In Minneapolis
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Yea, it was far from a proportional response. Especially not for what amounts to a simple traffic violation.
Change the scenario a bit. Strip away the details that make this politically charged.
Police stop a teenager for having a burned out brake light. Kid takes off because he’s spooked. Would we ever imagine the right course of action would be to shoot him at point blank range?
She wasn’t the target of their immigration enforcement activities, she was just blocking the way. It’s not like any of the agents looked like they thought she was a threat. No one is crouching or approaching the car carefully. The guy who shot her came around the front of the car, the other guy walked over to the door and tried to open it and when he couldn’t he reached in to unlock it. They wanted her car out of there and she eventually started to move. They should have let her leave and if they wanted to pursue some kind of charges, simply note her license plate and deal with it later.
The guy who shot her had two choices: Shoot her or step aside. I think he was pissed off and lost his cool. I won’t be surprised if it turns out he’s one of the new recruits they’ve hired and that he doesn’t have much real law enforcement training.
The whole episode was unnecessary escalation and is a result of the administration-induced hysteria. Constant chaos and knee jerk reactions.
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Yea, it was far from a proportional response. Especially not for what amounts to a simple traffic violation.
Change the scenario a bit. Strip away the details that make this politically charged.
Police stop a teenager for having a burned out brake light. Kid takes off because he’s spooked. Would we ever imagine the right course of action would be to shoot him at point blank range?
She wasn’t the target of their immigration enforcement activities, she was just blocking the way. It’s not like any of the agents looked like they thought she was a threat. No one is crouching or approaching the car carefully. The guy who shot her came around the front of the car, the other guy walked over to the door and tried to open it and when he couldn’t he reached in to unlock it. They wanted her car out of there and she eventually started to move. They should have let her leave and if they wanted to pursue some kind of charges, simply note her license plate and deal with it later.
The guy who shot her had two choices: Shoot her or step aside. I think he was pissed off and lost his cool. I won’t be surprised if it turns out he’s one of the new recruits they’ve hired and that he doesn’t have much real law enforcement training.
The whole episode was unnecessary escalation and is a result of the administration-induced hysteria. Constant chaos and knee jerk reactions.
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I agree with everything except the simple traffic violation - that part isn’t clear to me. I don’t know why she was perpendicular to the road. If she had been trying to block them it would be more than a violation (though she was waving them by). If she was caught in the middle of a K turn then yeah, traffic violation.
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Why was she there? With her car like that?
Importantly, why disobey the direction of an armed law officer?
Why drive dangerously, probably injuring one officer, threatening another? Why attempt to flee the scene at high speed and about to endanger the public?
Why use her car as a weapon?
What was going through her mind for those few seconds?Our UK Highway Code is very clear:
"You MUST obey" the directions and signals of law and traffic officers.We had a young police office who was caught on a vehicle as it took off, dragged along some distance and died.
I have little sympathy for anyone who flaunts the law in this reckless way, endangers others, especially our law officers.What does your driving test code say regarding directions given by law officers?
Ventosa viri restabit
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Why was she there? With her car like that?
Importantly, why disobey the direction of an armed law officer?
Why drive dangerously, probably injuring one officer, threatening another? Why attempt to flee the scene at high speed and about to endanger the public?
Why use her car as a weapon?
What was going through her mind for those few seconds?Our UK Highway Code is very clear:
"You MUST obey" the directions and signals of law and traffic officers.We had a young police office who was caught on a vehicle as it took off, dragged along some distance and died.
I have little sympathy for anyone who flaunts the law in this reckless way, endangers others, especially our law officers.What does your driving test code say regarding directions given by law officers?
There are a lot of possible scenarios regarding what happened and there's a lot we can't know. One has to view the situation from the perspectives of all the people involved.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
Why was she there? With her car like that?
The eyewitness in the MPR interview that I posted earlier seems to indicate that she was trying to block the street, basically as part of a reaction to ICE activities in her city. We had a lot of incidents like that in Chicago when they were here.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
Why use her car as a weapon?
That assumes facts not in evidence and a particular intention on her part. She could have simply been leaving the scene.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
Why attempt to flee the scene at high speed and about to endanger the public?
Again, facts not in evidence. And you might want to look at the video again. She's on a snow packed street and anyone who is used to driving on snow knows that you can't take off very fast in conditions like those.
And as for endangering the public, there were a lot of bystanders on the street. The ICE agent doing the shooting was potentially endangering them.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
A police officer is pointing a gun at you at near point blank range standing nearly right in front of your bonnet
Has it been established that she even saw the agent in front of her car? What if she was distracted by the guy trying to open her door and was simply trying to leave?
