> And don’t forget where the bad choices began. President Donald Trump has ordered ICE to carry out a heavy-handed campaign of rounding up illegal immigrants. Kristi Noem has supervised a paramilitary group that goes around masked and acts like a law unto itself. This kind of gung-ho, confrontational behavior was inevitably going to result in tragedy.
This is true, but I'd also add the attitude of liberal protestors of talking about LE as a modern day gestapo (while also simultaneously finding them so u threatening they feel perfectly safe blocking them with their vehicles) to the list of causes of unnecessary escalation in this situation.
There's no contradiction between holding that an on-the-street terrorist action by the government is blatantly illegal; holding that it's dangerous; and protesting it by defying it. Don't you know anything about Selma or Oxford Town or Kent State or Stonewall?
Are you an American? Do you have any historical awareness of the Boston Tea Party? Tyrannical oppression must be resisted. (Which reminds me — where are all the Second Amendment freaks who are supposed to have accumulated their arsenals for exactly this situation: to fight off an out-of-control oppressive and violent government?)
I think you're taking this a bit over the top. ICE are enforcing fairly anodyne immigration law (if often doing it in a needlessly inflammatory way). They're not some kind of illegal tyrannical posse.
Read what I wrote in my longer comment. The entire thing is completely unconstitutional. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens. They are operating away from their purview which is border cities and border-adjacent communities (they have been sent to Minneapolis at the President's discretion for political reasons). What happened is a serious crime and a watershed moment in our history just like Kent State and the other examples I gave.
This is a common misconception. ICE can legally operate in the U.S. interior (i.e., away from the border) to arrest, detain, and remove noncitizens who are removable under federal immigration law. They also have some (limited) forms of jurisdiction over citizens who are actively impeding them in their lawful duties (although the laws about this get complicated).
They can arrest, detain and remove noncitizens. You said it yourself.
Respectfully, please read my longer comment about law enforcement procedures and the strict laws that govern them. I just get tired of writing this elementary stuff over and over because people somehow can't read it or absorb it.
Just to be clear, are you saying that ICE has no authority to arrest citizens impeding thier work? Hypothetically, if there were like a human wall, would they just have to like try to red rover thier way through it or go home?
Well, we're certainly not strapping up to fight on behalf of people calling us "freaks", often the same people who have trying to illegally disarm us for decades.
What are you even talking about? Who's "illegally disarming" you? Gun laws have become systematically more lax over the past few decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
And anyway what has that got to do with Ross/Good? Why are his defenders so concerned with his mood and state of mind and whether it was "justified" (as if discussing a child) rather than the ironclad constitutional laws that govern all such interactions between drivers and law enforcement (including the clear cut fact that ICE has no jurisdiction over citizens)?
I've encountered you before and I hold your sloppy thinking and impulsive, simplified Conservative polemics in very low regard.
Why am I not surprised that you don't know what you're talking about? Do you even know what a Bruen response bill is, and how many blue states have passed them in open defiance of the supreme court? How about all of the hardware bans and carry restrictions being advanced across blue America?
As to the relevance, did you not read your own comment I was responding to? You also seem misinformed regarding what police powers ICE has, as they absolutely can arrest people who are interfering with their operations, as these women were.
The state-level pushback against SCOTUS (especially in the wake of the Alito and Thomas authored decisions about New York open carry) are obviously examples of action the other way but they don't change what I said about how the overwhelming trend in national gun policy has been the other direction.
ICE agents "cannot legally arrest or deport a U.S. citizen," full stop.
They have federal law enforcement authority, which means they can in fact detain someone who is committing a crime, such as impeding them in their duties.
I'm sorry but anybody trying to argue in any way that the shooting is "justified" by anything she or her wife did, is just outrageously, direly wrong. It's possible to argue that the situation prompted Ross to shoot, but that's like saying that JFK's presence in Dallas prompted Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot — the whole thing is so completely framed in extra-legal and blatantly unconstitutional practices (including his glaring lack of any real training and his obvious temperamental and ideological unsuitability for the job) that any attempt to lessen the burden of his guilt by discussing what Good "shouldn't have" done must be dismissed out of hand.
Hundreds or thousands of criminal trials have hinged on exactly these details: What did the cop say; when did he unholster; did he identify himself; how many warnings; what stance etc. Everyone who’s ever been pulled over or seen YouTube videos of vehicular stops (and there are thousands of those, too) knows all about this. There have been SCOTUS cases that hinge on state and federal laws that concern this behavior by police and Federal agents, because (as the entire society knows) these are important life-or-death questions. Officers (real officers who get legitimate police academy training) spend months on these questions and can be expelled if they can’t absorb or follow them.
