The Immigration/Deportation/ICE Thread
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I can see it, too.
Smitty
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He's fighting against the officers and refusing to go down. Yes, that's insane. Anyone who resists arrest when there are 6 officers around is completely out of their mind.
What's even better is that this retard apparently was "coming to the aid," of someone else who was getting arrested.
Yeah, green soy boy cuck is going to stick it to the man!
Another angry loser deluded into thinking he was acting righteous by fighting ICE, and now he's dead.
The democrats have their blood on his hands as well, at the very least.
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Smitty
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More lies as usual.
They are not getting "a few" of the worst of the worst while "sweeping up" American citizens.
They are getting tons of criminals who are here illegally and a couple American citizens have been mistakenly apprehended. And two dolts got shot, one of them who broke the law outright and the other at the very least appeared to have unwisely and riskily resisted arrest while armed (which doesn't mean there should be no repercussions for the offending officer in that particular case but there's no need to rush to judgment either).
American citizens get shot, whether justifiably or not, during law enforcement many times a year. It doesn't mean we need to stop arresting criminals or change how we police en masse. And it's only front page news in this instance because the media wants a public referendum denouncing ICE. Because the media is the unashamed publication arm of the Democratic party.
(They wanted that with regular policing too, until defunding the police became politically untenable and now you don't hear about those stories every three days anymore, huh, I wonder whats up with that).
But tell me by what metric ICE is performing worse than average local or federal police forces? And by how much worse? And why, if marginal, would that mean we should change how we police this situation when deportation of the millions of illegals who are here is a national security concern of the highest level?
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Smitty
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No, he can't.
Smitty
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Of course not, but it's also an inevitability, especially when goons and retards unwisely resist legal officers with violence.
That's not a fact.
It's a reasonable inference to a certain degree that better training might reduce casualties, but, when the casualty number is two, and one of them involved attempted murder with a deadly weapon in a vehicle, that's a lot of inferring going on.
What the Vice President has to say is nearly meaningless in this whole situation. They are not going about their jobs with reckless abandon just because he made an off-hand comment.
Smitty
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Mostly from you denouncing them and blaming them for every situation when it's clearly not their fault and the victims are mostly to blame for the outcomes.
Ok. Let's increase their training budget, and to accomplish that, we'll go cut twice as much bloat spending from some leftist social crusade spending project.
Oh, they'll just complain about that, get a corrupt judge to block it in contradiction to the law without justifiable cause, and incite their voters to violence to make the situation worse on their own.
When they feel like cooperating, we can have a conversation about what can be done differently with training.
Until then I'm not incentivized to change what is otherwise like a 99.9999% success rate.
There is no data and no argument to be made that any statements from the VP or Miller supercede their orders and instructions down the chain of command. ICE agents are not acting in contradiction of the law en masse and neither of the fatalities appear to have been by officers acting in contradiction of the law either; if anything, poor judgment in heat of the moment scenarios that were almost entirely made worse by the incited-to-violence behavior of the "victims," and in which none of the officers have the slightest chance of being found guilty of crimes themselves.
The media would like you to think so despite this affair being better run than prior administrations. They didn't make it front page news in the past administrations, for reasons you are quite well aware of.
Irving Cowboy
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I'll say this, @Smitty, your ignorance of facts that don't coincide with your opinion is hilarious, if not sad.
Standing over a man and shooting him over 5 times is what you want? OK.
4 agents holding someone down face-first in the pavement while another one sprays pepper spray directly into their eyes is following their training? And the lady wasn't being arrested, she was being shoved by some tough guy and Pretti got between her and the agent, with his BACK to the agent and both hands up, nonetheless. And you call that good practice... OK
ICE's budget was 10B in 2024... woefully inadequate. But it ballooned to 90B this year, and you are going to cry that they don't have the money to train their agents properly? OK.
No, none of those agents give a shit when they hear Noem (Lewandowski), Vance, or Miller say that they have free reign to conduct operations however they see fit and a narrative absolving them of any wrongdoing will be immediately released and therefore have absolute immunity. But in your mind, they don't pay attention to that.
And you keep saying that these are the only two, only because they were the only ones shot to death. There are more victims of those agents than you are willing to admit, but are all too eager to believe their story, even after video comes out that tells a completely different story.
Standing over a man and shooting him over 5 times is what you want? OK.
4 agents holding someone down face-first in the pavement while another one sprays pepper spray directly into their eyes is following their training? And the lady wasn't being arrested, she was being shoved by some tough guy and Pretti got between her and the agent, with his BACK to the agent and both hands up, nonetheless. And you call that good practice... OK
ICE's budget was 10B in 2024... woefully inadequate. But it ballooned to 90B this year, and you are going to cry that they don't have the money to train their agents properly? OK.
No, none of those agents give a shit when they hear Noem (Lewandowski), Vance, or Miller say that they have free reign to conduct operations however they see fit and a narrative absolving them of any wrongdoing will be immediately released and therefore have absolute immunity. But in your mind, they don't pay attention to that.
And you keep saying that these are the only two, only because they were the only ones shot to death. There are more victims of those agents than you are willing to admit, but are all too eager to believe their story, even after video comes out that tells a completely different story.
Smitty
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Your ability to dodge points when you don't have an adequate rebuttal is far sadder.
No, I don't want that.
I want these idiots to stop confronting LEOs and go back to protesting peacefully.
The problem is these morons confuse protesting with obstruction. Like little petulant children, they think temper tantrums and physical opposition is ok to get what they want.
They are wrong.
I don't know exactly what their training is, but regardless of what it is, anyone being detained or restrained must immediately, without exception, accede to police force and then get a lawyer later.
That is the only acceptable course of action, ever.
