otherwise, it's trivially looked up, relevant legal statues like 8 U.S. Code § 1357 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357) are quite clear about the agents' powers (which as an objective matter of fact do include situations where they may arrest US citizens without a warrant), and Walz and Frey have no real excuse for their false assertions.
You don't have to like laws that entitle law enforcement to use lethal force in limited circumstances (which seem to be only slightly broader than those extended to ordinary citizens), but the US does in fact have such laws, at both state and federal level. And the consequence of not having them, practically speaking, is that criminals kill officers and/or go free.
And as it happens, there's a clear defense in the Good case. I've already pointed at actual lawyers saying the same and explaining it in detail. And my submission of that (>>46596055 ) got flagged for no good reason.
I have nothing to quibble with the video you linked (which I think must have been released since I made my comment, or I missed it), that makes the order of events a lot clearer, I can see the gun being taken now, and the timing of the shot.
You know you can watch the videos yourself
But yeah, it's just not happening, you couldn't possibly just be unaware
Edit: you literally said "i will not watch the videos" - you are admittedly willfully ignorant on the subject, your posts are therefore irrelevant
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.
> But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau
> All of this is extremely clear in law.
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” — Henry David Thoreau
Oh boy the hand waving away at the time. Now the other shoe is dropping.
> [1] All violence by your allied authority figures, that is. We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors.
This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack. The previous poster's comment is entirely sensible, and it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way.
You can’t count the number of gunshots? Huh. And here I thought your handle meant zahl + man.
It's almost as if those laws are mostly just performative bullshit that doesn't actually prevent the spread of violent ideologies when the environment is conductive to them.
So we might as well stop arguing that the government should have a monopoly on tools of violence. These people should be afraid of us, and not the other way around.
Many of them are experienced and trained. The man who shot Renee Good served in Iraq, worked for Border Patrol for two decades and was literally a firearms instructor[1].
This is just what cops, reactionaries and psychopaths will do when they know that they have carte blanche to do anything they want, including murder.
No amount of "training" will fix this. It isn't an accident, it isn't incompetence, it is deliberate and wanton.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good#Jon...
This would imply it was an unintentional mistake which is far from obvious. If they recognized it was an egregious error the perpetrators would be prosecuted and they won’t be.
> training of the ICE/BP officers
What makes you think it’s something they want to avoid repeating in the future? (Not /s)
Depends on how you define the word. But yes?
Their decision to escalate the situation in the first place is a clear indication of that.
> no longer posing a physical threat?
Can you show a video of the gun leaving its holster before that then? Or are you saying that merely possessing a firearm regardless of circumstances is grounds for an immediate execution?
So assuming it's random lack of training when he does it again seem far too charitable.
People have differing opinions, however the opinion most persuasive to me is you only tell them if asked unless the law requires otherwise. Volunteering you have a gun when there is no requirement to do so in my opinion adds unnecessary tension to the situation. IDK about in Minnesota, but in my state there is no duty to inform the police and you can basically only downsides to doing so, since they will be asking before you get into any situation where they're going to be going into your waistband to find out.
In one of the states I lived in, IIRC they changed the law to remove duty to inform because their cops had a history of executing people that informed them.
> it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way
Regardless of your opinion, I'll portray it as a defense of ICE, anyway.
> > So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process.... a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.
> This completely misrepresents what happened.
I don't strictly disagree with the idea that "solely for having a gun" is a misrepresentation, either (after all, the ICE agents had guns and they weren't executed), but it's not a "complete" misrepresentation. (The actual misrepresentation is that the victim was helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun.) Calling it a "complete misrepresentation" is seeking to emotionally prime the reader against the supposed illogic in the parent comment. That is indeed a defense of the ICE agents (and such defenses and excuses can be seen throughout their comment history, hence, I presume, the ad hominem).
Somehow, still, I doubt that's the framing zahlman would accept about the situation, especially given their (obvious) defense of ICE's actions in their initial comment. Yes, the ad hominem statement you refer to should not have been included. But it is surely not intellectually dishonest regardless of how inappropriate it is for this forum. Given the quote from their initial comment, it seems that said dishonesty cuts the other direction.