And even if you want to go beyond black-and-white laws and get into psychology (which everyone on the conservative side is doing; he didn’t “feel” safe) there is just no room to maneuver given what the whole world has seen of the situation. Trials have hinged on that, too — on police fear leading to untoward violence — and it's clear that the standards applied are way, way more stringent than anything going on right now in terms of absurd claims that his thigh was brushed by the edge of the fender or whatever (and please don’t pick apart this example).
I know in an egalitarian society we're supposed to be even-handed and I know there are a lot of people who are on his side (because they have been led over the years into a completely indefensible and un-American state of mind wherein shock tactics like this are permissible or desirable) but this is an open and shut case. The instant you start talking about Ross' mood or feelings you've lost the plot, full stop.
I agree with your take, just want to point out that some reports say Ross is not untrained but a veteran, an experienced LEO, and a firearms instructor. (My takeaway is that his defensive shooting reflexes were obviously quick, but his training totally failed in the critical moment. Hopefully the unnecessary second and third shots plus the words he uttered afterward will haunt him forever).
- ICE has no authority to detain or arrest anyone except those they can reasonably suspect are undocumented. So there is nothing "foolish" about the Goods wanting to leave the scene.
- Ross fired two more shots, the first through the open drivers side window mere inches from Good's head, LONG AFTER the car had passed him. And the third shot was fired after she was at least 6 feet past him.
If this was a private carjacker instead of a government-paid one, it would be an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder.
So don't give us any of this "on the other hand" balderdash.
"ICE has no authority to detain or arrest anyone except those they can reasonably suspect are undocumented. So there is nothing "foolish" about the Goods wanting to leave the scene...If this was a private carjacker instead of a government-paid one, it would be an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder."
Hmm, this is a really interesting framing. To repeat a question I asked above, if there were like a human wall of white people trying to stop them from going somewhere, would they really have no options but to like try to red rover thier way through it or go home? I'm really surprised they have no ability to arrest people impeding thier work.
ICE agents have the power to stop, detain and arrest people they suspect of being in the US illegally. They can detain US citizens in limited circumstances, such as if a person interferes with an arrest, assaults an officer, or ICE suspect the person of being in the US illegally.
That’s pretty much what I said. They are trying to stretch the “interfering with an arrest” factor beyond anything rational, claiming that any protester anywhere near ICE agents are “interfering.” They’re even claiming that people following them or recording them are “interfering.” That is a lie. There was no “arrest” under way. Good was clearly leaving the scene to avoid being dragged out of her car and detained or worse.
Right. I just mean that the agents telling her to get out of the car had the authority to do so, at least potentially - it doesn't look like she was blocking them since I saw in the video someone drove around her, but I don't know for sure what happened before all the videos.
Well, I’ll leave it to the experts but I’m pretty sure I’ve read that they cannot order someone out of their car. And given the many many times we’ve seen ICE throwing people to the ground, handcuffing them, and taking them away, it would be petty foolish to comply.
The intentions of the smiling mother of three are entirely irrelevant to whether the shooting was justified or not. I am utterly indifferent as to whether she had murder, intimidation, flight, or some combination thereof on her mind because her intent isn't what matters on the question of self-defense.
To understand why, imagine if she'd stepped out of the vehicle with a water gun that looked like a real firearm and aimed it at the officer with the intent to squirt him. What do you suppose would happen next?
Obviously, she'd be shot, and there would be no question that the shooting was justified because any reasonable officer in that position would have believed his life to be in imminent danger.
Now rewind to the actual incident. There are two points which are not up for dispute:
1. Her vehicle began accelerating straight towards the officer BEFORE her wheels turned to the right, however briefly.
2. The vehicle made contact with the officer, as evidenced by the sound of the impact coinciding with its trajectory in the officer's cell phone footage, and the grudging admission of the Mayor of Minneapolis who tried to downplay the officer's injuries.
The unavoidable conclusion of this is that while she evaded arrest for the crime of obstructing federal law enforcement (the latter being a misdemeanor and the former being a felony), she accelerated her vehicle towards the officer. Any reasonable officer in that position would have regarded his own life to have been in danger, because now, she's engaging in apparent vehicular assault--REGARDLESS of whether that is her intention or not.
Assault with a deadly weapon (in this case, a two-ton bullet that you can turn) warrants a lethal response.
The picture of the dog that this article included is cute and will succeed in stirring up sympathy among some readers, but the cold legal reality is set in stone. The event was awful, but lawful.
He gave a live press release where he grudgingly acknowledged that the officer had sustained a minor injury from the impact. Despite his best efforts to downplay it, this means that the vehicle's trajectory intersected with the officer's position while the suspect was fleeing arrest.