Anyone who doesn't do that is in the wrong, always.
You never, ever physically fight with LEO.
This guy did. He was wrong. That's the end of the story.
Anything else is splitting hairs. What their training was, whether what LEO believed was reasonable, etc, etc, etc, etc.
These guys DO get trained. Extensively. As you just pointed out, they have a big training budget.
And in the heat of the moment, they have to make a quick call that is the result of what they've been trained to do in conjunction with their appraisal of the situation. The situation was created by the retard who didn't immediately hit the ground like a sack of bricks.
These guys get trained. But they are placed in situations where their lives are put in danger by aggressors ALL THE TIME. They are trained that it is ok to use lethal force sometimes, because it is.
"Make the training better," is a loser excuse. They are trained. Extensively.
Stop behaving like petulant children. Stop deluding yourself that ICE are Nazis or fascists.
Protest non-violently like you're supposed to under the first amendment.
Stop physically confronting LEO on behalf of others.
Go get an Attorney.
That's the right move.
Ok. And Pretti shouldn't have done that. He was wrong to do that. You don't go jump in an officer's face because you think they are mistreating someone. That's idiotic Cowboy nonsense.
Film. Record. Report. Get a lawyer.
Retard jumped into a confrontation while armed with 6 officers.
He made the situation worse.
Stop. Doing. That.
But these idiots are being conditioned online that physical resistance is righteous. That they are "sticking up for the little guy." (despite the fact that their position is the one being bankrolled by huge corporate interests and not vice versa). That it gives them license to "punch Nazis."
They are delusional. They are wrong. They are endangering themselves and Law enforcement.
They have to stop.
And their Democrat overlords who are placing these sacrificial lambs into harms way have to tell them to stop.
You are the one who brought up that their training was inadequate. So it's not inadequate then?
No, they don't. Not any more than a soldier ignores their commanding officer when they hear the President/Commander in Chief make a political speech. Didn't you serve? How don't you know this?
Those are the only two who have been shot and killed.
There are more people who have been wrongfully apprehended, but the number is anecdotal and insignificant compared to normal policing and in consideration of the job that ICE has to do (root out illegal immigrants often being protected by factions of the community).
No one has a credible argument to make that we need to overhaul normal policing because sometimes people are wrongfully detained (or shot). (They tried to make that argument, because destruction of society is their ultimate goal, so they can win votes and/or usher in a socialist revolution, but that became unpopular and counter productive politically so they abandoned it).
We shouldn't do it here with immigration policing either, and you don't have a credible argument to make that would indicate such. You are overplaying statistically insignificant anecdotes to score political points, and it's shameful.
Now, that doesn't mean I would agree that ICE can just kick down people's doors without a warrant.
But if they do, should Joe Homeowner get into a fist fight with officers and then cry if he's shot?
No.
Accept the cuffs. Get a lawyer.
If your only argument is "train them to handle people better so they don't have to shoot them," then I'll suggest that you yourself are probably relatively ignorant as to what their training is, and I'll also suggest that you probably don't have a better suggestion on how to train them better.
In fact, what I hear whenever you opine on the subject is mostly whining because you don't like how mean that big ol' meany Trump is and you mostly just want him to stop enforcing his mandate to eradicate illegal immigration in this country.
Tough, them's the breaks. You lost the election.
We are rooting out illegals. They are being sent back where they came from. If you have an actual suggestion how to do it more effectively, great, but stopping it will not be an acceptable suggestion, nor will reducing the intensity of the operation.
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Cujo
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I watched this like 5 times. So damn funny.
Oh no, she wasn’t shot. She tried to pick up a flash bang and throw it back at officers. She’ll have to finger her rotten snatch with her other hand, I guess. Please keep fucking around, I’m enjoying it.
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Cujo
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A helpful way to think about the Pretti case and why the 2A argument misses the point:
First, let’s get something clarified: whether Pretti was carrying legally is not the central issue—and even if he weren’t, that alone would not justify the use of deadly force.
The question is what happened once police engaged.
At that moment, the relevant legal framework changes.
Gun-carry law governs possession. Use-of-force law governs encounters.
Once officers lawfully engage and issue commands, the 2nd Amendment no longer controls the analysis. From that point on, it’s about officer safety, compliance, and resistance.
Here are some common objections and why they fail:
“He was legally carrying.”
Legal carrying addresses who may possess a firearm. It does not grant the right to ignore lawful commands or remain armed during an enforcement encounter.
“The 2nd Amendment protects him here.”
The 2A protects possession, not conduct during police interactions. Courts have not regarded it as immunity from lawful commands or use-of-force standards.
“He didn’t intend harm.”
Intent is not the determining legal factor. Use-of-force laws focus on objective threats and resistance, not subjective motives.
“But he was just filming or protesting.”
Once an individual involves themselves in an active law enforcement situation, officers have the authority to control the scene. Filming or protesting does not supersede commands or safety protocols.
“CCWs mean you can carry anywhere.”
A CCW is not a blank check. In fact, it’s a regulated permission that comes with obligations: avoid confrontation, comply with the police, and de-escalate. It is meant to prevent armed interference, not encourage it.
One final important point:
Border Patrol agents are obligated to be present and have a right to return home. Pretti was under no obligation to be there, especially while armed.
You may oppose immigration policies or critique federal enforcement actions. However, once an individual resists lawful commands while armed during an enforcement operation, the discussion shifts away from gun rights or politics.
It becomes a matter of use-of-force law.
This isn’t a matter of ideology; it’s how the law functions in practice.
——————————————————-
***Entire post authored by Will Ricciardella
Re-posting, as I agree with every word.
First, let’s get something clarified: whether Pretti was carrying legally is not the central issue—and even if he weren’t, that alone would not justify the use of deadly force.
