By now, everyone in America has seen multiple videos of the ICE agent shooting Renee Good on January 7th in Minneapolis. Many folks (including administration figures) jumped on single initial videos on Bluesky or X to rush to judgment. Almost all of them are wrong: wrong about the facts, wrong about the law, just plain wrong. I’ve taken a few days to capture the most important video elements, create a timeline, and clear away the bulls!t* both sides have been spewing. I will attempt to show (1) what happened, (2) why (where we can tell), and (3) what does not matter to the story.
Let’s start with the background. On the day in question, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, along with allied federal agencies) was involved in an Enforcement and Removal Operation (ERO) in the Minneapolis area. These are targeted raids wholly within the legal duties of ICE. While many Americans don’t agree with the policy ICE was enforcing, there is no legal basis for any citizen to impede the actions. In this instance, it is no different from deciding the bank robber is innocent and tackling the police officer arresting him. It will not end well, regardless of your intentions.
According to her spouse, Renee Good was a member of an online community called ICE Watch, which coordinates protest activities against ICE ERO. This is legal. Watching where ICE agents are, showing up and protesting with signs, whistles, or car-horns, and even following them are protected activities under the First Amendment. However, most of these actions are profoundly ineffective: ICE targets still get detained, arrested, and deported. Which makes the protesters angry, and wanting to do more. Anytime the protest crosses over into actively or passively interfering, it becomes illegal. Yet many such illegal activities do not result in arrest. ICE agents detain people who are interfering, and after completing the operation, release them without pressing charges. They do this in order to complete their daily mission, and to recognize the fine line between legal and illegal behavior, whether you believe that or not. In fact, all law enforcement officers exercise the same restraint: ever had a cop let you off with a warning when the radar gun got you “dead to rights?”
By all accounts, Renee Good was a very nice person. A great neighbor, a loving spouse, a kind mother, a committed member of her community. This would all be relevant character witness if she were charged with a crime. She is not; she is dead. Morally, it is a tragedy that she was lost to the community. Legally it matters not at all. What matters is what she did that morning, and although she is not there to tell us, why?
Renee Good dropped off her child at school around 9:00 AM. At 9:37 AM she was shot. We don’t yet know what she did between the time she dropped off her child and when she parked her car laterally blocking a two lane street. We do know that ICE was completing a mission in the area and one of their vehicles, which had pulled off the street to park, was stuck in the snow at the same location. Some other cars did pass by, but Good remained in the driver’s seat with her window rolled down and her engine idling. Her spouse, Becca Good, exited the passenger-side of the vehicle and began filming with her phone the collection of ICE vehicles that had arrived on the scene to extricate the trapped vehicle. ICE agents in two vehicles (one in front of Good’s car, one behind) also exited their vehicles and approached her car.
These videos contain important audio explaining several aspects of the incident. Renee Good can be heard saying “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” The agent who approached from the passenger side is filming the encounter, and he comes face-to-face with Becca Good as he moves to the rear bumper. He does not speak, but he is walking around Good’s car, filming the license plate and circling around to the front of the car. Becca Good can be heard saying, “That’s okay. We don’t change our plates every morning. Just so you know. . . . It will be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That’s fine. . . . US Citizen!” Then a moment later, “You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.” The agent continues toward the front of the car as Becca returns to the passenger door. As she reaches for the passenger-side door handle to open it, the two agents approaching her car from the driver’s side shout, “out of the car” “get out of the f*cking car” and “get out of the car” in overlapping succession.
While the two agents continue to approach Renee’s car door, the other (filming) agent moves to the front of her vehicle, holding his cell phone in his left hand. Becca tries to opens the passenger door, but it is locked. She says “Drive. Drive, Baby drive!” One of the agents arrives at the driver’s door and attempts to open it from the outside; he fails. He then reaches inside, either to grab the steering wheel or unlock the door. Renee Good places the vehicle into reverse (the back-up lights come on) and the car moves a foot or two back, as the officer reaching-in staggers off balance with his arm still in the car. Renee Good places the car in drive, as indicated by the back-up lights going off and the vehicle moving forward slowly. The agent still has his arm inside the car.