The Whiskey Rebellion, was bearing arms.
Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. That seems an obvious assumption. Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
> This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that.
> It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
I don't really agree with the flags but this casual dismissal of "you just don't like it" is not helping you to understand the actual reasons others may have to flag (and downvote, which I do agree with). For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling regardless of said someone's self-perception of their commentary. You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
He also has a history of doing exactly this before. It's the second time he was "struck" by a moving vehicle after purposely putting himself in his purported harms way. Who knows how many times he's practiced for this murder before.
If the video somehow didn't do it, the "fucking bitch" not even seconds after pulling the trigger would put any one of us away for murder.
[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
An ad hominem argument is an argument constructed around characteristics of a person outside the bounds of what is being discussed. Inferring someone's opinion[1] about the subject under discussion from their text, and explicitly marking so in my text when doing so, is just "debate". Am I wrong? Say I'm wrong and cite why.
Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack. In fact the clear offense being taken makes it pretty clear to me that my point landed closer than maybe you're prepared to admit.
[1] You cleverly skipped the point where I even admitted I might be wrong!
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross did her research solely on people who were dying: people with terminal illnesses, and she studied how they coped with facing their own mortality. Not how other people did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_K%C3%BCbler-Ross
And of course, even for a dying person, this may be total bunk. It is not like some programmed flowchart that people go through five stages of emotional stuff. This is just, like, a framework for further therapy.
I'm actually studying this stuff right now. In the 1980s and 1990s, "The Five Stages of Grief" were basically a household phrase, and everybody talked about them like they were real and true and invariable. But everyone doing the talking had never actually studied the research or even knew who proposed it. They were just parroting headlines.
> whether the protestor could possibly have wielded their gun while being restrained by agents, or whether he is disarmed by the gray-jacketed agent, or what caused the agents to fire when they did
Is a list of excuses for the shooting (to wit: "maybe he wielded the gun", "maybe he wasn't disarmed", "maybe they had cause to fire"). It's all things that would have (arguably) made it justified. You'll have to forgive me if I took that for a clear indication of your opinion here.
Like, if you look at something and say "Well, it looks like X happened, but I don't know", it's neutral. If you say "It looks like X happened, but I don't know because it could have been Y or Z instead', you're pretty clearly constructing a sideways argument that "X did not happen". And thus, you'll end up being painted as an X denialist by people on the internet too lazy to find your comment history.
What I see is that some of them seem to display even more of a killer attitude than professional soldiers, and bring a whole additional supply of firepower to each scene when they arrive that was not in the equation before.
With that level of highly-armed government-initiated risk introduced, it looks like in almost any neighborhood where there is normally about zero yearly risk of someone being killed, when the "troops" are sent in the risk skyrockets.
On a daily basis too which is too frequent to ignore and a virtually incalculable increase, but you don't need numbers to see how bad it is.
Which, given the statistic that a decent percentage of ICE applicants can't get a passing score on an open book test [0] doesn't surprise me.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-is-reportedly-hiring-p...
More importantly, when X is phrased in a way that implies intent or motives not in evidence, or plays up the injustice of X in legally irrelevant ways, that's reason to push back in an open Internet discussion.
But also, my defense is not about treating protestors uncharitably. Telling me "We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors." would still be ad hominem, because my arguments do not rely upon protestors being malicious.
Except for the physical obstruction of justice aspect, which isn't in question. 1A doesn't give people the right to get in an LEO's way when that officer is actively trying to enforce law. Protestors shouldn't physically be in the path of on-duty law enforcement if they expect not to get arrested. Arrest is a natural consequence of "civil disobedience". For a more extreme example, "freedom of assembly" for me and my friends does not extend as far as "assembling" in a tight circle around you that denies your freedom of movement. (Note: I am neither an American citizen nor an American resident, but these principles are not difficult to understand, and not sufficiently different from Canadian law to matter for this discussion.)
But for example in the Good case, I don't believe she intended to run over the officer, but that doesn't matter to the officer's perception of threat. And in point of fact, he was struck (although NYT reported that he wasn't "run over", and then other outlets presented this as if he wasn't struck).
