US president Donald Trump has added another justification for the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an Ice agent in Minnesota: she behaved badly.
“At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
In the days since Good (37) was shot and killed by Jonathan Ross, an Ice agent, Trump administration officials have used a variety of arguments as they have tried to justify the episode.
They have called it an act of self-defence, and Trump has falsely claimed Good “ran over” the agent. JD Vance, the vice-president, has argued that Ross has “absolute immunity.”
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While Trump still says the Ice agent was acting in self-defence, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing.
The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.
Asked by a reporter if he believed deadly force was necessary in this case, Trump said: “It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.”
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The federal government has defended the shooting as lawful and necessary, while local officials have dismissed that narrative. Trump referred to a “crunch” he heard in footage of the shooting to buttress his claim that the Ice agent was in danger.
“It seems like the big picture is to control the narrative and suggest to the public that she was in the wrong, and they were in the right,” said Barbara L McQuade, a former US attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan.
“And also, I think, to send a message that the public needs to obey law enforcement on the streets, and to intimidate protesters.”
She added: “If people are afraid they’re going to be shot or arrested for observing or peacefully protesting, or even for mouthing off, I think the thought is that will cause people to self-censor or chill their behaviour, cause them to stay home.”
Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, said that even if Trump’s allegation that Good was a “professional agitator” were true, that would not justify her killing.
“As far as I can tell, they’re not professional agitators,” Fox said. “She’s just a local woman who lived in the community. But it doesn’t really matter, right? You don’t get to kill someone because they engage in conduct that you disagree with or find distasteful or deplorable. If cops could just kill people any time they get annoyed or frustrated, my God, we would be in trouble.”
In the moments before the shooting last Wednesday in Minneapolis, Good tells the agent that she isn’t mad at him, and Ross begins to circle her vehicle.
She reverses as he crosses in front of her SUV, then she starts to move forward, and turns to the right. Ross is near her left headlight when he opens fire three times, killing her.
[ Minneapolis shooting: New video emerges filmed by Ice agent who shot Renee GoodOpens in new window ]
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Good’s killing was one of 13 episodes in which federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July.
Aboard Air Force One, Trump said Ice agents have faced their own hardships.
“These people have been harassed and threatened every day,” the president said. “They had bands out playing so they couldn’t sleep at the hotel. I see what they’re doing to them. They’re threatening them constantly.”
Like Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the actions of Ice on Monday, denigrating the protesters who oppose the agents’ actions.
“This administration will continue to stand wholeheartedly by the brave men and women of Ice, including that officer in Minneapolis who was absolutely justified in using self-defence against a lunatic who is part of a group, an organised group, to interject and to impede on law enforcement operations,” Leavitt said.
Vanita Gupta, a former associate attorney general who oversaw both the civil rights division that can prosecute federal agents and the civil division that can defend them, called the administration’s rush to disparage Good “unprecedented.”
“Being ‘disrespectful’ does not warrant the use of deadly force,” Gupta said. “The immediate public efforts by the White House to spin the facts, including denigrating the victim, does not change federal law.”
Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, contrasted Trump’s treatment of Good with his praise and support for the hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and attacked the police.
On January 6th this year, the Trump administration made a page on its website that accused the Capitol Police of instigating the riot, and said a pro-Trump rioter whom the police killed during the mayhem was “murdered”.
“Trump just pardoned nearly 1,600 insurrectionists,” Raskin said, “hundreds of whom violently attacked police officers and called them everything from traitors to pigs to racial epithets, and ruthlessly taunted them and maligned them for hours.”
He added that “Donald Trump’s very dubious characterisation of Renee Good as having been disrespectful is not only factually suspect, but it’s legally irrelevant.”
“The police do not have the right to shoot people in the head because they consider them having acted in a disrespectful way,” Raskin said. “That legal standard would have led to a slaughter on Jan 6.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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