At the moment the car begins moving forward and accelerating, the agent in front of the car is slightly in front of the driver’s side headlight. At that moment, he reaches for his weapon with his free (right) hand. Simultaneously, the agent with his arm in the car disentangles himself and staggers away from the car. Renee Good turns her steering wheel to her right as the agent in front fires one round through the front windshield. He fires two more rounds through the open driver’s side window. Becca Good never got back into the car before it accelerates away, crashing into a parked car down the street. Renee Good is dead from one or more gunshots to the head. Someone (certainly one of the ICE agents) is heard saying “F*cking b!tch.”
There are some opinions floating around which are not supported by the facts. Early BlueSky coverage indicated the ICE agents gave conflicting commands to “get the eff out of here.” There is no evidence to support this conjecture. All three commands heard, from two different voices, are to “get out of the car.”
Some have voiced uninformed opinions about the the rules for deadly force, and the fact three rounds were fired. To be clear, ICE agents are authorized to use deadly force if there is a threat to the agent or anyone else. Whether the shooting agent could evade the car or not is irrelevant, as the car is the deadly weapon in this case. To put it in perspective, imagine telling a police officer they can’t shoot back at a suspect if the suspect shot first and missed them! In this case, the officer with his arm in the vehicle was clearly at risk of being dragged. That is a deadly threat.
Were the three rounds fired excessive? A forensic analysis of the shots shows they occurred within a single second. The Supreme Court has held (Plumhoff v. Rickard) that an officer employing deadly force is within his rights to continue shooting until the threat is disabled. The shooter in this case had no time to stop and consider whether his first round had hit the target. In fact, at this time, we still don’t know whether the first round did hit or kill Renee Good.
Several former law enforcement officers have commented negatively on the fact the agent who fired his weapon “stopped in front of a car.” Their complaints cite the police rule that you never stand in front of a car. This is indeed a rule of policing, but the agent in question barely–if at all–stops in front of the car. He is circling the car, filming it as evidence. That’s why he is able to get out of the way. Cops walk in front of a cars all the time; it’s practically impossible to avoid doing so in a public environment. One doesn’t take up a blocking position in front of a suspect vehicle, or one might become a hood ornament. That wasn’t the case here.
What does the geography of the crime scene and videos show us? Renee Good was not attempting to run over the agent who shot her. Look at the video labelled #4 in this Washington Post coverage. Renee Good clearly looks forward at the agent in front of her car as her spouse commands her to “drive.” And her hands show her turning her steering wheel to her right to avoid the agent who is moving away to her left. There is a hidden clue here. When Renee looks forward at the agent in front of her car, she is no longer looking at the agent who has his arms inside her car door. She does not know it, but the agent in front of the car can see both her, and the other ICE agent about to be dragged.
Is it relevant that the agent who shot Renee Good had been previously dragged? Probably not. If opposing counsel in a hypothetical case could introduce other evidence that the shooting agent was mentally unwell, or unbalanced, hateful, or unfit for duty, that might be relevant. But the simple fact he was previously dragged does not by itself indicate anything. Likewise, the fact the alleged shooter was a member of a highly trained ICE element, and taught firearms safety, is not necessarily relevant. It does remove the possibility the shooter was untrained, but that is all it does. The decision to shoot is a split-second one where officers are supposed to let their training kick in. That is the purpose of training.
So what really happened here? Two women active in anti-ICE protests happened upon (or were notified of) some ICE vehicles in their vicinity. They decided to join-in the protest. If you listen/watch closely to the various videos, you’ll see a number of people gathering on the street, some filming, and unidentified voices (not the protagonists mentioned here) shouting epithets at the agents. For reasons known only to them, the women park their car directly across a street, blocking access. There is no legal reason on the planet to do so. Even a local police officer would have arrested them for blocking traffic.
