[bananabiscuit]

I don’t think this is as clear cut as anyone on either side is claiming.

Looking [1], it does appear that Renee attempted to run the car right into the ICE officer, the wheels were still pointing slightly left, and the officer was still in front of the car. Also in [2] you can see that she was looking directly at the officer during this initial acceleration attempt. The only thing that saved the officer in that initial attempt was the loss of traction due to the icy road.

After that, indeed the wheels were pointing away from the officer and arguably there was no more danger to him, but after the clear attempt to hit him, you cannot realistically expect the officer, in a split second, to re-evaluate if her intentions to hurt anybody changed or not. At this point his life was already threatened. He doesn’t know what she is doing and waiting to find out could mean that he is dead.

[1] https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2008984798271094791

[2] https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2009683575298211979

[throwawayqqq11]

It gets quite clear, when you change the setup a little bit.

1) Make the PO a regular human without a gun and you can imagine, that any normal person would have made just a quick sidestep to avoid collision, like most of us have experienced in person too. Use of force was totally unjustified, esp. when you combine it with:

2) Change the intetion of the driver to really want to harm the person ~2m in front of the car. Cop get trained, that you should not use your gun on close encounters with knives, bc the short distance <5m will give you not enogh time to stop a knive attacker reliably. If you stand that close infront of a car, a short but strong tab of the pedal would have been enough to get you, no matter how fast you draw your gun or how good your aim is. To me, it is clear that she never ment to hit anybody, the acceleration does not indicate it.

It is _very_ obvious. 2/3 shots hit the side of the car and the front wheel _never_ pointed at the PO.

[mindslight]

Focusing on the minutiae of how the victim reacted when she was already well into fight-or-flight mode is a red herring.

Real police officers [0] are trained to deescalate situations. Because needlessly turning up the heat results in very bad outcomes for everyone involved.

Meanwhile, these ICE "officers" aggressively created and violently escalated a situation arising from a traffic infraction at best [1]. They didn't even follow their own procedures, crafted not out of any type of restraint with concern for the public, but merely pragmatism whereby shooting someone does not stop a moving vehicle.

Thus, responsibility for how the victim reacted in her moments of panicked terror rests completely on them - and it's perfectly understandable that when a bunch of masked armed thugs are trying to carjack you, the natural response is trying to get out of there as quick as possible regardless of if that means hitting any of the attackers.

[0] as much as they themselves are statistically quite trigger-happy and are often criticized by actual soldiers who are used to stricter rules of engagement,

[1] ignoring the equity of a citizen exercising her natural right to observe and document the activities of her government, and the fact that ICE has no mandate to police traffic infractions

[bananabiscuit]

I would agree with this more if Renee was just a random person that ICE decided to give a hard time. But in this case, it was her decision to become involved and attempt to obstruct the officers from doing the job they explicitly have the authority to do [1]. Also in this case Renee is the one who made the first life threatening action. The fight-or-flight situation is her own doing.

People should protest but there are clearly very stupid ways of going about it.

[1] the streets are not the place to decide whether that authority is legitimate, ethical, moral, etc.

[mindslight]

Can you elaborate on specifically what she did to "attempt to obstruct the officers", ideally with a source that isn't just hearsay or seemingly outright fabrication (eg the administration) ? Everything I've seen starts off with a description of her "blocking" one lane of a two lane street, which is a perfectly normal activity in city traffic for a multitude of purposes. And those purposes would certainly include filming or observing the activities of government agents.

I've avoided watching the videos because frankly I've got more pressing things I need to get done rather than frying my nerves for several hours from watching someone get assaulted and murdered. I'm open to the idea that the media hides inconvenient details, but it's an awfully large distance to clear to go from something that sounds like civil Constitutionally-protected observation and criticism of government agents, to she was actively physically obstructing them. So I'm skeptical of such claims, especially given this administration's tendency to disingenuously characterize things like mere filming as a type of obstruction.

(also please elaborate on what you mean by "the first life threatening action". Did she do something violent before the masked, armed, and aggressive gang (with no lawful jurisdiction over US citizens) surrounded her and attacked her car?)

[bananabiscuit]

Not sure if there anything definitive. I got the impression that Renee and her wife were positioning their car specifically to impede ICE, going off of what I saw from the interaction in the second video I linked in my original post. Does not look like any normal traffic interaction to me, but I could be wrong. This seems like a detail that will be easy to definitively verify or disprove once more information comes out.

[mindslight]

So to be clear, you haven't actually seen any definitive evidence that her goal was to physically impede ICE, yet you're jumping to that strong conclusion based on how she stopped the car? Why wouldn't you assume she was merely turning her car for a better filming/viewing angle, sparing us all from having to view one more video with an A-pillar smack in the middle?

> Renee and her wife were positioning their car

What do you mean they both were? Was it a drivers' ed car with pedals and steering wheel on both sides? Is co-driving some kind of lesbian thing I don't know about?

Listen, I assumed good faith here. I use some pretty strong language to condemn this regime and its cheerleaders, but I personally had been steelmanning Trump up through June of 2020 (when it had fully set in for me that he was dividing rather than leading us through Covid). I really want to be mistaken here - it would be fantastic to find out that my country actually isn't being taken over by fascists, right? I welcome anybody that convinces me this isn't the case!

