THE MINNEAPOLIS SHOOTING: THAT SETTLES IT. Although the argument goes on, the video of the Minneapolis shooting taken by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Renee Good effectively answered the question of whether the agent, Jonathan Ross, acted lawfully. The video, and other evidence as well, suggests that he did.
“Regardless of whether you believe Renee Good’s death resulted from either her poor decision-making in gratuitously courting danger, or Trump’s excessive zeal in ramping up immigration enforcement, the legal case comes down to whether the agent reasonably perceived a potentially lethal threat,” wrote former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. “From what we have seen so far, he did.”
That doesn’t mean the situation wasn’t tragic or that Ross made the best possible decision in pulling the trigger. But it does mean that, given everything that happened, and given what Good did, Ross was acting within the law when he used lethal force.
Ross is highly unlikely to face any sort of federal prosecution over the incident. But that does not mean that officials in the state of Minnesota will see things the same way. “I’ve just been through enough of these cases where if there’s a political agenda, then the law gets thrown to the side,” Eric Nelson, the lawyer who defended Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer now jailed for the death of George Floyd, told the Daily Mail. “It is entirely possible that the federal system could say we’re not going to indict [Ross], but the state could prosecute him for some form of homicide or manslaughter.”
The Ross video is so valuable because, for a couple of days after the shooting, it wasn’t terribly clear what had happened. Was Good part of the local effort to impede ICE’s operations? Did her car hit the agent who fired the shots? Did her wife have some sort of role in events? What had happened in the minutes before the shooting? Nobody knew much.
The video gave the best answer yet to some of those questions. Yes, Good was part of the local effort to impede ICE’s operations. Yes, her car hit Agent Ross. Yes, her wife played a role in events. As far as what happened in the minutes before the shooting, the portion of video that was released doesn’t tell us anything, although another video that has recently come to public attention, made from a house overlooking the scene, showed that Good was obstructing ICE officers.
What was striking was that even as the video emerged, the voices who claimed that the shooting amounted to murder argued that the new pictures supported their position. Shortly before the shooting, Good had told an agent, apparently Ross, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad.” That, the argument went, showed that she was not in the frame of mind to drive her car in a way that hit Ross. The it-was-murder voices also argued that the video showed Good was trying to avoid Ross, not hit him.
But the videos left no doubt that Good was impeding ICE. There was also no doubt that one or more law enforcement officers ordered her to get out of her car, which she did not do. There was no doubt that she did not stop her car, as ordered. And there was no doubt that Good’s wife, Rebecca Good, a belligerent actor in the street scene, said, “Drive, baby, drive!” immediately before Good hit the accelerator with Ross in front of the car.
Put it all together, and in the view of a number of experts, it added up to a legally sufficient reason for Ross to fire his weapon. “The totality of circumstances relevant to the ICE officer’s decision to use deadly force would have included not simply that Good was a ‘citizen protester’ concerned about the removal policies of the Trump administration,” wrote William Shipley, another former federal prosecutor, “but also that she had created a dangerous condition for others in parking her vehicle blocking a lane of traffic, had failed to comply with lawful commands to exit her vehicle, failed to heed lawful commands to stop as she put the vehicle in gear and began to move, the directions coming from her partner to ‘drive’ while the officer was in front of her vehicle, his observations of her and her conduct through the front windshield, her turning the wheel into his direction and bringing the front end around to face him directly, and beginning to accelerate with the car in ‘Drive.’”
Obviously, none of that will deter Minnesota’s Democratic political officials from denouncing ICE. Perhaps relieved to not be on the defensive about their inaction in the state’s massive Somalia fraud scandal, some Democrats in local positions have routinely called Good’s death “murder.” Others have made a show of their anger. “Get the f*** out of Minneapolis,” said Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey to ICE. Frey also addressed the argument that the ICE agent acted properly by saying, “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: That is bulls***.”
Now, even though it appears that the core elements of the incident — Good’s and Ross’s actions in the few seconds surrounding the shooting — have been established, there is still much about the case we don’t know. First, it seems likely several more videos will emerge, not the least of which is that taken by Renee Good’s wife Rebecca Good. On Sunday morning, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem alluded to events before the shooting and said, “You haven’t seen the video of the entire morning and the previous encounters with this individual [Good]…there’s more information.”
And from a larger human interest perspective, we know very little about either Good or Ross. How did Renee Good end up in Minneapolis? Some details, like when Good moved to the city, remain unreported. And what about Rebecca Good? What’s her story? And on the other side, what is there to learn about Ross’s career in law enforcement? There is a lot we don’t know that would, at the very least, add context to the story. But at the moment, the basics seem pretty clear.