The question is what happened once police engaged.
At that moment, the relevant legal framework changes.
Gun-carry law governs possession. Use-of-force law governs encounters.
Once officers lawfully engage and issue commands, the 2nd Amendment no longer controls the analysis. From that point on, it’s about officer safety, compliance, and resistance.
Here are some common objections and why they fail:
“He was legally carrying.”
Legal carrying addresses who may possess a firearm. It does not grant the right to ignore lawful commands or remain armed during an enforcement encounter.
“The 2nd Amendment protects him here.”
The 2A protects possession, not conduct during police interactions. Courts have not regarded it as immunity from lawful commands or use-of-force standards.
“He didn’t intend harm.”
Intent is not the determining legal factor. Use-of-force laws focus on objective threats and resistance, not subjective motives.
“But he was just filming or protesting.”
Once an individual involves themselves in an active law enforcement situation, officers have the authority to control the scene. Filming or protesting does not supersede commands or safety protocols.
“CCWs mean you can carry anywhere.”
A CCW is not a blank check. In fact, it’s a regulated permission that comes with obligations: avoid confrontation, comply with the police, and de-escalate. It is meant to prevent armed interference, not encourage it.
One final important point:
Border Patrol agents are obligated to be present and have a right to return home. Pretti was under no obligation to be there, especially while armed.
You may oppose immigration policies or critique federal enforcement actions. However, once an individual resists lawful commands while armed during an enforcement operation, the discussion shifts away from gun rights or politics.
It becomes a matter of use-of-force law.
This isn’t a matter of ideology; it’s how the law functions in practice.
——————————————————-
***Entire post authored by Will Ricciardella
Re-posting, as I agree with every word.
Smitty
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Does the second amendment protect someone committing a crime from being shot at by police? No?
Then why would we cite it here? Pretti wasn't shot for carrying, he was shot because he engaged in a physical confrontation with police and put them in a position where they believed lethal force was reasonable to protect themselves.
We'll see whether that belief was reasonable as the investigation goes on, but it has zero bearing on the second amendment, not any more than a Drug dealer with a gun would be protected by the second amendment if he used it to shoot at cops.
It's a straw man argument propped up by desperate people who just want to say anything to avoid taking yet another political loss if they have to have an honest debate.
Pathetic emotional appeals are their only winning move.
Then why would we cite it here? Pretti wasn't shot for carrying, he was shot because he engaged in a physical confrontation with police and put them in a position where they believed lethal force was reasonable to protect themselves.
We'll see whether that belief was reasonable as the investigation goes on, but it has zero bearing on the second amendment, not any more than a Drug dealer with a gun would be protected by the second amendment if he used it to shoot at cops.
It's a straw man argument propped up by desperate people who just want to say anything to avoid taking yet another political loss if they have to have an honest debate.
Pathetic emotional appeals are their only winning move.
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That makes it even funnier.
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The fact that you are okay with this ends your argument.
Smitty
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Why the Alex Pretti shooting leans toward justified force - barely
Here's my 24-hour-later analysis. I've listened to all of the arguments. I've watched as much video as I can. I've reread case law.
I believe the shooting was technically justified legally (like 50.5%, just over 50-50), but barely, and there is enough there to rule it as such. But it's a very close call, and I see why people are upset about it. I don't like this shooting. If the gun discharged accidentally as some think, my percent grows for the officer (but that’s unproven.)
It's an ugly, messy shooting. Anyone pretending that this is a clean, clear-cut and obviously justified shooting - including the Trump administration - is being extremely disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. The people on the other side, who claim this is a clear-cut execution, implying ill-intent, are also being very disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. This one falls somewhere in the middle, and the answer likely lies within the fog of war and inside a scrum that we can't all completely see.
I also stipulate that we don't know everything the system does; we don't even know what the officer's statement says. I reserve the right to change my opinion based on new information.
The analysis
Let's start with the law. “The 'reasonableness' of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. ... The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation."
— Graham v. Connor
Officers have a right to use deadly force if they reasonably believe they or another person is in imminent danger of great bodily harm or death. That's the standard. They don't have to be right; just reasonable (and that will be very important here.)
Start there. This officer did not have the benefit of analyzing every single angle in slow-motion. What we are seeing now is NOT what he saw. He had a split-second to react. That's important. We also can't see exactly what he saw, which is also important. We aren't seeing his POV. The people recording videos weren't. We are seeing the struggle from the side; he had a different view. And that matters, because it's what he saw - or thought he saw -- that is determinative here. That's the big black hole in all of these analyses. We haven't yet heard from him.
How it unfolded
Pretti was armed. That's not illegal. He had a permit, and he had a right to have the gun. The Trump administration's comments on the firearm, that possessing the handgun indicates Pretti was a threat to "massacre" people or whatever, etc., are extremely inappropriate. I am sick and tired of the Trump administration giving out information that doesn't quite match the truth. I think it is hurting their cause. Their over-the-top rhetoric implies this is obvious justified force. That's bulls*t, sorry.
They've done this too much. I get why. They are living in an exceptionally compressed news cycle. The "other side" (Walz, Frey, etc.) are just as quick to release insane and reckless statements in the other direction and have. They are dealing with a media that is predisposed against them and law enforcement. They are fighting for the narrative. They are trying to go very hard at the false narratives on the front end before they set. I get this, but I think they are rhetorically taking it too far.
I personally wouldn't bring a firearm to an agitated and tense scene, but I know others who would for that very reason (self-protection). Thus, so far, Pretti has done nothing wrong in this sequence of events.
