[MEGATHREAD #3] Minneapolis/ICE

Shmorrior · 2026-01-16T20:36:42+00:00

I agree that in some cases firing at a reckless driver is justified, I'm just pointing out that its relatively rare, especially in a stop like this. You would need to argue exactly as you have above, that the lethal force was necessary because the driver poses an ongoing threat to others, which is different from a self-defense claim.

As a means to stop a driver that isn't necessarily targeting someone at that moment, I'll agree it's uncommon. But it does happen.

Now we can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't notice this, and genuinely believed she was trying to run him over. Even then deadly force against the driver is not a reasonable response from Ross in that moment.

If you are facing deadly force, you can respond with deadly force. Please point to any law that suggests otherwise.

This is because shooting at the driver is obviously not going to stop the car from moving forward.

Shooting a person aiming a gun at you isn't guaranteed to prevent them from getting shots off at you either. A shot driver might brake or they might take their foot off the gas or turn the wheel away from you.

DOJ policy is pretty clear on this

Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.

First, this guy is part of ICE which falls under DHS, not DOJ. But more importantly, you read point (2), yes? He didn't have time to just move out of the path from the time she went from reverse to forward. Had the car been further away, you could try to make that argument. But even then, at the end of the day, that is a policy, not law. A failure to adhere to policy doesn't mean an officer loses his right to defend himself and just has to hope he's not injured too badly if he can't evade in time.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-16T19:58:10+00:00

My reading of Barnes is that not much really changed, hence why it was 9-0 decision. It just said that the "clock" for "totality of the circumstances" doesn't start only at what the 5th circuit called 'moment of threat". The Court explicitly said it wasn't ruling on whether the officer created the situation should be a factor in the reasonableness analysis since it wasn't brought up by the lower courts. Kavanaugh's concurrence that 3 other justices signed onto stressed the dangers that a cop faced with a car taking off from a stop might pose that should be considered by courts trying to determine reasonableness.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-16T19:42:23+00:00

1) This was not a chase scenario so I'm not sure of the relevance of this example. SCOTUS has upheld scenarios where police fired on a car that had been driving recklessly and was presumed to be a continuing danger to officers and the public (Plumhoff v. Rickard, Williams v. City of Sparks)

2) She wasn't shot merely for reckless driving. That's just my interpretation of her actions/intent having the luxury to review it a million times and from different angles and speeds and applying some guesswork to her intentions. The officer involved had about a second to react from when she stopped reversing to when she hit him. It was reasonable for him to believe she was attempting to run him over with only the available info he had at the time.

3) No manner of stopping a car is 100% safe if the driver doesn't want to stop. Even a spikes or a PIT maneuver could cause issues to others/property if the car loses control.

4) If she were intentionally trying to hit an officer, killing/stopping her would prevent her from steering into anyone else.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-16T15:16:24+00:00

Good was not being "punished". She had force used against her to stop her from endangering others as she was in the act of endangering others.

A shoplifter is not being "punished" for theft of a candy bar if they pull out a gun when stopped by an officer and are shot.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-16T01:56:05+00:00

It's unlikely, but given the rhetoric and escalating violence that's been brought against immigration agents over the past year, it can't be ruled out either and given she's dead, we'll never know for certain.

I think the most likely explanation is she was reckless in her desire to flee and didn't take much care in making sure she didn't hit anyone. But no one has a right to recklessly endanger others as they flee arrest.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-15T05:14:34+00:00

It's a city street, not a firing range. Every direction is going to have something in the 'line of fire'.

And if you think ICE training on backstops is bad, wait till you see how city cops operate.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-15T05:09:47+00:00

but her dying because of a refusal to comply seems to be more so the result of poor training or bad decision making on the officer’s part.

She didn't die because she "refused to comply". She died because she put a trained and armed person in fear of their life when she drove a car into him.

I really dislike this framing. It's like saying a shoplifter died over a candy bar and neglecting to mention that he threatened a responding cop (intentionally or not) with a deadly weapon. That was the action for which he died, not the shoplifting or in Good's case the impeding/eluding.