According to Secretary Noem, the ICE personnel stuck in the snow were leaving after an earlier-morning operation. So the ICE agents were not involved in an active operation: they were headed home, or to the office for a debrief. They are not chasing a suspect. The verbal exchanges between the women and the ICE agents show a degree of hostility, but not malice. I would characterize them as taunting, and law enforcement personnel are trained to ignore such taunting. Furthermore, since they are not involved in an active operation, the ICE agents should be exercising maximum discretion toward any attempt to impede them.
Within forty seconds, the incident goes from ridiculous to deadly. Law enforcement personnel have the right to defend themselves, and are trained to do so. The protesting women do not evince any professional training in the fine art of legal non-violent resistance. They are treating this as a bit of theater to be filmed and disseminated for the cause. The officer filming circles their car to get full data on it; when he does, he ends up directly in front of the vehicle at the exact moment when the women decide they don’t have to obey the agents’ commands and attempt to flee (but not kill anyone).
Here is the split-second decision that agent has to make: he hears the engine revving and sees the car moving forward towards him. He can see both the car approaching him and he can see his associate struggling to get free of the moving car. He assesses deadly force is necessary and pulls his weapon. Self-preservation kicks in and he starts to evade the front bumper of the vehicle, which either brushes or narrowly misses him (someone, presumably the shooter, shouts “woah” at this moment), as he fires a shot that enters through the front windshield. As the car passes him, he fires two more times. All of this happens in under three seconds.
What’s important in all this?
An American citizen is dead, for no good reason. It’s not the shooting agent’s fault, he reacted as he was trained. It’s not the victim’s fault; she did not intend to injure anyone. ICE bears a responsibility to ensure its officers employ greater discretion when not involved in active operations. We entrust ICE with the difficult task of capturing and removing illegal aliens, and with the right to use deadly force. ICE should conduct a safety stand-down and remind its agents that conduct outside of operations is not the same as conduct during operations. If the Goods had been driving to block an imminent arrest, that would have been one thing. There was nothing in particular going on, and greater discretion was necessary.
Groups which form to track ICE also shoulder blame. Law enforcement is law enforcement, whether you agree with the law being enforced or not. On Instagram, the account called MN (Minnesota) ICE Watch has a tab indicating “If you don’t have a crowd asserting pressure there may be some interference charges that come with blocking a police vehicle that may be more easily handed down for only one or two people blocking a police vehicle, but in many cases these are misdemeanor offenses and catch and release.” These anti-ICE groups even acknowledge what they are advising is illegal, but brush it off as a “misdemeanor or catch and release.” Law enforcement officers are authorized to use deadly force, and are trained to do so. This is not street-theater. It’s all fun and games until somebody gets shot in the face.
The whole situation reminds me of the countless videos of people detained by police who suddenly decide to flee, with predictable consequences. Even if the Goods had done nothing wrong up to that point (they had), when law enforcement orders you to get out of the car, you must get out of the car. Not “drive, baby, drive.”
If you jumped on the bandwagon of labeling the deceased woman a domestic terrorist, or ICE as trigger happy Gestapo: congratulations, you too share in the blame. Hyperbole never helps, and in this case you are not offering your opinion, you are factually wrong. People think it’s a partisan hoot when they post highly-provocative bullsh!t* on social media: it’s not. When you do so, you help raise the temperature, not lower it. For God’s sake, even Renee Good kept her commentary civil, although she did a make one tragic, fatal mistake.
Stop it. Just stop it, now. Or accept your part in the blame.
Post Script: It has only been days since the event. More evidence may come to light, and the FBI investigation will also provide more information.
*technical term I heard from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The opinion he voiced had the exact same stink.
She just should have followed instructions and gotten out of the car- or maybe she shouldn’t have even been there in the first place🤷🏼♀️
Either one of THOSE choices and she’d
Likely still be alive. IMHO
Pat, thoughtful as always. My thoughts. Tragedy? Yes. Avoidable? Yes. Excessive Force? Probably not. Let’s all wait to learn what the investigation determines.