I don't agree with WHY he was protesting. I personally wouldn't protest law enforcement agents who were trying to arrest an illegal immigrant wanted for assault (as they were that day). But I stipulate he had a right to protest. Let's not sanitize what they are protesting, though.
He started out peacefully. He was recording the agents with his cell phone. He had a right to do that. It's a free country.
Alex Pretti's poor decisions
Pretti's first poor decision, though, came when he entered the street as two women were trying to record an agent near his car. This behavior has been happening all over Minneapolis, and it's now led to two deaths. The Minneapolis police have failed to secure the streets and to protect the agents as they attempt to conduct law enforcement operations. He should have stayed on the sidewalk and out of their way. The women should have, also. He took a step here that helped escalate the situation. You don't have a right to "protest" in the middle of the street.
Totality of the circumstances
The Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY in May that the totality of circumstances must be considered. The case is Barnes v. Felix, and I believe it's important here.
"An excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment must be evaluated based on the totality of the circumstances, not solely the moment an officer perceives a threat. Justice Elena Kagan authored the unanimous opinion of the Court, which vacated and remanded the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that had applied a narrower 'moment-of-threat' analysis."
"The Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard requires a fact-specific, contextual examination of all relevant circumstances leading up to a law enforcement officer’s use of force. While the moment the officer fires a weapon may often carry significant weight, events occurring before that instant, such as the initiation of a stop or earlier conduct by the parties, may affect how a reasonable officer would have perceived the situation. Prior actions by either the officer or suspect may clarify ambiguous behaviors or shift how threatening a situation reasonably appeared, making a strict focus on only the climactic moment inconsistent with established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."
This decision helps the firing agent, in my opinion, and it's a key reason that I tilt (barely) toward justified force. There are elements that go against it; in the totality of the circumstances, up to this point, Alex Pretti was just recording (which was his right), he wasn't threatening anyone with the firearm (or even wielding it), and he didn't "attack" officers.
However, federal agents (and these were Border Patrol, not ICE) have been harassed, threatened, harangued, and attacked as a group day in and day out for weeks now. One was attacked by a shovel and broom.
Armchair quarterbacks have NO IDEA the extreme level of abuse these officers are facing all day every day. I am not saying that justifies lethal force in and of itself; I'm told that all cops know to guard against any such instinct.
However, it's relevant to the totality of the circumstances. The media are all painting Alex Pretti as a lovely man who worked as a kindly nurse and loved his dog; fine. But the officers didn't have any way to know that on the scene, and, at this point, they have to perceive that everyone could be a potential threat when it comes to these agitated scenes. I also think they are just done with people impeding their operations, getting in the middle of the street and blowing whistles in their faces, while they try to arrest illegal immigrant child molesters (and, in this case, one with an assault history). That leads me to the next actions.
Escalation by the agents
An agent did escalate things by pushing a woman back off the side of the street, and then when Pretti intervened, pepper-spraying and pushing him. I question whether the pushing was necessary, but I do judge it based on the above totality of the circumstances. I think that agent was trying to get them out of the street. But I think that was an escalating action that could have been avoided. That being said, pepper-spraying someone doesn't give them a right to struggle with cops; it's a de-escalation technique that is far down on the use-of-force continuum.
You have to consider that the agents were involved in other tense and agitated situations a short time before ON THE SAME DAY down the street and had already detained another person. They were trying to clear the street and push the protesters back and out of it before things got more chaotic and out of control. It's street control and crowd control basically. It looks ugly on video.
None of this would have happened if the Minneapolis police were protecting the agents and securing the streets when they do operations, as noted. That they have not done so is unconscionable. And it's leading to deaths. Both deaths have occurred when protesters essentially got in the way of law enforcement operations, leading to agitated and gray-area encounters. This is on Frey, O'Hara and Walz. Walz should have activated the National Guard much sooner.
These agents are left to fend for themselves against hostile crowds who are trying to impede their actions every step of the way. I think the push back and the pepper spray were an attempt to keep control of the scene before it spun out of control. It seems like a bit of a premature overreaction, though, as they weren't surrounded by hundreds of encroaching people or something. But you have to understand that instinct within the context of the abuse these officers have been taking, and the other scenes they've been in that have spun very quickly out of control, imperiling their safety.
Officers and citizens fighting in the streets - in the words of Frey - whatever could go wrong? Lots.
For people to say Pretti had a right to struggle with agents because he was pepper sprayed is an insane take. Pepper spray means back off.
If officers tell you to back off, back off.
But he didn't.
Was he "helping a woman"?
Pretti inserted himself into a situation where he didn't belong, helping escalate it. He should have stayed on the sidewalk, and there wouldn't have been a problem. To pretend these are just protests is ridiculous. Some people are peacefully protesting, but when you impede law enforcement, struggle with them, or generally commit crimes, you are, minimally, an agitator, not a protester.
Pretti then went over to the woman who fell, and there was another chaotic moment. The left is trying, as always, to read this moment as negatively for the agents as possible. They say Pretti was "trying to help the woman." Was he? Maybe.
But it's hard to tell what he was doing from the video. Some people think he was trying to get her water bottle due to the pepper spraying. On video, it looks like the beginning of a chaotic scrum. Whatever he was doing, he went physically hands-on the woman. And the agent, distracted by the need to control the rest of the scene, sees them on the ground chaotically struggling or rolling around. He sees Pretti making physical contact with her. He wasn't calmly helping her. They were stumbling or rolling around.
Pretti should have backed off. At this point, the agents appear to be pulling Pretti off the woman. They drag him away from her. I don't find this to be inappropriate behavior. They probably thought they were protecting the woman or, alternatively, just trying to restore order in the streets. You can't have people rolling around the streets. Remember again that they were there to arrest an illegal immigrant with an assaultive history. Every second people are rolling around with them in the streets, that person could be getting away.