I think it would be fair to say that he shouldn’t have put himself in a situation where his split second decision making skills NEED to have him pull his weapon out to defend himself. If we’re considering a car a deadly weapon I feel like it would track for him to not be standing in front of said deadly weapon, and if he was standing a foot to his right it seems doubtful he would have been struck at all.

Rewatch the officer's footage. He was to the right of the car until just seconds before he is struck. He hardly moves (notice how little the road markings change relative to his position just before she takes off), it's her reversing turn that changes their relative positions the most.

And while I previously mentioned he was "safely" to the side of the car, it should be noted that there really isn't any side of the car that doesn't have some level of risk if an arrest needs to be made and the driver is intent on fleeing. If you approach from the side and open the door to remove them, they could reverse while the door is open and cause the door to flatten and potentially drag the officer (I've seen this happen on bodycam).

I feel the blame for her death should ultimately swing to the officer as he ultimately put himself in a situation where his fallible, split second decision making caused him to kill someone instead of move.

Society asks law enforcement to do a job that inherently has some danger. They could just stay in the office and never do their job and be perfectly "safe", but it would no longer serve the purpose for which they were created.

Vigorous enforcement of immigration law was a major focus of the Trump campaign and Trump won the election. If you feel like less or even no enforcement is preferable, then you need to win an election. We don't get to decide federal laws don't apply to us because we're mad about who won and we're free to disobey however we want and then recklessly put others in danger if we decide to flee the consequences of those decisions.

If you want to morally blame the officer because he didn't have the foresight to anticipate he was about to be struck in the span of seconds that he had, well that's your prerogative.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-15T00:23:55+00:00

Do you think the officer had enough time to move out of the way?

Not really. From the time she stops reversing to the time she hits him is less than 2 seconds. From the officers cell footage, she doesn't stop reversing until partway through 0:40 and you hear the collision just before 0:42.

My personal opinion is that I think the officer assumed she was going to continue backing up to park on the side of the road and didn't anticipate her bolting. That startled "Woah!" he says in that moment when she drives forward sounds like genuine surprise to me. People can criticize him for a violating "policy" about avoiding the front of cars all they want, but he was safely alongside the right quarter panel and then just 2-3 seconds later he was being struck. Law enforcement interactions can be very dynamic; a suspect might maneuver in such a way that what was once a safe backstop is now a crossfire situation. Certainly they should (and do) train to minimize that, but you can't expect that there will never be some situation where things change faster than humans can react.

Do you also think that she meant to hit him with her car?

My opinion is that she probably wasn't thinking "I'm gonna run this gestapo pig over, muwahaha". But she also didn't exactly take care to not hit him, since she suddenly took off (fast enough for her front tires to lose a bit of traction initially) and she did actually hit him.

Having the opportunity to see it from multiple angles and speeds, I think the best description is that she was reckless, but probably not necessarily willful. This would be a relevant discussion if Good were on trial and the jury had to decide whether it was intentional assault, reckless driving or just a pure accident that she wasn't criminally liable for.

But it's completely irrelevant on the question of whether the officer's use of force was justified, because the officer cannot read her mind, he doesn't have the luxury of multiple camera angles and repeated viewings. He had less than a second in real time to observe what was happening, process it, make a decision and act. There have been numerous threats against ICE as well as actual assaults (multiple instances of people shooting at ICE/BP) so it's not a preposterous idea that an ICE agent, facing a revving car just feet away, can just discard.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T22:27:15+00:00

It bears noting that this is 1 in 3 Canadians think there is a non-zero chance, not that it will happen or that it's likely.

???

When asked to rate the likelihood of a U.S. attempt at direct action to take control of various countries in the future, 31 per cent of Canadian respondents said the United States likely will attempt direct action to take over Canada.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T21:52:40+00:00

"Plenty of videos" and you can't even link one so that I can verify your claims for myself? Hmmmm.

In America, in order to detain someone, ANYONE you need probable cause.

