Awful but Lawful

Somehow it just had to happen in Minneapolis. Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts have been waiting for their martyr, and now they have one.

At about 9:40 a.m. local time, ICE officers were engaged in enforcement activity and driving south in the 3300 block of Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis. When a protester, later identified as Renee Nicole Good, pulled her Honda Pilot SUV into the path of the agents’ vehicles and prevented them moving forward, two agents stepped out of their pickup truck, which was unmarked but had its low-profile emergency lights activated.

While those two agents approached the Pilot and attempted to detain Good, a third agent, who apparently had emerged from another vehicle, approached the front of the Pilot. When an agent attempted to open Good’s door, she backed up a few feet before driving forward and toward the third agent, who now had his pistol in hand and aimed at her. The Pilot continued forward, striking the third agent, who fired two or three rounds from his pistol. The Pilot continued a short distance down Portland Avenue before colliding with a parked car. Good was taken to a hospital but died from a gunshot wound.

And now, as I write these words, what may turn out to be a long night is falling in Minneapolis as protesters take to the streets.

Predictably, protesters are calling Good’s death a murder, with the feckless Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, and the even more feckless Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, demanding ICE cease operations and leave the area. “Get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” Frey said at a press conference. “We do not want you here.”

Though neither the mayor nor the governor would ever admit it, for them the shooting will serve as a welcome distraction from the Simoleons for Somalians Cash Giveaway scandal which has received so much attention and prompted Tim Walz to withdraw his bid for a third term. And now, as we have seen any number of times, most infamously in the death of George Floyd in 2020, each side of the argument is attempting to shape the narrative, with both of them resorting to distortions of the truth.

Unfortunately, the official ICE response overstated the involved agent’s valid self-defense claim. “Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations,” the ICE statement began, “when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them – an act of domestic terrorism.”

Not exactly. From videos I’ve seen of the incident, it fell far short of anything that could be called a “riot.” (By the time you read this there may be a genuine riot going on.) Yes, Good willfully obstructed the ICE vehicles, but while it’s possible she intended to hit the agent with her car, to me it appears more likely that she was merely indifferent to the possibility that she might hit him as she attempted to escape from what would have been a lawful arrest.

But whatever her intentions may have been, she was driving toward and did in fact strike a man she reasonably should have known was a law enforcement officer. (Reports that he wasn’t struck are false.) The U.S. Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor (1989) held that “[t]he ‘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.”

From the shooting officer’s perspective, was it reasonable to believe Good was assaulting him with force likely to cause death or great bodily injury? I believe it was. Graham also held that “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.”

In this case, there will be limitless amounts of 20/20 hindsight served up on the cable channels and podcasts, but there can be little question that the circumstances on Portland Avenue this morning were indeed tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.

But while the officer may be standing on firm legal ground, there are other factors to consider. If a similar incident were to occur involving an officer with my former employer, the Los Angeles Police Department, the likely outcome would be no criminal charges from the district attorney, but the shooting would nonetheless be found “out of policy” by department brass, with the officer facing discipline and even removal from the department. The LAPD Manual instructs that “[a]n officer threatened by an oncoming vehicle shall move out of its path instead of discharging a firearm at it or any of its occupants.”

I am unaware if ICE has a similar policy in place, but even if the agent is found to have violated such a policy, it does not necessarily make the shooting unlawful.

We in the trade have a term for incidents like this one where the results are tragic, even avoidable, but do not rise to legally prohibited conduct: “awful but lawful.” This one surely was both.

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