"The ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips." Are you serious? That's clearly a sarcastic comment, likely meaning that Ross pushed against the car.
Cathy, we all saw the video footage. He wasn't moving towards the center of the vehicle when it approached, he was jumping away from the center. And the vehicle still made contact with his hip. What do you suppose would have happened if he'd remained in place instead of moving away from the center? It would have struck him more directly. The mayor's admission of contact settles this entire dispute.
How relevant is the direction of the tire? Ross isn't looking at the tire. He can't calculate tire angles in a split-second out of his peripheral vision.
That's a good point. Hopefully you will grant that she isn't looking at Ross when she decides to depart, either. She's looking at the guy shouting at her to her left.
I think all the instant replay analysis of tire angles is a bit precious. Good backs up, lining the front of the car squarely towards the agent before she accelerates forward. She is turning the tires/wheels after that, but I doubt that was obvious to someone suddenly facing a car accelerating towards them. That we are debating *if* she hit him suggests that in-the-moment interpreting she intended to is not outlandish. If she was close enough to "brush" him, it was too close. Utterly reckless.
This all happened really fast, training and reaction times being what they are, if the first shot was justified, the following 2 in the string, all within about a half second, were just an extension of the initial decision to shoot. And that initial decision was probably made at moment she started driving towards him, but it takes time to bring up the gun, etc. Again, that the car had started to change direction by time the shots start isn't really indicative of much given reaction, processing time.
I’m surprised how many commenters are saying Good was at fault because she moved the car forward.
LE officers are, or are supposed to be, trained to not put themselves in front of a vehicle and to not shoot into a vehicle moving away from them.
Seriously, all Ross had to do was take a step back from the vehicle. Instead, due to ramped up adrenaline and roiling anger, he CHOSE to shoot Good in the face. A completely wrong headed and tragic decision.
100% agreed. I've watched all the videos and thought about it a lot, and heard others analyze it. Your words here mirror my thoughts. Unfortunately a lot of people
ignore that both parties played a role, and focus on the politics and finger pointing. (I wrote my second ever Substack post about this topic, I'd link it here, but I don't know how).
None of this changes the fact that she instigated the entire situation, she refused to comply with lawful orders, and she accelerated at an armed federal agent.
It's easy to play armchair quarterback, freeze framing every millisecond of the interaction and scrutinizing every split-second decision this officer was forced to make, but the bottom line is she made a series of terrible choices that got herself killed.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
That cuts both ways. She did make terrible choices, in hindsight. So did the shooter. He could easily have stepped aside and not shot and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Bottom line, her death is asking us all to honestly clock our biases, isn't it?
The author of this piece is making a fundamental error in analysis. It’s not what viewers of these videos see from a wide angle, and with perfect hindsight, that matters. It’s what the parties involved could see.
So I think it is important to note that while we can see that Good appeared to be turning to the right, and away from the officer, Officer Ross was not in a great position to see that. Firstly, he was probably looking at the driver. Second, and more important, he was right in front of the hood. Which would’ve obstructed any view he had as to which way the wheels were turning. It is highly likely that all he saw was a car moving forwards in his direction. And let’s face it, the car did make contact.
I cannot say that I personally have a strong bias one way or the other in this case. I just tend to see nuance. I don’t think the driver intended to hurt the officer. And I also do not think that the officer was there to just shoot some driver. The real, and harder questions need to deal with all sides of the issue. When it comes to that, it’s important to note that Officer Ross IS a law enforcement officer, whether you like the laws that he is enforcing or not. And the agency that he works for is clearly dealing with public interference on a regular basis.
Which brings me to Good’s position in all of this. It was incumbent upon her to also recognize that he is a law-enforcement officer, as well as the fact that she was engaging in civil disobedience that went beyond peaceful protesting, and free speech. She was breaking the law in interfering with their operations. Whether she agreed with those operations or not. When you are engaging with civil disobedience of this type, part of the deal is that you need to be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions. You are making a statement, but you need to accept the consequences. Just as many civil rights activist over the years have done, including Martin Luther King Jr., who accepted prison as part of his movement. Just like Gandhi did. Just like Mandela did. It sucks, but it is part of the game. It is also what lends legitimacy to your cause.
To me, the takeaways from the situation are for everybody. Immigration enforcement officers need to review their policies, and enforce their policies. It was not a wise move for Ross to be standing in front of the vehicle. And training should certainly emphasize that shooting into a moving vehicle when there are plenty of other people around should not be a routine first reaction. He had pictures of their license plates, and they could’ve just apprehended her safely later in the day. The protesters, however, need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. Because Obama deported far more people than this administration has, and they were all at home watching TV at the time. So some reflection is in order about how much danger they are putting themselves in with more and more extreme tactics to fight something that they simply did not care about a few short years ago.