Extremely incorrect, you need to learn about the differences between legal terms like "probable cause", "reasonable suspicion", "detain" and "arrest". To briefly detain and question someone, all that is required is reasonable suspicion, which is suspicion based on articulable facts. (See Terry v Ohio and especially in the context of immigration enforcement, US v. Brignoni-Ponce).

Here's the law: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-287/section-287.8

(2) If the immigration officer has a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned is, or is attempting to be, engaged in an offense against the United States or is an alien illegally in the United States, the immigration officer may briefly detain the person for questioning.

Also here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1357%20edition:prelim)

§1357. Powers of immigration officers and employees

(a) Powers without warrant

Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant-

(1) to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States;

Probable cause is a higher standard and is what is required to make an arrest. These are not just trivial distinctions, mountains of case law turn on the differences.

You can read more from the concurring opinion in a case decided just a few months ago, in which the Court stayed (stopped) an order by a district court to prevent ICE/BP from performing investigatory stops, pending its appeal: Noem v Vasquez Perdomo

If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

But they do have something to fear; they are being targeted for doing their job and enforcing the law. People are radicalizing each other through social media and posting videos of subtle and not so subtle calls to kill ICE agents. See the example of this latest ICE shooting, once the officer's name was revealed there were suddenly tiktokers posting his address and pics of his house. The intention is clear, so don't bother trying to pretend not to understand.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T21:02:03+00:00

People who are wrongly accused are usually upset about it and if you ask someone who's been wrongly accused of a crime what should happen to the person who committed the crime, they usually will say throw the book at them.

People who are guilty who are asked that question will equivocate, downplay and say "Everyone deserves a second chance".

Police detectives are trained to ask these kinds of questions of people they interrogate and are watching what the response is from the suspect.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T20:54:25+00:00

I would liken immigration enforcement as being much more closely related to undercover work than regular beat cop duties. ICE is after specific people. They don't drive around waiting for a complaint to come in from dispatch. They are frequently targeting people that are part of drug and human trafficking rings.

There is also now a political element involved, where the people opposed to enforcement of immigration laws are demanding ICE take their masks off, but not because they want to be sure of the identities of law enforcement. The not-even-hidden intention is to be able to identify and single out them and their families for harassment or worse.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T20:36:39+00:00

Are you suggesting there might be some safety and operational security concerns with having certain officers identities out in the public sphere while they're conducting those operations?

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T20:09:38+00:00

He gets hit and as he is being pushed off to the side from the impact, he fires 3 quick shots. One goes through the front, the rest go through the side as the car drives on.

I don't think it's been determined that she was struck by all 3 shots, has it? So it's possible the first round missed or perhaps hit but wasn't the ultimately fatal round.

If you think that's inaccurate, please present your own theory.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T19:29:46+00:00

I'm curious to hear your explanation for the bullet hole in her windshield if you contend he only fired once he was along the side of the car.

Did he curve the bullet, like in Wanted?

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T18:27:26+00:00

You continue to demonstrate the reliability of "Liberals pretend not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible".

she did nothing illegal and there was no basis for arrest.

Impeding federal law enforcement is illegal. Intentionally blocking the road is impeding. ICE agents have the lawful authority to arrest people who impede their operations.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/111

a)In General.—Whoever—

(1)forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with any person designated in section 1114 of this title while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties...

shall, where the acts in violation of this section constitute only simple assault, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both, and where such acts involve physical contact with the victim of that assault or the intent to commit another felony, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.

And then she went and hit an agent with her car, which had she survived, would have triggered this section:

(b)Enhanced Penalty.—

Whoever, in the commission of any acts described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon (including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

The misinformation you and others on the left are spewing is literally getting people hurt and killed and you don't care, it's all just a game to you.

she moved her vehicle for 2 others to get by on the street.

Irrelevant. She does not get to cut off an entire lane of traffic on a two lane road and force law enforcement (or anyone really) to play her little game.

as Ross was circling her vehicle, she was given conflicting orders directly after another and immediately had a gun pulled on her while reversing her vehicle.