At no point did I claim not to be defending the ICE agents, so let's please not talk about intellectual dishonesty there.
----
Regarding the bit you quoted from me:
I responded prematurely to the situation based on my experience from every single previous discussion of ICE agents I found myself in. I don't see how there's a problem with offering a defense of ICE in general. You can't just say that one side of an argument is barred, if you're going to have a discussion at all. (And the reason HN permits political submissions like this is because they want people in tech to have discussions. The relationship of the story to tech is tangential at best.)
I said "completely misrepresents" because "solely for having a gun" is completely false, and because it should be rejected as absurd a priori. That's just not how entanglements with law enforcement play out, and ignores that probably many lawful gun owners were rightly ignored (given that MN allows concealed carry of handguns). People are seriously now arguing as if they believe that a Republican government is stripping away 2A rights by force. I don't understand how that could possibly pass anyone's sniff test.
But I also said it because it's part of a long string of loaded language — the stuff I went on to dissect. The victim's virtue is played up, seemingly to make the event seem more egregious, even though it's clearly irrelevant to the cause of action. Or else it's being played up to try to bolster the "solely for" case by denying other reasons for the shoot. Regardless of whether it was justified (I agree that it will likely not be found justified), the actual cause of action is clear.
(Having seen multiple videos now, I can't hear the part where Pretti supposedly "informs a DHS officer that he is legally carrying". The part where one of the officers is shouting about he has a gun, would seem to contradict that; because it comes across that the officer first saying it is surprised to see that he has a gun.)
Most importantly, "effectively subject to summary execution without due process" is an unreasonable way to characterize LEO use of lethal force, both in general and I believe in this specific instance. One or more people messed up and this guy shouldn't have gotten shot. But that is miles away from what it would actually take to justify that phrasing. That would require:
* everyone who shot could clearly see, from their own perspectives, that the gun had already been taken away;
* before firing, they took enough time to respond to that change in the situation;
* at the time of firing, they had the mens rea that the victim should die as punishment for what had happened up to that point.
These are simply things that you can't prove with video footage like this. I can't even tell who shot. It's a chaotic scramble recorded from distant third-person perspectives, with important parts of the action obscured from line of sight by other important parts of the action. Yes, there's enough to see the gun being taken away before gunshots (apparently) but that's a lucky break considering everything else. (When I first saw the footage from the angle on the street, I thought it was happening on the sidewalk rather than in front of the parked car; of course the other angle being from the sidewalk disproves that.)
Anyway, I simply can't fathom how you think that the term "complete misrepresentation" is "seeking to emotionally prime the reader". Like, what words could I possibly use instead that aren't supposedly emotionally manipulative, given that I actually did sincerely consider the statement a complete misrepresentation?
For that matter, I think your characterization "helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun." is still misrepresentative. He was obstructing and resisting. And, yes, he had a gun, which is dangerous any time one gets in a physical altercation with any kind of LEO. People with CC permits should understand that.
All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
> Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity.
In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest?
> Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes.
> For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling
I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines.
"The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault.
(For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.)
And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too.
And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. >>46750452 .
It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith.
But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them).
I did research this story.
And I already previously reported back (e.g. >>46750401 ) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force).
I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human.
Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito.
> You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
This is effectively intimidation.
To me, this looks very much like testing the waters. Stephen Miller said, "To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity." ICE has blocked state law enforcement from investigations into the killings. ICE has said they're done with their investigation of the last one, and those fuckers are still working.
Aside from scale, what's the difference?
[EDIT:15-minute chunk of] video that lays out the evidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThhm1-g1a8
Can you please explain to me how it violates HN guidelines in any way? Or how any of it is untrue? For example, do you disagree that 8 U.S. Code § 1357, as cited, empowers ICE to arrest US citizens without a warrant in specific circumstances, specifically relating to obstructing them from doing their original job? Do you disagree that ICE are, contra the public claims of Walz and Frey, LEO? Did you see my submission >>46596055 , and can you articulate a problem with it?
Including >>46749406 , in which I explicitly acknowledged that I do not think this particular shooting was justified?