Pat, thoughtful as always. My thoughts. Tragedy? Yes. Avoidable? Yes. Excessive Force? Probably not. Let’s all wait to learn what the investigation determines.
I enjoy the folksy contrarianism here, but in your evaluation of whether the ICE officer in question was justified in his use of his weapon you engage in textbook sophistry.
People who cut other people are guilty of a crime. Surgeons cut people. Surgeons are criminals. Here we omit a big, “yeah, but…” So too with the ICE officer.
Does an officer have the ability to fire his weapon at the person who is threatening his life? I think yes. Was the driver in this case threatening his life? I think no.
And if you really think the circumstances here warrant deadly force, imagine this same officer at an enforcement operations in a Walmart parking lot. God help us.
Perhaps in my sophistry I was a little opaque? The justification for deadly force is more on the threat to drag the second agent (which the shooter could clearly see) as it was on the threat to run over the shooter. Dragging is a real possibility here, and the shooter has only a microsecond to make a choice, since once the car passes him, he would be as likely to shoot his fellow agent being dragged as hit the driver.
The entire incident is avoidable if the agents kept in mind that they weren’t in active operations (which is an assumption on my part based on Sec Noem’s comments, so I could be wrong). It’s also avoidable if the deceased driver had followed the “rules” allegedly taught by the several non-violent ICE observer organizations, which include (1) don’t use your car to impede and (2) obey all law enforcement commands.
As to the Walmart parking lot, which of us has not wished to have a 105mm cannon when engaging there?
I just don’t see a threat to life for the officer who fired the shots, or the officer who reached in the window. For me there’s a whole lot of stipulation as to whether the window reacher was in imminent danger; couldn’t he have just let go?
That combined with the Walmart-parking-lot-esque speeds involved here, I’m left with I’m going to ask a whole lot more of civil servants empowered with deadly force.
Fair enough. Each of us have watched numerous videos and come to different conclusions. The only opinion that matters legally is that of the shooter. He hasn’t spoken yet, but eventually will. You and I may agree the situation at the point Renee Good started driving forward required de-escalation. I only offer that the officer’s training indicated a deadly threat. It doesn’t require him to get hit by the car, nor does it require him to confirm the other agent is being dragged. It’s a split-second decision made in real-time. That is why courts invariably do not find such agents guilty of any misconduct.
Are you familiar with the 2013 PERF report documenting federal agents stepping into vehicle paths to justify deadly force, and how DHS policy since 2014 explicitly instructs agents to move out of the way? How do you reconcile that with Ross’s positioning in the video?
For those unfamiliar, the “PERF report” is an independent study commissioned by US Customs and Border Protection, entitled “USE OF FORCE REVIEW: CASES AND POLICIES, February 2013) and completed by the Police Executive Research Forum. You can access it here: here.
Among other things, it recommends CBP agents not be authorized to use deadly force to stop a moving vehicle in the absence of another deadly threat, and not position themselves so as to be at risk (ie, in front of a vehicle). In the latter observation, it coincided with widely-held policing doctrine.
To your point, Agent Ross is walking around the vehicle, filming it. At the moment he stops, he is in front of the driver’s side headlight, and is able to avoid being struck by the vehicle, as even those defending the driver’s action contend.
To my point, the shooter could also see the agent whose arm was still in the car was in danger of being dragged. This, too, is a threat justifying deadly force. I do agree (as I said) that ICE should instruct its agents to discern between active operations and other times. Such training would have resulted in a different outcome in this case.
Another killed in Minneapolis. Maybe he reached for something that the officer perceived to be a weapon. Personally I like the odds of 7 on 1, but he had to make a split second decision and that’s hard. A car going 3mph, which you are aside, can be deadly for you or the officer reaching inside the window. Split seconds, people. Or maybe they are a bunch of untrained, masked thugs who have been unleashed on an American city and encouraged to be judge, jury and executioner.