The main struggle
That's when the struggle started. It's possible Pretti didn't have a chance to extricate himself from the struggle. I get that. But he also appears to have engaged in it. He is now struggling with agents while armed. This is an exceptionally dangerous decision.
More than an intentionally reckless choice, it appears to be the predictable result of a cascading scene of chaos that just kept getting more chaotic. And this all happened in seconds.
But he is struggling with the agents while armed.
Now comes the critical juncture. He had his cell phone in one hand. It doesn't appear he withdrew his gun. That hurts the agent's case.
Disarming Pretti
The officer in the gray jacket appears to have disarmed Pretti. He comes into the scrum and removes the g*n from Pretti's waistband. I think that's clear. So, yes, Pretti was unarmed when the officer fired. That hurts the agent's case. That makes this ugly and messy.
The agents seemed surprised. They were looking for the gun later. But that helps his case, because other agents weren't aware that gray jacket man got it either, apparently. Another agent also drew his firearm, indicating more than one perceived a threat.
The critical moment
At the critical moment, you can see the firing agent pause and then fire. That motion indicates he saw something, paused to make sure what he was seeing, and then was concerned enough to fire. What did he see? The gray jacket man had the gun.
That's unclear. We don't know HIS version of events. Always remember that the system has evidence and information (and possibly more video) that we haven't seen. That can change things.
Here's where the legal analysis comes in. The agent doesn't have to be right under the law. He just needs to be reasonable, as assessed by what other officers would perceive as reasonable, juxtaposed against the totality of the circumstances. It's worth repeating that here.
If he thought Pretti had a gun or was drawing a gun, that makes this a likely justified shooting. Because we can't see what he saw, there is no way to know that for sure. But screenshots make it look like Pretti either had something in his hand or something fell nearby (maybe a magazine, gear from an agent?) Some people online believe he was reaching for his holster, but others don't. People see what they want to see in the videos, but all that matters is what the officer saw, and he was at a different angle. I think it's likely that he thought Pretti had a gun or was reaching for a gun. I think it's likely that he believed that, if he waited, Pretti might use that gun on his partners.
I think this belief was wrong. But the law doesn't mandate that it be correct, just reasonable.
To me this is a very close call, but what gets me over the edge to the side of the agent is the totality of the circumstances of what they're dealing with overall and also one key piece of evidence. According to even CNN, an agent shouted, "he's got a gun" right before the agent fired. I suspect that this utterance combined by some movement by Pretti in the scrum led the officer to believe his partners were in imminent danger. It’s important to hear the agent’s side. It could change my stance, which is preliminary.
If you watch the video closely, I doubt that the agent knew that the gray jacket man had already disarmed Pretti. The disarming and firing happened very close together (we're talking a second), and the agent was not looking in that direction and appeared focused on drawing his own gun, tunnel vision, etc. I also think it's possible that PRETTI didn't realize that he had been disarmed. Did the officer think his cell phone was the gun? Did he see the gun being pulled from his waistband by the gray jacket officer and mistakenly think Pretti had drawn it? Did Pretti make a motion. This was a CHAOTIC scrum, and it happened in seconds. The number of shots is usually not legally relevant when they are so tightly bunched together due to adrenaline and muscle memory.
Rob Doar, president of the MN Gun Owners Law Center has put forth an (unproven) theory that Pretti’s gun accidentally discharged when Gray Jacket Man grabbed it. And that this was the first shot and the agent reacted to it. But DHS has not said that.
I am unclear what fell in the video.
That's fog of war stuff, and the law accounts for it, but it is NEVER pretty. Years ago, in Milwaukee, an officer shot a man who was holding a small black cassette tape. He mistakenly thought it was a gun. He was exonerated.
I don't like it, though. I question why he couldn't just grab Pretti from behind and pull him away. I question why that many officers couldn't get control of one struggling guy without taking his life. Alex Pretti doesn't get his life back. That is a really big deal.
I think this shooting is dicier than the Good case (she hit the officer with her car). I am concerned that the agents have taken so much abuse that they are now too quick to react or to escalate things themselves. They have been placed in an impossible situation, and, again, that is the fault of the Democratic and police leadership in Minneapolis, which is not protecting them or controlling the streets during their operations.
I think a truly independent investigation may be warranted.
It's a mess. Let's not pretend it isn't one.
When there's a tie in these cases, I give it to the person who was there to uphold the laws during endless scenes of agitation and lawbreaking.
These officers don't wake up in the morning wanting to take a life. That matters. They want to go home at night. They are working under incredible, almost combat-like circumstances, completely abandoned by the leadership and Police Department of the city they're operating in.
This officer didn't intend to "murder" Alex Pretti, and any rhetoric to that regard is extremely unfair and agitating. Politicians, including the Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic candidates and the mayor of Milwaukee, have released inciting, unhelpful statements, rather than responsible analyses. Writing things like he was killed on his knees, he was "murdered," etc., is not a helpful response from leaders.
The law requires an assessment of the totality of the circumstances, and that is what I have tried to do here. These situations are ALL case specific.
Final conclusion
I don't like this shooting. I wish this had not happened. I think the officers escalated the situation in some ways. I think Alex Pretti made some bad decisions. I think Democratic and police leadership are not protecting officers OR protestors/agitators. I think this is a close call. I think it's a messy, ugly, gray-area, fog-of-war, shooting.
But that's where I come down. I lean toward there being enough there to not justify sending this officer to prison, basically. But it's a slim margin.