This is the crux right here: "What is Good’s goal at this point? To me, it seems she’s preparing to turn right and (foolishly) try to get away from the ICE agents. Not everyone agrees."
I do not buy at all that Good was trying to run anyone over. When you watch the video that seems totally clear to me. But she made the same ole mistake we often see on police cam videos: She was given a command by an authority person with a gun. They're trying to open her door. Ross is clearly standing right in front of the car. What you do here is easy and obvious: You immediately stop driving and you comply 100% with whatever they say. Ideally you put your hands up while you're at it. I have personal experience with this. You never, EVER disobey a command. And the fact that she tried to drive off? What did she think was going to happen? They were just gonna let her go? She obstructed them.
The fact that her door was locked, that she stayed inside her car, that she tried to drive off: These are what got her killed. And her wife trash-taking the agents didn't help.
So she deserved summary execution for not obeying the commands of masked men with guns and no badges. The rush to defend literal jack booted thugs killing unarmed American citizens is amazing to me. Cool, cool.
I've watched every video out there, including the one from Ross's cam. I think the most likely explanation here is that he killed her because he wanted to, and he figured that getting barely grazed by her vehicle would give him legal cover, particularly given the stance of the current administration. Like the author of the piece, I also thought that Kyle Rittenhouse probably should never have been charged in the first place, and the left hardly covered itself in glory in its response to the Jacob Blake shooting. In this case though, the position that happens to code left seems to be the accurate one. The current administration won't be in power forever and there's no statute of limitations in play here. Some sort of conviction down the line, possibly for manslaughter (it could be hard to get 12 jurors to all agree on second degree murder), is a very real possibility.
I think you've fairly captured how most people feel.
That said, your conclusion as Trump being responsible is incomplete. We're only having to crack down on illegal immigration because Biden opened the border and let 8 million illegals in. That's where this problem started. Trump was elected (in part) to address it.
Folks are also discussing this one incident in a vacuum when it's not, and this is part of what's leading to drastically different takes from the same video (on top of general partisanship).
This is hardly the first video capturing unprofessional and escalatory behavior by federal agents - we've been seeing a steady stream of this and it's been ever increasing:
- ICE slamming old men to the ground and punching them.
- Breaking car windows with firearms.
- The whole masking and jumping out of unmarked vehicle thing.
- In this case, the man jumping out of the pickup coming in WAY too hot telling her to get out of the car and grabbing the handle/reaching into her window.
There's also the complete lack of oversight and accountability and questions about why federal LE is being zerged into places like this. It feels performative and literally designed to intimidate and stoke fear.
So those of us who see Ross as at fault here are looking at the entire pattern that's led up to this incident, and how it perfectly encapsulates all of the disturbing bullshit we've been seeing for the last 6 months. Folks that disagree with me basically don't see issue with the things I mention above, and are coming from a place believing that the ICE presence is justified, that agents are acting appropriately within their jurisdiction, and that all these libs just hate America and any source of authority doing or saying what we don't like. All I can say is, it's telling that Ross' defenders can't give the slightest bit of ground in acknowledging that Ross and the guy that approached Good from the truck could have handled things 1000x more safely and professionally as expected from trained LE. If we place randoms in Good's position and repeat this scenario, a not insignificant number are going to respond the same way as she did instead of just complying. All they had to do was calmly tell her to leave, or coolly ask her to get out of the vehicle.
Edit to add:
The way Trump, Vance, and Noem came out and blatantly lied and opined when all they had to do was say that the investigation would play out is another piece of context that can't be lost here. Because of what they did, folks are going to justifiably doubt any investigative findings that support Ross' actions that day, even if they're legitimate.
I think you're being too generous to the ICE officer. Of all the dumb decisions: taking out his gun and shooting someone was the dumbest decision of all. I don't care what stupid decisions Good made leading up to her death but absolutely none of them warranted being killed.
Do I thin it's cold blooded murder? No. But he killed someone and he deserves to, at minimum, lose his badge.
The first goal of law enforcement is to make the community safer. He completely fails at this task.
> And don’t forget where the bad choices began. President Donald Trump has ordered ICE to carry out a heavy-handed campaign of rounding up illegal immigrants. Kristi Noem has supervised a paramilitary group that goes around masked and acts like a law unto itself. This kind of gung-ho, confrontational behavior was inevitably going to result in tragedy.
This is true, but I'd also add the attitude of liberal protestors of talking about LE as a modern day gestapo (while also simultaneously finding them so u threatening they feel perfectly safe blocking them with their vehicles) to the list of causes of unnecessary escalation in this situation.