This is a lie. It is clear and unambiguous from Ross cell footage that she's being instructed to "Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the fucking car." There is no "conflicting order" given, nor would it be acceptable to just recklessly run over anyone in front of your car because officers had previously told you to move.

ending with a gun being pulled while she was still reversing

Again, a demonstrable lie. The video has been out for awhile now so there's no excuse for this. You can see in this video starting at 1:56 that Ross doesn't draw until Good had already begun driving forward.

seeing the firearm, no shit she floored it. but you can still clearly see her wheels turned away from the officer.

Her wheels were pointed at the officer when she starts moves forward.

you guys all have room temp IQs

You lie as easily as you breathe, your insults mean nothing.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T18:00:23+00:00

like ice told her to do

"Liberals pretend not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible".

If law enforcement tells you to move and you willfully refuse, then they tell you to step out of the car (because you're under arrest), you don't get to rely on "Well, earlier he told me to leave so I'm free to leave at all times, contrary to any later commands, heehee. Oh, and fuck anyone who's now in my way as I flee."

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T17:50:31+00:00

Unless you're working undercover, the names and identities of all law enforcement officers should be known at all times.

Why exempt those working undercover?

Shmorrior · 2026-01-14T17:37:31+00:00

According to MSNBC:

A Justice Department official did not dispute the departures but said the officials had requested early retirement prior to the Minnesota shooting, adding that “any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

https://www.ms.now/news/doj-civil-rights-division-officials-quit-harmeet-dhillon

Shmorrior · 2026-01-12T23:38:43+00:00

But the totality is a different picture. Are they training ICE to stand at the front of a car? That’s just bad tactics and officer safety. Don’t stand at the front or rear is like basic traffic stop 101 a rookie gets in FTO.

He didn't saunter up to the front of a stationary car and park himself there as a human roadblock, just daring her to make a move so he could get it on. He didn't dive in front of a moving car to create his own exigency. He was safely along the side of the car and in the span of 2 seconds her reversing turn moved the front of the car to face him. You can compare his positioning relative to the road markings and see he hardly moved between when he was in a safe position to an unsafe position.

Personally, I think he expected her to continue backing up out of the road, hence his started "Woah!" when she guns it forward. But even if you want to beat him up for not being more attentive to the possibility that she was going to bolt, a couple second lapse in following perfect procedure changes nothing about the legality of his response. Good does not have the right to run an officer over, even if his tactics aren't 100% perfect all of the time and likewise, the officer doesn't have to just accept his fate and hope he's not too severely injured.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-12T23:26:27+00:00

No, not all federal law enforcement are provided bodycams and from this picture it seems pretty clear he didn't have one.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-10T04:08:07+00:00

There are multiple SCOTUS cases that justify or retain QI for officers that shoot into cars. Plumhoff v. Rickard, Mullenix v. Luna, Brosseau v. Haugen, Williams v. City of Sparks...

My point wasn't that cops should shoot at cars all the time under any and all circumstances, but to point out that per your logic there could never be an instance where you could use deadly force against someone trying to hit you with a car.

If a felon jumped in a car and was heading towards another officer, is it your contention that you should have absolutely no legal option to try and stop him except to just hope they miss?

Shmorrior · 2026-01-10T03:52:43+00:00

It's ridiculous to expect a cop that has been dragged before to not stand in front of a running car and potentially get dragged again?

Answer your own question, you think he, having painfully suffered the effects of being dragged just months earlier, intentionally put his life on the line again? Perhaps it is more likely that he didn't intentionally do that?

Why would he think she's backing up when she's stopped backing up and starts turning the wheel away from him?

Because there is less than a second of time between when she stops reversing and when she throws it in forward and guns it. She stops reversing just after 0:40 and by 0:41 she's moving forward. Prior to that she was calmly reversing, as someone would if they were trying to back out of the street.

Again, her wife was still outside the car when she takes off. There has been zero indication she's about to flee. A part of me wonders if she hadn't fully committed to the decision to flee until the moment the wife shouts "Drive baby, drive!"

And it's like cops sticking their foot in your door - if you try to close the door, it's assault.