If you check the video, the ICE agents get out of their vehicle and approach her car saying "get out of the fucking car" within seconds. They don't wait for a response. Ten seconds later she is dead.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
What was going through her mind for those few seconds?
Good question and something to keep in mind. We are looking at that video from a completely different perspective than hers. Or the agents'.
BTW, these guys are not police officers. They are federal ICE agents. And a lot of them are newly hired. It is entirely possible that many of them do not have extensive law enforcement training that police get.
Our police are trained to de-escalate situations to try to get a proper outcome with the least risk to the parties involved. High speed police chases are called off if there is the sense that it is possible that innocent bystanders could get injured or killed.Also, officers here typically approach a car from the rear, not from the side as the ICE agent did. And certainly not crossing in front if you think there is a threat.
His command to her was "get out of the fucking car". Pretty much any cop I know would have said "please get out of the car" or "we need you to move your car". The ICE agent escalated the temperature of the incident rather than reducing it. Fight or flight. We can't know which was triggered in her.
ICE has not been acting according to our generally accepted rules for engagement. Here's a recap of how some events played out here in Chicago:
For me, it still comes down to the concept of proportional response and de-escalation techniques. Ten seconds from an order to exit, to dead, means something went terribly wrong.
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What will a jury think?
The problem now is 'we' know the driver was a wonderful saint-like local woman. Her actions however were less so.
The position she had placed her car was the start of the incident.
Her refusal to comply with law officers' request, however blunt and aggressively made, was an escalation; her dangerous, reckless and threatening driving in attempting to flee the scene completely unacceptable.
She's dead. Tragic.I ask you:
If a law enforcement officer asks you to get out of the car, will you?
Are you required to obey?His hand is on your door handle, will you reverse taking his hand and body with you? Then will you attempt to drive away without looking forward where you are going?
A moment of stupidity we all dread could happen.
Ventosa viri restabit
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It’s worth noting the ICE goon does not have blanket immunity from prosecution in Minnesota for manslaughter or murder.
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What will a jury think?
The problem now is 'we' know the driver was a wonderful saint-like local woman. Her actions however were less so.
The position she had placed her car was the start of the incident.
Her refusal to comply with law officers' request, however blunt and aggressively made, was an escalation; her dangerous, reckless and threatening driving in attempting to flee the scene completely unacceptable.
She's dead. Tragic.I ask you:
If a law enforcement officer asks you to get out of the car, will you?
Are you required to obey?His hand is on your door handle, will you reverse taking his hand and body with you? Then will you attempt to drive away without looking forward where you are going?
A moment of stupidity we all dread could happen.
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
If a law enforcement officer asks you to get out of the car, will you?
It's not about me. Or you. Would either of us have been in the car trying to protest ICE activities? I can answer for myself: Based on what's happened with the ICE goons in the US, I would not take the risk. I would not have been blocking a street with my car. Call me a coward.
But neither of us was there.
I've already tried to outline what would be normal law enforcement protocols here. So has @jon-nyc . US is apparently not UK, though I wonder if it's really the case that a UK policeman would use deadly force on someone who responded in the way that Ms. Good did.
So for the hypothetical discussion, let's add some context, that of the perspective of US citizen who has been following what's happening here. ICE agents have not been treating protestors well in other interactions around the country. Even at the incident in question we see ICE agents spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of protestors.
This was their enemy:
They have refused the requests of members of the clergy to see detainees so they can pray with them.
And in my town, this happened:
So let me flip the question: Given that additional information, would you get out of the car /follow commands given that ICE has been behaving badly on a regular basis?
And, if you were an agent whose orders weren't followed immediately, what would your next step be?
@AndyD said in In Minneapolis:
What will a jury think?
Well, there was this case here in Chicago. Never got to a jury; judge threw out the case.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/21/us/marimar-martinez-shooting-case-what-we-know
And this, from yet another police chief:
In each of the recent ICE shootings, the government has claimed the officer was acting in self-defense.
Other reporting shows, however, that law enforcement experts have long warned against shooting into cars, and most of the nation’s major cities have banned the practice.
“Bad idea. Bad to do,” said Carmen Best, the former Seattle police chief, in a 2021 interview with the Times. “If you think the vehicle is coming toward you, get yourself out of the way.”