I am writing all of this because you won't get this take in many other places, and someone needs to say it. I recognize some reasonable people will come down on the other side, and I get how they get there. I just don't respect the people whose argumentation revolves around sending me death threats (we have gotten multiple), calling people N*zis, arguing that immigration laws should not be enforced even against criminals ("get out of Minnesota"), or smearing all law enforcement. Fundamentally, I believe what is happening in Minnesota is about preserving and upholding the rule of law, but these situations are not helping. And I am fairly shocked an officer would be this quick to shoot, knowing what would result. No officer wants to be in this position. Frankly, this situation is every officer's worst nightmare.
The way forward
I have also proposed a solution in a previous post, so I will end on that. I think BOTH sides should stop the incendiary rhetoric and sit down at a table. They should agree (Trump, Noem, Bovino, Walz, Ellison, and Frey) on a joint plan to focus on the illegal immigrants who committed crimes (felonies, misdemeanors and OWIS).
The state should agree to honor all detainers in jails and to allow ICE in courthouses and to help them identify such. Those are safer environments. For the operations on the street, the Minneapolis police and/or National Guard should protect the agents and control the streets. Worry about the rest later. Both sides should agree to stop the incendiary rhetoric.
Trump can't and shouldn't withdraw ICE completely. There is an organized element within these "protests" likely. Antifa took a microphone and said that Minneapolis will be the rock that breaks ICE, and they will replicate this strategy everywhere if it works. I don't think they care about the lives lost; they think it's helping their cause, and that cause is preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration laws at all. The government can not allow the tail to wag the dog. So they have to stay the course.
That's how I would do it.
But that won't happen. And I recognize that.
#BreakingNews #ice #BREAKING
Here's my 24-hour-later analysis. I've listened to all of the arguments. I've watched as much video as I can. I've reread case law.
I believe the shooting was technically justified legally (like 50.5%, just over 50-50), but barely, and there is enough there to rule it as such. But it's a very close call, and I see why people are upset about it. I don't like this shooting. If the gun discharged accidentally as some think, my percent grows for the officer (but that’s unproven.)
It's an ugly, messy shooting. Anyone pretending that this is a clean, clear-cut and obviously justified shooting - including the Trump administration - is being extremely disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. The people on the other side, who claim this is a clear-cut execution, implying ill-intent, are also being very disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. This one falls somewhere in the middle, and the answer likely lies within the fog of war and inside a scrum that we can't all completely see.
I also stipulate that we don't know everything the system does; we don't even know what the officer's statement says. I reserve the right to change my opinion based on new information.
The analysis
Let's start with the law. “The 'reasonableness' of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. ... The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation."
— Graham v. Connor
Officers have a right to use deadly force if they reasonably believe they or another person is in imminent danger of great bodily harm or death. That's the standard. They don't have to be right; just reasonable (and that will be very important here.)
Start there. This officer did not have the benefit of analyzing every single angle in slow-motion. What we are seeing now is NOT what he saw. He had a split-second to react. That's important. We also can't see exactly what he saw, which is also important. We aren't seeing his POV. The people recording videos weren't. We are seeing the struggle from the side; he had a different view. And that matters, because it's what he saw - or thought he saw -- that is determinative here. That's the big black hole in all of these analyses. We haven't yet heard from him.
How it unfolded
Pretti was armed. That's not illegal. He had a permit, and he had a right to have the gun. The Trump administration's comments on the firearm, that possessing the handgun indicates Pretti was a threat to "massacre" people or whatever, etc., are extremely inappropriate. I am sick and tired of the Trump administration giving out information that doesn't quite match the truth. I think it is hurting their cause. Their over-the-top rhetoric implies this is obvious justified force. That's bulls*t, sorry.
They've done this too much. I get why. They are living in an exceptionally compressed news cycle. The "other side" (Walz, Frey, etc.) are just as quick to release insane and reckless statements in the other direction and have. They are dealing with a media that is predisposed against them and law enforcement. They are fighting for the narrative. They are trying to go very hard at the false narratives on the front end before they set. I get this, but I think they are rhetorically taking it too far.
I personally wouldn't bring a firearm to an agitated and tense scene, but I know others who would for that very reason (self-protection). Thus, so far, Pretti has done nothing wrong in this sequence of events.
I don't agree with WHY he was protesting. I personally wouldn't protest law enforcement agents who were trying to arrest an illegal immigrant wanted for assault (as they were that day). But I stipulate he had a right to protest. Let's not sanitize what they are protesting, though.
He started out peacefully. He was recording the agents with his cell phone. He had a right to do that. It's a free country.
Alex Pretti's poor decisions
Pretti's first poor decision, though, came when he entered the street as two women were trying to record an agent near his car. This behavior has been happening all over Minneapolis, and it's now led to two deaths. The Minneapolis police have failed to secure the streets and to protect the agents as they attempt to conduct law enforcement operations. He should have stayed on the sidewalk and out of their way. The women should have, also. He took a step here that helped escalate the situation. You don't have a right to "protest" in the middle of the street.
Totality of the circumstances
The Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY in May that the totality of circumstances must be considered. The case is Barnes v. Felix, and I believe it's important here.
"An excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment must be evaluated based on the totality of the circumstances, not solely the moment an officer perceives a threat. Justice Elena Kagan authored the unanimous opinion of the Court, which vacated and remanded the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that had applied a narrower 'moment-of-threat' analysis."
"The Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard requires a fact-specific, contextual examination of all relevant circumstances leading up to a law enforcement officer’s use of force. While the moment the officer fires a weapon may often carry significant weight, events occurring before that instant, such as the initiation of a stop or earlier conduct by the parties, may affect how a reasonable officer would have perceived the situation. Prior actions by either the officer or suspect may clarify ambiguous behaviors or shift how threatening a situation reasonably appeared, making a strict focus on only the climactic moment inconsistent with established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."