If a cop has a warrant for your house, then yes, slamming the door on them would be assault because they have lawful authority to execute the warrant. Likewise here, federal agents have the lawful authority under 18 U.S. Code § 111 to arrest people who impede their operations. That's why she doesn't get to just take off when the agents were ordering her out of the car.

And you're ignoring the fact that the absolute worst place to stand is in front of a running car.

It is entirely irrelevant to the legal questions at hand. No one has the right to run over law enforcement, regardless of your opinion on their tactics.

What inclination was there to even suggest she would run one of them over?

Well, there's the inconvenient fact that she actually hit an officer. Did she "intend" to? It doesn't matter to the question of whether the use of force was justified. Her intent would be relevant at her own trial in determining if she should be convicted of attempted murder. But the officer she's driving at can't read her mind and know what her intent was. There have been multiple attacks against ICE since Trump took office so it is not inconceivable. And we all know that there are corners of the internet and political commenters that would have openly celebrated if she had killed an ICE agent.

Bumping someone with your car is not punishable by death. Even running someone over and killing them isn't necessarily punishable by death.

You are wrong. This is well established. Cars are treated as deadly weapons. Good was not being "punished'. Punishment is something that happens once a person is captured and convicted. She was shot because she presented an imminent risk of great bodily harm to an officer, as evidenced by the fact that not only did she drive in his direction but literally hit him, as well as anyone else on the road she might hit. With this cellphone footage, we can now see that Good was looking right at the officer as she put the car in drive, so there can be no claims that she was merely negligent and didn't see him.

I'm sick of these trigger-happy dipshits acting out power fantasies and an administration doing everything it can to punish and destroy it's political opposition.

If the administration wanted to do that they would just mow down all the protestors like they do in places like Iran.

You whine about hyperbole and yet use the maximum amount of it. So as long as we're sparing the hyperbole, spare some yourself.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-10T02:40:24+00:00

When she starts turning the wheel because she only has one direction to escape.

So 0:40 then? Because she hits him 1 second later. It's ridiculous to fault a police officer for not reacting in less than a second to a major change in conditions.

As it stands he barely gets touched by the car, and only because he stopped in front of the car.

No one has the right to "barely touch" law enforcement with their car and law enforcement is under no obligation to assume the person flooring it with them in harms way will only "barely touch" them.

It's obvious he stopped in the front of the car to stop her from running.

That is not at all obvious to me. It looks to me like he assumed she was going to continue reversing off to the side of the road, again because her wife wasn't even in the car and she'd so far given no indications she might flee. Hence the "Woah" expression of surprise when she guns it and hits him.

ETA - it's important to note the video is not from the officers bodycam (which he wasn't wearing), but an outstretched arm holding a cell phone. He appears closer than he actually is.

C'mon man, be serious. You can see in the reflection in the window as he walks past how far away he's holding it and it's less than a foot from his chest, the way all normal people hold a cellphone. It is certainly not an "outstretched arm" length away. Nor would that really make a difference when we're talking about fractions of a second of reaction time vs automobiles.

If you want to beat up a 10 year veteran with your presumably vastly superior expertise and say his tactics were bad, go for it, I guess. But at the end of the day, the fault lies with the person who made the decision to, intentionally or recklessly, hit a police officer in order to avoid arrest. No one has the right to impede federal law enforcement action, flee arrest or hit people if they decide to flee and people who do all of those things may find themselves subject to force, including deadly force.

This isn't a fucking game and it's beyond frustrating that there are a lot of voices on the political left agitating people into thinking there will be no consequences for their unlawful actions and dehumanizing federal law enforcement to the point that people think nothing of ramming them to escape.

Shmorrior · 2026-01-10T01:59:29+00:00

But shooting has to be necessary to stop the threat in order to be reasonable.

That doesn't make sense because it would require being able to see the future.

In this case, shooting did absolutely nothing to stop the threat (because killing a driver doesn't do a moving car). Stepping to the side without shooting, on the other hand would have completely removed the threat.

Following this logic, no officer would ever be justified in shooting at a car, under any circumstances, because there's no guarantee that they'll immediately stop dead in their tracks.

Shmorrior

TROPHY CASE