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wtgW

wtg

@wtg
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  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    @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.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • Favorite movie dance scenes
    wtgW wtg

    Teaching the tango, from Scent of a Woman.

    Link to video

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • Favorite movie dance scenes
    wtgW wtg

    This song was on the radio when I was just driving home. Made me think of this scene in the bar in the movie Michael.

    Video quality isn't the best, but fun anyway.

    Link to video

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • Gotta have some good news
    wtgW wtg

    Great idea, @bernard ! I was thinking we need some good news. I even had that Avelo article queued up to post a little later. You got there first!!

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  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    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.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-law-enforcement-involved-ice-related-shooting-minneapolis-rcna252812

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    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.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    @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.

    alt text

    alt text

    This was their enemy:

    alt text

    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:

    https://abc7chicago.com/post/us-postal-service-worker-pushed-ground-trying-intervene-arlington-heights-immigration-arrest-landscaper-video/18096836/

    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.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    @jon-nyc I didn't know that.

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  • Alaska tries out AI
    wtgW wtg

    😁

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    And from that Minnesota Reformer link:

    Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a Wednesday press conference that they have yet to see information indicating that the shooting was justified

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    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 would 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:

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/07/feds-statements-after-minneapolis-driver-killed-by-ice-officer-echo-pattern-from-midway-blitz-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.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    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.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • This house is a blank slate
    wtgW wtg

    They have another inn.

    https://www.snowvillageinn.com/

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    @shirokuro Here’s the Reddit thread.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1q6r1iu/cmv_the_minneapolis_ice_agent_who_shot_and_killed/

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    It’s from someone on Reddit. I dont usually post stuff from there but these observations were worth noting, I thought

    Here’s some analysis from CNN.

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/us/minneapolis-shooting-ice-video-analysis-vis

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    Here is the frame-by-frame breakdown:

    Pre-Motion Intent: The agent drew and aimed before the vehicle gained forward traction. The lethal intent existed before the "threat" moved.
    The Traction Factor: The tires initially spun on ice. This was not a speeding missile, it was a vehicle struggling to accelerate. This provided ample reaction time that was ignored.
    The Sidestep: The agent sidestepped while maintaining his sight picture.
    If you have the time and balance to sidestep and keep aiming, you have the time to clear the path.
    He didn't shoot because he was trapped, he stayed in the pocket to ensure a kill.
    He prioritized taking the shot over taking a safe step. That is an offensive choice, not a defensive necessity. To further solidify this argument, he did not fire his weapon until after the vehicle was taking a clearly evasive maneuver..

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  • Game of Wool
    wtgW wtg

    It’s on Channel 4 in the UK. They’re looking to name the UK’s first knitting champion.

    Anyone watched it?

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  • Word association thread
    wtgW wtg

    Caramba

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • Did people actually vote for this guy?
    wtgW wtg

    From a live update at NYT.

    President Trump proposed on Wednesday increasing military spending next year by more than half, raising the defense budget in 2027 to $1.5 trillion as he pushes for American imperialism in Venezuela and beyond.

    “Our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,” Trump wrote on social media. “This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.”

    The president’s request for a $600 billion increase in military spending comes as his administration flexes military strength around the world. In just the last week, Mr. Trump has vowed to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves under threat of a military blockade, and has threatened to forcibly annex Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO military ally. In his announcement Wednesday, Mr. Trump characterized the state of the world as “very dangerous and troubled times.”

    It is unclear from Mr. Trump’s announcement which weapons programs and branches of the military would benefit from the increased spending. But in recent days the president and his advisers have outlined a vision for a new world order in which the United States may freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as the actions were deemed in the national interest.

    Mr. Trump justified the huge proposed increase in military spending by claiming, falsely, that it could be paid entirely through tariff revenue. By the government’s estimates, the United States collected more than $200 billion in tariff revenue in 2025, and Mr. Trump has already promised to return that revenue to Americans who have been hurt by the tariffs, including to farmers in the form of relief payments and to citizens more generally in the form of $2,000 rebate checks. (One nonpartisan group estimated the rebate checks would cost $600 billion a year.)

    Mr. Trump had proposed about $1 trillion for military spending last year. Republican lawmakers, in a rare act of defiance, criticized that plan for spending too little on the armed forces.

    Even so, the president insisted on Wednesday that he would have raised military spending by only about another $100 billion next year, to a total of $1 trillion, were it not for the large amounts of revenue being raised from tariffs. Mr. Trump also reiterated his promise to hand out dividend checks to “moderate income Patriots” from tariff revenue.

    In what appeared to be a move to head off criticism for funneling even more taxpayer dollars to the military-industrial complex, Mr. Trump said that he would attempt to limit pay for executives at defense companies that take contracts with the U.S. military to $5 million a year. He also said he would move to ban stock buybacks and the issuing of dividends for those companies.

    It is unclear how those rules could be enforced, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for details. An executive order signed by Mr. Trump on Wednesday did not cap executive salaries, or explicitly ban stock buybacks or the issuing of dividends. Instead, it focused mostly on reviewing defense contractors that the administration considered underperforming.

    Mr. Trump turned his ire toward Raytheon, a company that makes many of the missiles and bombs supplied to the U.S. military and its allies, claiming that it had been “the least responsive to the needs” of the American military. The president threatened to cancel contracts with Raytheon if it did not follow his directives to increase production and limit compensation for executives and stockholders.

    In 2009, Congress and the Obama administration sought to set pay limits for executives in the law that bailed out banks after the financial crisis. But in practice, that law had only a marginal effect on executive compensation at companies that accepted the bailout. On Wednesday, stock prices for defense companies dipped slightly before trading stopped at 4 p.m. Mr. Trump’s announcement of the $1.5 trillion military budget came at 4:17 p.m.

    In absolute terms, a $600 billion increase in military spending is an enormous rise. It is more than the entire defense budget — $582.7 billion — proposed by the Obama administration in 2016, the year before Mr. Trump’s first term began. Inflation and fluctuations in purchasing power can complicate comparisons to previous years and to rival militaries, but data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, also known as SIPRI, suggests that Mr. Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion military budget could rival American military spending during periods of the Cold War.

    China has the second-largest military budget of any country at $245 billion, though its spending goes much further than the United States’ because of factors like cheaper labor. China has hundreds of thousands more troops than the United States, for example, but pays them much lower salaries. Russia, which has a much smaller economic base and has waged a nearly four-year war in Ukraine, has an official military budget of more than $160 billion..

    He seems to be a doing a loaves and fishes thing with that tariff revenue.

    Off Key - General Discussion

  • In Minneapolis
    wtgW wtg

    And another video. The woman who was watching the events and who took the video has balls of steel.

    It shows the soon to be victim trying to leave the scene but a car comes down the street and she stops to let it by, even waving it by. Just then an ICE vehicle drives up and the agents get out. Two of them are near her car and one reaches for her door. She tries to leave and as she is driving by a third agent who is a ways down the street, he turns and shoots straight at her.

    https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/07/ice-officer-fatally-shoots-driver-through-car-window-in-minneapolis/

    Whatever happened to de-escalation?

    Another eyewitness interviewed by MPR.

    https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTODCRTAhDL/

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