There's no contradiction between holding that an on-the-street terrorist action by the government is blatantly illegal; holding that it's dangerous; and protesting it by defying it. Don't you know anything about Selma or Oxford Town or Kent State or Stonewall?
Are you an American? Do you have any historical awareness of the Boston Tea Party? Tyrannical oppression must be resisted. (Which reminds me — where are all the Second Amendment freaks who are supposed to have accumulated their arsenals for exactly this situation: to fight off an out-of-control oppressive and violent government?)
I think you're taking this a bit over the top. ICE are enforcing fairly anodyne immigration law (if often doing it in a needlessly inflammatory way). They're not some kind of illegal tyrannical posse.
Read what I wrote in my longer comment. The entire thing is completely unconstitutional. ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens. They are operating away from their purview which is border cities and border-adjacent communities (they have been sent to Minneapolis at the President's discretion for political reasons). What happened is a serious crime and a watershed moment in our history just like Kent State and the other examples I gave.
This is a common misconception. ICE can legally operate in the U.S. interior (i.e., away from the border) to arrest, detain, and remove noncitizens who are removable under federal immigration law. They also have some (limited) forms of jurisdiction over citizens who are actively impeding them in their lawful duties (although the laws about this get complicated).
They can arrest, detain and remove noncitizens. You said it yourself.
Respectfully, please read my longer comment about law enforcement procedures and the strict laws that govern them. I just get tired of writing this elementary stuff over and over because people somehow can't read it or absorb it.
Just to be clear, are you saying that ICE has no authority to arrest citizens impeding thier work? Hypothetically, if there were like a human wall, would they just have to like try to red rover thier way through it or go home?
You’re just wrong.
ICE can arrest anyone who is committing a crime under Title 18.
This includes things such as impeding a mission.
There’s no reason to get worked up here. No one is coming for you, or any of us, or anyone else you know, unless you know criminals.
A little different than kent state
I'm hardly the only one making the comparison. There are vast differences but I think those are outweighed by the fundamental similarities.
Well, we're certainly not strapping up to fight on behalf of people calling us "freaks", often the same people who have trying to illegally disarm us for decades.
What are you even talking about? Who's "illegally disarming" you? Gun laws have become systematically more lax over the past few decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
And anyway what has that got to do with Ross/Good? Why are his defenders so concerned with his mood and state of mind and whether it was "justified" (as if discussing a child) rather than the ironclad constitutional laws that govern all such interactions between drivers and law enforcement (including the clear cut fact that ICE has no jurisdiction over citizens)?
I've encountered you before and I hold your sloppy thinking and impulsive, simplified Conservative polemics in very low regard.
Why am I not surprised that you don't know what you're talking about? Do you even know what a Bruen response bill is, and how many blue states have passed them in open defiance of the supreme court? How about all of the hardware bans and carry restrictions being advanced across blue America?
As to the relevance, did you not read your own comment I was responding to? You also seem misinformed regarding what police powers ICE has, as they absolutely can arrest people who are interfering with their operations, as these women were.
The state-level pushback against SCOTUS (especially in the wake of the Alito and Thomas authored decisions about New York open carry) are obviously examples of action the other way but they don't change what I said about how the overwhelming trend in national gun policy has been the other direction.
ICE agents "cannot legally arrest or deport a U.S. citizen," full stop.
They have federal law enforcement authority, which means they can in fact detain someone who is committing a crime, such as impeding them in their duties.
Of course they can, silly man.
Title 18 provided authority for all Federal Law Enforcement; they can arrest anyone on that authority.
I'm sorry but anybody trying to argue in any way that the shooting is "justified" by anything she or her wife did, is just outrageously, direly wrong. It's possible to argue that the situation prompted Ross to shoot, but that's like saying that JFK's presence in Dallas prompted Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot — the whole thing is so completely framed in extra-legal and blatantly unconstitutional practices (including his glaring lack of any real training and his obvious temperamental and ideological unsuitability for the job) that any attempt to lessen the burden of his guilt by discussing what Good "shouldn't have" done must be dismissed out of hand.
Hundreds or thousands of criminal trials have hinged on exactly these details: What did the cop say; when did he unholster; did he identify himself; how many warnings; what stance etc. Everyone who’s ever been pulled over or seen YouTube videos of vehicular stops (and there are thousands of those, too) knows all about this. There have been SCOTUS cases that hinge on state and federal laws that concern this behavior by police and Federal agents, because (as the entire society knows) these are important life-or-death questions. Officers (real officers who get legitimate police academy training) spend months on these questions and can be expelled if they can’t absorb or follow them.