@andyd - Apparently you and I have very different takes on what happened and how things played out. It certainly is the case that had the agents and/or Ms Good acted differently that things could have gone a different direction. With what I know now, I place the responsibility for the outcome much more on the agents than on her. You seem to be indicating that the blame is all on her because she didn't follow an order. Given the factual information I have, including the videos and eyewitness interview from MPR, I couldn't disagree more.
Doesn't seem likely that further discussion without additional facts coming to light will yield anything helpful to either of us.
Love, wtg.
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From the woman who did the video. Local reporting from MPR. Conflicting orders from the agents?
An eyewitness told MPR News that ICE agents gave conflicting orders to a driver in south Minneapolis on Wednesday, with one agent ordering her to drive away from the scene where an ICE vehicle was stuck in a snowbank while another yelled for her to get out of her car as he reached for the door handle.
The scene ended with an agent shooting into the car, killing the woman.
Caitlin Callenson said she was walking down Portland Avenue with her partner when she saw who she assumed were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“They tried to zoom their car out of the snowbank but were just stuck,” she said.
She said other ICE vehicles showed up, leading neighbors to believe it might be an ICE enforcement action. People showed up, and some began blowing whistles.
“People in our neighborhood have been terrorized by ICE for six weeks. We want our neighbors safe, and so when we see a group of ICE vehicles, people in the community are showing up and saying, ‘This is not OK,’” she said.
Callenson said one person — the woman who was shot a short time later — drove her vehicle perpendicular to the lanes of traffic on Portland Avenue, south of the ICE vehicles. By that point, Callenson said, the vehicle stuck in snow had been freed.
“Some of them were leaving, and they just went around her, but ICE gave her orders to leave, while at the same time, another ICE person said, ‘Get out of the car,’ and he reached for her door handle. And then there was an ICE agent in front of her vehicle. So it was difficult for her to leave, as she'd been ordered to do,” Callenson said.
“She turned her steering wheel toward the right. The person was grabbing her door handle, the ICE officer who was in front of her vehicle shot once from the front and twice from the side, hitting her maybe three feet away at the max. Because she was shot, and she was already trying to leave, her foot was on the accelerator, and she crashed into a telephone pole.”
After the shooting, Callenson said a neighbor identifying himself as a doctor asked if he could render aid to the woman who shot but was told by ICE agents to stand back. She said emergency responders’ vehicles couldn’t get past ICE vehicles, so firefighters and other first responders had to walk to the injured woman.
Callenson said she saw the ICE agent who fired the gunshots walk away to the north and get in an ICE vehicle.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/07/shooting-south-minneapolis-ice-agents-federal-operation
This account is kind of supported by the video, where she waves a car around her.
A bystander runs to the crashed vehicle. The ICE agent who did the shooting walks at a relatively slow pace towards it and then comes back, not in a hurry.
The typical response of a trained police officer would be to quickly render aid to the person they had just shot. They'd be running to the car. The ICE guys basically just all stand around. I take that as another sign of lack of training.
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From another eyewitness. My bolding.
Emily Heller was in the middle of making breakfast when she heard whistles – a signal residents have used to warn their neighbors about the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – and agents quarreling with protesters on her street.
Without time to put on her shoes, Heller ran outside and saw a convoy of ICE agents on her street, yelling at a woman in an SUV who appeared to be blocking them from passing.
Moments later, the woman, Renee Nicole Good, 37, was fatally shot.
“My life is forever changed from having witnessed this,” Heller said.
Heller told CNN Good “was totally peaceful” before the agents began yelling at Good to move and “aggressively” approached her vehicle.
An ICE agent then tried to open her car door as another stood nearby. “She reversed a little bit,” Heller said, and then turned her wheels to begin pulling away.
“And then they went up to her car and started trying to open her door, and that’s when I’m sure she got spooked and tried to flee,” Heller said. “So she reversed a little bit and then angled her wheels so she could drive away. And as she was trying to move forward, one of the ICE agents stepped in front of her vehicle and reached across the hood and fired his weapon about three or four times and shot her in the face.”
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Gov. Walz prepares the Minnesota National Guard.
If I'm mayor Frey, I move immediately to arrest the Ice goons involved.
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It is important to consider that the ICE agents that have worked for many years used to follow procedures and protocol to assure that there was probable cause and warrants issued before taking anyone into custody. Plenty were deported on a regular basis.
This new ICE is acting like well-funded government-sponsored (Rebublican only) bounty hunters. Instead of procedure and protocol, warrants and research - agents are awarded cash bonuses for capturing people and placing them into the government (Republican only) system where they are presumed guilty until proven innocent. We've witnessed all sorts of random people being gathered, injured and murdered - and the first defense used by ICE and the government (Republican only) is to lie over and over.