I already explained repeatedly: I responded hastily based on priors, and then responded poorly to someone who insulted me.
When I initially said:
> All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
Do you think any of that is incorrect? Which part specifically, and why?
And, to be clear, you were okay with me being called a "nazi sympathizer" (>>46754655 )?
I just vouched for >>46748563 , which was flagged and killed. Do you think it violates HN guidelines? How exactly? Because I legitimately don't understand.
Do you think it is not worth considering?
> This is effectively intimidation.
I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases.
> I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word).
I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of >>46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all.
The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
I did later find video where the gunshots are much more clear.
“You all saw him, he had a gun”.
What’s it called when you name something the complete opposite of what it is?
Not an oxymoron, because that’s about the concepts in the words.
I see why your post was flagged. You argued that the Good shooting was justified by referencing a video in which "laywer" (who has links to paypal and patreon, I guess his law career is going great) among other things called her in his words "motorist who was blocking traffic" (ignoring that some other SUV easily drove past Good's car in the same video a few seconds before) and where he said the officer was "trying to get from in front of the car" while the officer clearly was trying to block the car's path while approaching the car. If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires. It's clear he wanted to kill the driver. And that's not a justification
> Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification.
Don't forget ANY video you see on social media has incentives for something or something else.
Your objection to this boils down to a simple disagreement with the findings, and unjustified ad hominem. (There is no good reason to doubt that Nate the Lawyer is in fact a lawyer: he asserts so and makes appropriate disclaimers on his channel, he clearly shows reasoned legal arguments, he's been interviewed by others who accept the claim, he is accepted by all the other well-known lawyers on Youtube, etc.) I could have posted different analyses by other lawyers; most of what I've seen has been rather more strident and more at risk of offending those who think the shooting unjustified. In fact, as far as I can tell, LegalEagle is the only prominent lawyer on Youtube who disagrees that the Good shooting was justified, repeating a common pattern. Whereas many other Youtube lawyers concur that the Pretti shooting is at least problematic.
I hope you'll pardon me for not hiring a lawyer and paying just to get an opinion and copy-paste it to HN.
Flags cause posts to be hidden from logged-out public view. They warrant, therefore, that a comment violates guidelines and needs to be censored rather than simply being disputed.
Consequently, "you argued [something I disagree with]" doesn't become a reason to flag a post in itself.
----
As for the substance of your disagreement: I'm not going to get into my disagreements on things I've already repeatedly rehashed, but this argument is new to me:
> If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires.
First off, no, the point is that he was responding to a reasonably perceived threat of death or serious injury. It has nothing to do with either of those things.
Second, now that she has blocked the road and repeatedly refused to leave (including the interaction with Ross before the other officers arrive), she is being detained, and probably under arrest. That is a response to the obstruction, which is a federal crime (because they are LEO being obstructed) committed in the federal officers' presence, giving them the right (as LEO) to perform an arrest under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357 (a)(5). That's what was going on before she initiated the 2-point turn. The agents' presumed desire to have a clear road does not obligate them to take actions that would lead to a clear road; and it especially does not obligate them to let someone go free after committing a crime.
Third, it would have been quite impossible from his vantage point as the car starts moving forward, because the hood of the car would be in the way. He could only possibly shoot at the tires once he is will clear of the vehicle to its side; even then, he was struck and knocked off balance which would have made it quite difficult to aim with that intent.
Fourth, the law admits the possibility (which I agree with Nate is likely to hold up in court) of justifying shooting at Good specifically because of a self-defense argument. That argument could not apply if Ross managed to get out of the way and then started firing after that point. (It does cover shooting multiple times, including from the side, because human reflexes and police training to fire multiple shots come into play; the shots can easily be argued, with abundant precedent, to represent a single decision to fire the weapon.) And it certainly could not apply to shooting the tires of the vehicle. In general, LEO don't shoot at tires, for many good reasons that are easily looked up (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=can+officers+shoot+tires).
You're right about that. I'm sorry.
No further comment from me in this thread.
Didn't age so well. You took the narrative very easily. Might consider "Why".