And even if you want to go beyond black-and-white laws and get into psychology (which everyone on the conservative side is doing; he didn’t “feel” safe) there is just no room to maneuver given what the whole world has seen of the situation. Trials have hinged on that, too — on police fear leading to untoward violence — and it's clear that the standards applied are way, way more stringent than anything going on right now in terms of absurd claims that his thigh was brushed by the edge of the fender or whatever (and please don’t pick apart this example).
I know in an egalitarian society we're supposed to be even-handed and I know there are a lot of people who are on his side (because they have been led over the years into a completely indefensible and un-American state of mind wherein shock tactics like this are permissible or desirable) but this is an open and shut case. The instant you start talking about Ross' mood or feelings you've lost the plot, full stop.
I agree with your take, just want to point out that some reports say Ross is not untrained but a veteran, an experienced LEO, and a firearms instructor. (My takeaway is that his defensive shooting reflexes were obviously quick, but his training totally failed in the critical moment. Hopefully the unnecessary second and third shots plus the words he uttered afterward will haunt him forever).
What about two other facts?
- ICE has no authority to detain or arrest anyone except those they can reasonably suspect are undocumented. So there is nothing "foolish" about the Goods wanting to leave the scene.
- Ross fired two more shots, the first through the open drivers side window mere inches from Good's head, LONG AFTER the car had passed him. And the third shot was fired after she was at least 6 feet past him.
If this was a private carjacker instead of a government-paid one, it would be an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder.
So don't give us any of this "on the other hand" balderdash.
"ICE has no authority to detain or arrest anyone except those they can reasonably suspect are undocumented. So there is nothing "foolish" about the Goods wanting to leave the scene...If this was a private carjacker instead of a government-paid one, it would be an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder."
Hmm, this is a really interesting framing. To repeat a question I asked above, if there were like a human wall of white people trying to stop them from going somewhere, would they really have no options but to like try to red rover thier way through it or go home? I'm really surprised they have no ability to arrest people impeding thier work.
BBC says otherwise:
ICE agents have the power to stop, detain and arrest people they suspect of being in the US illegally. They can detain US citizens in limited circumstances, such as if a person interferes with an arrest, assaults an officer, or ICE suspect the person of being in the US illegally.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp80ljjd5rwo
That’s pretty much what I said. They are trying to stretch the “interfering with an arrest” factor beyond anything rational, claiming that any protester anywhere near ICE agents are “interfering.” They’re even claiming that people following them or recording them are “interfering.” That is a lie. There was no “arrest” under way. Good was clearly leaving the scene to avoid being dragged out of her car and detained or worse.
Right. I just mean that the agents telling her to get out of the car had the authority to do so, at least potentially - it doesn't look like she was blocking them since I saw in the video someone drove around her, but I don't know for sure what happened before all the videos.
Well, I’ll leave it to the experts but I’m pretty sure I’ve read that they cannot order someone out of their car. And given the many many times we’ve seen ICE throwing people to the ground, handcuffing them, and taking them away, it would be petty foolish to comply.
Let's talk about legal reality for a moment.
The intentions of the smiling mother of three are entirely irrelevant to whether the shooting was justified or not. I am utterly indifferent as to whether she had murder, intimidation, flight, or some combination thereof on her mind because her intent isn't what matters on the question of self-defense.
To understand why, imagine if she'd stepped out of the vehicle with a water gun that looked like a real firearm and aimed it at the officer with the intent to squirt him. What do you suppose would happen next?
Obviously, she'd be shot, and there would be no question that the shooting was justified because any reasonable officer in that position would have believed his life to be in imminent danger.
Now rewind to the actual incident. There are two points which are not up for dispute:
1. Her vehicle began accelerating straight towards the officer BEFORE her wheels turned to the right, however briefly.
2. The vehicle made contact with the officer, as evidenced by the sound of the impact coinciding with its trajectory in the officer's cell phone footage, and the grudging admission of the Mayor of Minneapolis who tried to downplay the officer's injuries.
The unavoidable conclusion of this is that while she evaded arrest for the crime of obstructing federal law enforcement (the latter being a misdemeanor and the former being a felony), she accelerated her vehicle towards the officer. Any reasonable officer in that position would have regarded his own life to have been in danger, because now, she's engaging in apparent vehicular assault--REGARDLESS of whether that is her intention or not.
Assault with a deadly weapon (in this case, a two-ton bullet that you can turn) warrants a lethal response.
The picture of the dog that this article included is cute and will succeed in stirring up sympathy among some readers, but the cold legal reality is set in stone. The event was awful, but lawful.
Huh? Where did the mayor of Minneapolis admit that the officer had injuries in this incident?
The trajectory of the phone may indicate that the car bumped Ross's arm after he reached across the hood.