This decision helps the firing agent, in my opinion, and it's a key reason that I tilt (barely) toward justified force. There are elements that go against it; in the totality of the circumstances, up to this point, Alex Pretti was just recording (which was his right), he wasn't threatening anyone with the firearm (or even wielding it), and he didn't "attack" officers.
However, federal agents (and these were Border Patrol, not ICE) have been harassed, threatened, harangued, and attacked as a group day in and day out for weeks now. One was attacked by a shovel and broom.
Armchair quarterbacks have NO IDEA the extreme level of abuse these officers are facing all day every day. I am not saying that justifies lethal force in and of itself; I'm told that all cops know to guard against any such instinct.
However, it's relevant to the totality of the circumstances. The media are all painting Alex Pretti as a lovely man who worked as a kindly nurse and loved his dog; fine. But the officers didn't have any way to know that on the scene, and, at this point, they have to perceive that everyone could be a potential threat when it comes to these agitated scenes. I also think they are just done with people impeding their operations, getting in the middle of the street and blowing whistles in their faces, while they try to arrest illegal immigrant child molesters (and, in this case, one with an assault history). That leads me to the next actions.
Escalation by the agents
An agent did escalate things by pushing a woman back off the side of the street, and then when Pretti intervened, pepper-spraying and pushing him. I question whether the pushing was necessary, but I do judge it based on the above totality of the circumstances. I think that agent was trying to get them out of the street. But I think that was an escalating action that could have been avoided. That being said, pepper-spraying someone doesn't give them a right to struggle with cops; it's a de-escalation technique that is far down on the use-of-force continuum.
You have to consider that the agents were involved in other tense and agitated situations a short time before ON THE SAME DAY down the street and had already detained another person. They were trying to clear the street and push the protesters back and out of it before things got more chaotic and out of control. It's street control and crowd control basically. It looks ugly on video.
None of this would have happened if the Minneapolis police were protecting the agents and securing the streets when they do operations, as noted. That they have not done so is unconscionable. And it's leading to deaths. Both deaths have occurred when protesters essentially got in the way of law enforcement operations, leading to agitated and gray-area encounters. This is on Frey, O'Hara and Walz. Walz should have activated the National Guard much sooner.
These agents are left to fend for themselves against hostile crowds who are trying to impede their actions every step of the way. I think the push back and the pepper spray were an attempt to keep control of the scene before it spun out of control. It seems like a bit of a premature overreaction, though, as they weren't surrounded by hundreds of encroaching people or something. But you have to understand that instinct within the context of the abuse these officers have been taking, and the other scenes they've been in that have spun very quickly out of control, imperiling their safety.
Officers and citizens fighting in the streets - in the words of Frey - whatever could go wrong? Lots.
For people to say Pretti had a right to struggle with agents because he was pepper sprayed is an insane take. Pepper spray means back off.
If officers tell you to back off, back off.
But he didn't.
Was he "helping a woman"?
Pretti inserted himself into a situation where he didn't belong, helping escalate it. He should have stayed on the sidewalk, and there wouldn't have been a problem. To pretend these are just protests is ridiculous. Some people are peacefully protesting, but when you impede law enforcement, struggle with them, or generally commit crimes, you are, minimally, an agitator, not a protester.
Pretti then went over to the woman who fell, and there was another chaotic moment. The left is trying, as always, to read this moment as negatively for the agents as possible. They say Pretti was "trying to help the woman." Was he? Maybe.
But it's hard to tell what he was doing from the video. Some people think he was trying to get her water bottle due to the pepper spraying. On video, it looks like the beginning of a chaotic scrum. Whatever he was doing, he went physically hands-on the woman. And the agent, distracted by the need to control the rest of the scene, sees them on the ground chaotically struggling or rolling around. He sees Pretti making physical contact with her. He wasn't calmly helping her. They were stumbling or rolling around.
Pretti should have backed off. At this point, the agents appear to be pulling Pretti off the woman. They drag him away from her. I don't find this to be inappropriate behavior. They probably thought they were protecting the woman or, alternatively, just trying to restore order in the streets. You can't have people rolling around the streets. Remember again that they were there to arrest an illegal immigrant with an assaultive history. Every second people are rolling around with them in the streets, that person could be getting away.
The main struggle
That's when the struggle started. It's possible Pretti didn't have a chance to extricate himself from the struggle. I get that. But he also appears to have engaged in it. He is now struggling with agents while armed. This is an exceptionally dangerous decision.
More than an intentionally reckless choice, it appears to be the predictable result of a cascading scene of chaos that just kept getting more chaotic. And this all happened in seconds.
But he is struggling with the agents while armed.
Now comes the critical juncture. He had his cell phone in one hand. It doesn't appear he withdrew his gun. That hurts the agent's case.
Disarming Pretti
The officer in the gray jacket appears to have disarmed Pretti. He comes into the scrum and removes the g*n from Pretti's waistband. I think that's clear. So, yes, Pretti was unarmed when the officer fired. That hurts the agent's case. That makes this ugly and messy.
The agents seemed surprised. They were looking for the gun later. But that helps his case, because other agents weren't aware that gray jacket man got it either, apparently. Another agent also drew his firearm, indicating more than one perceived a threat.
The critical moment
At the critical moment, you can see the firing agent pause and then fire. That motion indicates he saw something, paused to make sure what he was seeing, and then was concerned enough to fire. What did he see? The gray jacket man had the gun.
That's unclear. We don't know HIS version of events. Always remember that the system has evidence and information (and possibly more video) that we haven't seen. That can change things.
Here's where the legal analysis comes in. The agent doesn't have to be right under the law. He just needs to be reasonable, as assessed by what other officers would perceive as reasonable, juxtaposed against the totality of the circumstances. It's worth repeating that here.