How'd we get here? Three branches of government, where the executive branch is in charge of enforcing laws. We now know if the entire executive branch (Republican) decides what laws to ignore, and how to interpret existing laws and is willing to ignore the judicial branch (after all, who enforces what the judicial branch interprets?) it can lead to these results.
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I meant to post this earlier...
I think @wtg gave us a nice summary of @andyd 's and @wtg 's takes on this issue:
I place the responsibility for the outcome much more on the agents than on her. You seem to be indicating that the blame is all on her because she didn't follow an order.
I just want to say for the record that I agree with @wtg
The ICE agents are acting not in good faith, they are behaving unethically and most likely illegally. They cover their faces, they are responsible for "disappearing people," and as @wtg points out, they consistently act like completely untrained idiots. They are terrorizing communities across the country, and they shouldn't have been in this community in the first place.
The responsibility for this tragedy rests fully on them.
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It is important to consider that the ICE agents that have worked for many years used to follow procedures and protocol to assure that there was probable cause and warrants issued before taking anyone into custody. Plenty were deported on a regular basis.
This new ICE is acting like well-funded government-sponsored (Rebublican only) bounty hunters. Instead of procedure and protocol, warrants and research - agents are awarded cash bonuses for capturing people and placing them into the government (Republican only) system where they are presumed guilty until proven innocent. We've witnessed all sorts of random people being gathered, injured and murdered - and the first defense used by ICE and the government (Republican only) is to lie over and over.
How'd we get here? Three branches of government, where the executive branch is in charge of enforcing laws. We now know if the entire executive branch (Republican) decides what laws to ignore, and how to interpret existing laws and is willing to ignore the judicial branch (after all, who enforces what the judicial branch interprets?) it can lead to these results.
@Rontuner said in In Minneapolis:
It is important to consider that the ICE agents that have worked for many years used to follow procedures and protocol to assure that there was probable cause and warrants issued before taking anyone into custody. Plenty were deported on a regular basis.
This new ICE is acting like well-funded government-sponsored (Rebublican only) bounty hunters. Instead of procedure and protocol, warrants and research - agents are awarded cash bonuses for capturing people and placing them into the government (Republican only) system where they are presumed guilty until proven innocent. We've witnessed all sorts of random people being gathered, injured and murdered - and the first defense used by ICE and the government (Republican only) is to lie over and over.
How'd we get here? Three branches of government, where the executive branch is in charge of enforcing laws. We now know if the entire executive branch (Republican) decides what laws to ignore, and how to interpret existing laws and is willing to ignore the judicial branch (after all, who enforces what the judicial branch interprets?) it can lead to these results.
Good points about the rewards system in place for ICE agents. It really is a bounty program. And the rules of engagement have completely changed; there pretty much aren't any rules.
One other thing I thought of - how could shooting the driver of that car have prevented the agent from being hit? The momentum would carry the vehicle forward and he would have gotten clobbered anyway.
The only rational decision is, as the retired police chief said, to get out of the way. And worry about apprehending the perpetrator later.
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@wtg
🧡 right back at you and all here, at this upsetting incident.
I have no axe to grind, but admit to assuming not guilty unless proven.
I understand a bit of where you are coming from, the 90,000 Somali background, the effective invasion of federal ICE agents into the state.
I also understand a bit of the crapola which the Whitehouse puts out. Why do I dislike Vance so much?Ignoring the personas of the video and any ridiculous Vance theories; and looking at a video of the incident on BBC Verify, my take is:
That the driver was blocking the road and
the driver did not do as asked at least twice by law officers; and
the driver then tried to flee the scene driving in a way that endangered two officers by weaponising the vehicle.
That an officer shot at the vehicle once from in front then twice from the side.
Pretty factual.Can a video demonstrate intent/no intent by the driver to harm the officers? No.
The driver's actions could certainly be interpreted by the officers as a threat and attack.The first shot could reasonably be called self-defence. The other two side shots not. Lock him up. I'll listen to mitigation on his behalf.
BTW
Vance sucks big time.Ventosa viri restabit
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Andy, I would tend to agree with you about obeying law enforcement - except for 2 things:
- These new recruits are acting lawlessly without regard for common practices of law enforcement.
- The US has a poor record for how police have treated people in the country - killed for 'driving while black' comes to mind.
So no, normal societal rules don't apply anymore.