He gave a live press release where he grudgingly acknowledged that the officer had sustained a minor injury from the impact. Despite his best efforts to downplay it, this means that the vehicle's trajectory intersected with the officer's position while the suspect was fleeing arrest.
"The ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips." Are you serious? That's clearly a sarcastic comment, likely meaning that Ross pushed against the car.
Cathy, we all saw the video footage. He wasn't moving towards the center of the vehicle when it approached, he was jumping away from the center. And the vehicle still made contact with his hip. What do you suppose would have happened if he'd remained in place instead of moving away from the center? It would have struck him more directly. The mayor's admission of contact settles this entire dispute.
Not if he leaned into the car, which is what it looked like to me.
Also, Frey's off-the-cuff comment doesn't prove anything.
How relevant is the direction of the tire? Ross isn't looking at the tire. He can't calculate tire angles in a split-second out of his peripheral vision.
That's a good point. Hopefully you will grant that she isn't looking at Ross when she decides to depart, either. She's looking at the guy shouting at her to her left.
I think all the instant replay analysis of tire angles is a bit precious. Good backs up, lining the front of the car squarely towards the agent before she accelerates forward. She is turning the tires/wheels after that, but I doubt that was obvious to someone suddenly facing a car accelerating towards them. That we are debating *if* she hit him suggests that in-the-moment interpreting she intended to is not outlandish. If she was close enough to "brush" him, it was too close. Utterly reckless.
This all happened really fast, training and reaction times being what they are, if the first shot was justified, the following 2 in the string, all within about a half second, were just an extension of the initial decision to shoot. And that initial decision was probably made at moment she started driving towards him, but it takes time to bring up the gun, etc. Again, that the car had started to change direction by time the shots start isn't really indicative of much given reaction, processing time.
I’m surprised how many commenters are saying Good was at fault because she moved the car forward.
LE officers are, or are supposed to be, trained to not put themselves in front of a vehicle and to not shoot into a vehicle moving away from them.
Seriously, all Ross had to do was take a step back from the vehicle. Instead, due to ramped up adrenaline and roiling anger, he CHOSE to shoot Good in the face. A completely wrong headed and tragic decision.
He definitely had an itchy trigger finger it seems obvious to me.
100% agreed. I've watched all the videos and thought about it a lot, and heard others analyze it. Your words here mirror my thoughts. Unfortunately a lot of people
ignore that both parties played a role, and focus on the politics and finger pointing. (I wrote my second ever Substack post about this topic, I'd link it here, but I don't know how).
None of this changes the fact that she instigated the entire situation, she refused to comply with lawful orders, and she accelerated at an armed federal agent.
It's easy to play armchair quarterback, freeze framing every millisecond of the interaction and scrutinizing every split-second decision this officer was forced to make, but the bottom line is she made a series of terrible choices that got herself killed.
The use of force was justified.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
That cuts both ways. She did make terrible choices, in hindsight. So did the shooter. He could easily have stepped aside and not shot and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Bottom line, her death is asking us all to honestly clock our biases, isn't it?
The author of this piece is making a fundamental error in analysis. It’s not what viewers of these videos see from a wide angle, and with perfect hindsight, that matters. It’s what the parties involved could see.
So I think it is important to note that while we can see that Good appeared to be turning to the right, and away from the officer, Officer Ross was not in a great position to see that. Firstly, he was probably looking at the driver. Second, and more important, he was right in front of the hood. Which would’ve obstructed any view he had as to which way the wheels were turning. It is highly likely that all he saw was a car moving forwards in his direction. And let’s face it, the car did make contact.
I cannot say that I personally have a strong bias one way or the other in this case. I just tend to see nuance. I don’t think the driver intended to hurt the officer. And I also do not think that the officer was there to just shoot some driver. The real, and harder questions need to deal with all sides of the issue. When it comes to that, it’s important to note that Officer Ross IS a law enforcement officer, whether you like the laws that he is enforcing or not. And the agency that he works for is clearly dealing with public interference on a regular basis.
Which brings me to Good’s position in all of this. It was incumbent upon her to also recognize that he is a law-enforcement officer, as well as the fact that she was engaging in civil disobedience that went beyond peaceful protesting, and free speech. She was breaking the law in interfering with their operations. Whether she agreed with those operations or not. When you are engaging with civil disobedience of this type, part of the deal is that you need to be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions. You are making a statement, but you need to accept the consequences. Just as many civil rights activist over the years have done, including Martin Luther King Jr., who accepted prison as part of his movement. Just like Gandhi did. Just like Mandela did. It sucks, but it is part of the game. It is also what lends legitimacy to your cause.