If he thought Pretti had a gun or was drawing a gun, that makes this a likely justified shooting. Because we can't see what he saw, there is no way to know that for sure. But screenshots make it look like Pretti either had something in his hand or something fell nearby (maybe a magazine, gear from an agent?) Some people online believe he was reaching for his holster, but others don't. People see what they want to see in the videos, but all that matters is what the officer saw, and he was at a different angle. I think it's likely that he thought Pretti had a gun or was reaching for a gun. I think it's likely that he believed that, if he waited, Pretti might use that gun on his partners.
I think this belief was wrong. But the law doesn't mandate that it be correct, just reasonable.
To me this is a very close call, but what gets me over the edge to the side of the agent is the totality of the circumstances of what they're dealing with overall and also one key piece of evidence. According to even CNN, an agent shouted, "he's got a gun" right before the agent fired. I suspect that this utterance combined by some movement by Pretti in the scrum led the officer to believe his partners were in imminent danger. It’s important to hear the agent’s side. It could change my stance, which is preliminary.
If you watch the video closely, I doubt that the agent knew that the gray jacket man had already disarmed Pretti. The disarming and firing happened very close together (we're talking a second), and the agent was not looking in that direction and appeared focused on drawing his own gun, tunnel vision, etc. I also think it's possible that PRETTI didn't realize that he had been disarmed. Did the officer think his cell phone was the gun? Did he see the gun being pulled from his waistband by the gray jacket officer and mistakenly think Pretti had drawn it? Did Pretti make a motion. This was a CHAOTIC scrum, and it happened in seconds. The number of shots is usually not legally relevant when they are so tightly bunched together due to adrenaline and muscle memory.
Rob Doar, president of the MN Gun Owners Law Center has put forth an (unproven) theory that Pretti’s gun accidentally discharged when Gray Jacket Man grabbed it. And that this was the first shot and the agent reacted to it. But DHS has not said that.
I am unclear what fell in the video.
That's fog of war stuff, and the law accounts for it, but it is NEVER pretty. Years ago, in Milwaukee, an officer shot a man who was holding a small black cassette tape. He mistakenly thought it was a gun. He was exonerated.
I don't like it, though. I question why he couldn't just grab Pretti from behind and pull him away. I question why that many officers couldn't get control of one struggling guy without taking his life. Alex Pretti doesn't get his life back. That is a really big deal.
I think this shooting is dicier than the Good case (she hit the officer with her car). I am concerned that the agents have taken so much abuse that they are now too quick to react or to escalate things themselves. They have been placed in an impossible situation, and, again, that is the fault of the Democratic and police leadership in Minneapolis, which is not protecting them or controlling the streets during their operations.
I think a truly independent investigation may be warranted.
It's a mess. Let's not pretend it isn't one.
When there's a tie in these cases, I give it to the person who was there to uphold the laws during endless scenes of agitation and lawbreaking.
These officers don't wake up in the morning wanting to take a life. That matters. They want to go home at night. They are working under incredible, almost combat-like circumstances, completely abandoned by the leadership and Police Department of the city they're operating in.
This officer didn't intend to "murder" Alex Pretti, and any rhetoric to that regard is extremely unfair and agitating. Politicians, including the Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic candidates and the mayor of Milwaukee, have released inciting, unhelpful statements, rather than responsible analyses. Writing things like he was killed on his knees, he was "murdered," etc., is not a helpful response from leaders.
The law requires an assessment of the totality of the circumstances, and that is what I have tried to do here. These situations are ALL case specific.
Final conclusion
I don't like this shooting. I wish this had not happened. I think the officers escalated the situation in some ways. I think Alex Pretti made some bad decisions. I think Democratic and police leadership are not protecting officers OR protestors/agitators. I think this is a close call. I think it's a messy, ugly, gray-area, fog-of-war, shooting.
But that's where I come down. I lean toward there being enough there to not justify sending this officer to prison, basically. But it's a slim margin.
I am writing all of this because you won't get this take in many other places, and someone needs to say it. I recognize some reasonable people will come down on the other side, and I get how they get there. I just don't respect the people whose argumentation revolves around sending me death threats (we have gotten multiple), calling people N*zis, arguing that immigration laws should not be enforced even against criminals ("get out of Minnesota"), or smearing all law enforcement. Fundamentally, I believe what is happening in Minnesota is about preserving and upholding the rule of law, but these situations are not helping. And I am fairly shocked an officer would be this quick to shoot, knowing what would result. No officer wants to be in this position. Frankly, this situation is every officer's worst nightmare.
The way forward
I have also proposed a solution in a previous post, so I will end on that. I think BOTH sides should stop the incendiary rhetoric and sit down at a table. They should agree (Trump, Noem, Bovino, Walz, Ellison, and Frey) on a joint plan to focus on the illegal immigrants who committed crimes (felonies, misdemeanors and OWIS).
The state should agree to honor all detainers in jails and to allow ICE in courthouses and to help them identify such. Those are safer environments. For the operations on the street, the Minneapolis police and/or National Guard should protect the agents and control the streets. Worry about the rest later. Both sides should agree to stop the incendiary rhetoric.
Trump can't and shouldn't withdraw ICE completely. There is an organized element within these "protests" likely. Antifa took a microphone and said that Minneapolis will be the rock that breaks ICE, and they will replicate this strategy everywhere if it works. I don't think they care about the lives lost; they think it's helping their cause, and that cause is preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration laws at all. The government can not allow the tail to wag the dog. So they have to stay the course.
That's how I would do it.
But that won't happen. And I recognize that.
#BreakingNews #ice #BREAKING
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