To me, the takeaways from the situation are for everybody. Immigration enforcement officers need to review their policies, and enforce their policies. It was not a wise move for Ross to be standing in front of the vehicle. And training should certainly emphasize that shooting into a moving vehicle when there are plenty of other people around should not be a routine first reaction. He had pictures of their license plates, and they could’ve just apprehended her safely later in the day. The protesters, however, need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. Because Obama deported far more people than this administration has, and they were all at home watching TV at the time. So some reflection is in order about how much danger they are putting themselves in with more and more extreme tactics to fight something that they simply did not care about a few short years ago.
This is the crux right here: "What is Good’s goal at this point? To me, it seems she’s preparing to turn right and (foolishly) try to get away from the ICE agents. Not everyone agrees."
I do not buy at all that Good was trying to run anyone over. When you watch the video that seems totally clear to me. But she made the same ole mistake we often see on police cam videos: She was given a command by an authority person with a gun. They're trying to open her door. Ross is clearly standing right in front of the car. What you do here is easy and obvious: You immediately stop driving and you comply 100% with whatever they say. Ideally you put your hands up while you're at it. I have personal experience with this. You never, EVER disobey a command. And the fact that she tried to drive off? What did she think was going to happen? They were just gonna let her go? She obstructed them.
The fact that her door was locked, that she stayed inside her car, that she tried to drive off: These are what got her killed. And her wife trash-taking the agents didn't help.
So she deserved summary execution for not obeying the commands of masked men with guns and no badges. The rush to defend literal jack booted thugs killing unarmed American citizens is amazing to me. Cool, cool.
I've watched every video out there, including the one from Ross's cam. I think the most likely explanation here is that he killed her because he wanted to, and he figured that getting barely grazed by her vehicle would give him legal cover, particularly given the stance of the current administration. Like the author of the piece, I also thought that Kyle Rittenhouse probably should never have been charged in the first place, and the left hardly covered itself in glory in its response to the Jacob Blake shooting. In this case though, the position that happens to code left seems to be the accurate one. The current administration won't be in power forever and there's no statute of limitations in play here. Some sort of conviction down the line, possibly for manslaughter (it could be hard to get 12 jurors to all agree on second degree murder), is a very real possibility.
I think you've fairly captured how most people feel.
That said, your conclusion as Trump being responsible is incomplete. We're only having to crack down on illegal immigration because Biden opened the border and let 8 million illegals in. That's where this problem started. Trump was elected (in part) to address it.
I agree that Good was not trying to run over the ICE agent but I couldn’t disagree more that Rittenhouse was acting out of self defense
Folks are also discussing this one incident in a vacuum when it's not, and this is part of what's leading to drastically different takes from the same video (on top of general partisanship).
This is hardly the first video capturing unprofessional and escalatory behavior by federal agents - we've been seeing a steady stream of this and it's been ever increasing:
- ICE slamming old men to the ground and punching them.
- Breaking car windows with firearms.
- The whole masking and jumping out of unmarked vehicle thing.
- In this case, the man jumping out of the pickup coming in WAY too hot telling her to get out of the car and grabbing the handle/reaching into her window.
There's also the complete lack of oversight and accountability and questions about why federal LE is being zerged into places like this. It feels performative and literally designed to intimidate and stoke fear.
So those of us who see Ross as at fault here are looking at the entire pattern that's led up to this incident, and how it perfectly encapsulates all of the disturbing bullshit we've been seeing for the last 6 months. Folks that disagree with me basically don't see issue with the things I mention above, and are coming from a place believing that the ICE presence is justified, that agents are acting appropriately within their jurisdiction, and that all these libs just hate America and any source of authority doing or saying what we don't like. All I can say is, it's telling that Ross' defenders can't give the slightest bit of ground in acknowledging that Ross and the guy that approached Good from the truck could have handled things 1000x more safely and professionally as expected from trained LE. If we place randoms in Good's position and repeat this scenario, a not insignificant number are going to respond the same way as she did instead of just complying. All they had to do was calmly tell her to leave, or coolly ask her to get out of the vehicle.
Edit to add:
The way Trump, Vance, and Noem came out and blatantly lied and opined when all they had to do was say that the investigation would play out is another piece of context that can't be lost here. Because of what they did, folks are going to justifiably doubt any investigative findings that support Ross' actions that day, even if they're legitimate.
I think you're being too generous to the ICE officer. Of all the dumb decisions: taking out his gun and shooting someone was the dumbest decision of all. I don't care what stupid decisions Good made leading up to her death but absolutely none of them warranted being killed.
Do I thin it's cold blooded murder? No. But he killed someone and he deserves to, at minimum, lose his badge.
The first goal of law enforcement is to make the community safer. He completely fails at this task.