But trying to discuss these events in an intellectual manner, it seems I always end up seeing these telltale signs of motivated reasoning - in this case casually mentioning a detail ("her wife") that has seemingly zero bearing on the situation, yet what it does do is emphasize her identity as part of an outgroup. Now like everything, I could be misjudging here. Perhaps I've jumped the gun and you've got some very valid reason why that little detail, and only that little detail, is relevant. Please do enlighten me.

[zahlman]

> Can you elaborate on specifically what she did to "attempt to obstruct the officers"... ? Everything I've seen starts off with a description of her "blocking" one lane of a two lane street, which is a perfectly normal activity in city traffic for a multitude of purposes. And those purposes would certainly include filming or observing the activities of government agents.

> I've avoided watching the videos

Watching any of the videos makes it immediately and abundantly clear that she is deliberately obstructing the officers, by positioning her car more or less perpendicular to the road (and selectively waving past non-ICE traffic). She's driving an SUV, which naturally is going to obstruct more than one lane in this position. Filming and observing activities did not require having a car on the road at all.

> Did she do something violent before the masked, armed, and aggressive gang (with no lawful jurisdiction over US citizens) surrounded her and attacked her car?

First, if you "have avoided watching the videos", then how can you suppose to know such things about what happened? (In point of fact, the videos make it abundantly clear that the officers took no "life threatening action" before she accelerated the vehicle forward.)

Second, you are simply incorrect in supposing that ICE agents "have no lawful jurisdiction over US citizens". It has repeatedly been established that, as federal LEO, they may generally enforce federal law against US citizens. For example, from the SF Chronicle (https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/ice-arrests-cit...) (which can't reasonably be dismissed as any sort of right-wing propaganda):

> Protesters can be arrested for violence against government officers, destruction of property or acts of obstruction, such as blocking the path of an officer’s vehicle.

> ... But [according to a law professor] “if a citizen interferes with ICE work, then the citizen needs to follow orders to get out of the way” to avoid being charged with obstructing law enforcement.

It's easy to find many other sources that confirm that LEO can tell you to get out of the car at a lawful traffic stop, even if you are not under arrest, and you are legally required to comply. And federal ICE agents are clearly LEO.

[zahlman]

> Use of force was totally unjustified, esp. when you combine it with: Change the intetion of the driver to really want to harm the person ~2m in front of the car.

Such intent is not legally relevant and the legal standard for use of force here is simply not what you appear to think it is. Please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDda-L_ZOE8 .

> Cop get trained, that you should not use your gun on close encounters with knives, bc the short distance <5m will give you not enogh time to stop a knive attacker reliably.

No, the point of the training is not "don't use the gun in close quarters".

They are trained to not fuck around, and to shoot while they have the chance at range; and to not approach the person who brandishes a knife.

But "not approaching the person who brandishes an SUV" is unreasonable. By this standard, pedestrian crossings would be impossible. And in fact he was not "standing" in front of the SUV. He was in the process of circling back around it, while reasonably expecting the car to remain put, while regrouping with his allies as they demanded Good exit the vehicle.

> It is _very_ obvious. 2/3 shots hit the side of the car

This is also explained by the fact that the car is moving and turning such that the side of the car would face the gun. It does not in any way suggest malicious intent. The timing of the gunshots makes it clear that the officer fired three rounds continuously, most likely on instinct from training for that exact sort of firing pattern. There is enough time for the car to turn slightly (simply from the gun's mechanics), but not enough to allow for any kind of premeditation or even really conscious thought.

> the front wheel _never_ pointed at the PO.

I do not understand how it's possible to watch the video and come to this conclusion in good faith.

Of course, this does not mean that the wheel orientation was deliberate. But if the wheel "never pointed" that way and then continued to turn further right, the officer could not plausibly have been struck. Multiple videos make it abundantly clear that he was struck, and required considerable time (I would say more than a full second) to regain his balance.

[bananabiscuit]

the front wheel never pointed at the PO.

My whole point is that this isn’t true. Look at the first video I linked, in the first couple of seconds, the cop is in front of the bumper, the cars wheels are still pointing slightly to the left, on their way to center, as she guns the engine. The loss of traction on the icy road is the only reason the PO had a chance to jump out of the way (but apparently by the NYT analysis, he might have been still hit). And at this point he is correct to think the driver is dangerous and might harm somebody.

[_DeadFred_]

ICE has routinely done this to protestors, on film. Are you saying those occurrences were attempted murder and ICE should be prosecuted?

If it's an offense worthy of a mother being murdered and a child orphaned, extrajudicially on the street, then surely the much lighter sentence of imprisonment for attempted murder by ICE officers would be called for, all things being the same, correct? At the least they should be tried and taken to court, wouldn't you agree?

[bananabiscuit]

I have only looked at this incident closely. If in other incidents ICE agents ran down civilians, yes, of course they should be taken to trial.

[fzeroracer]

There was another incident last month in Minneapolis where ICE ran down a citizen with their car [1]. Do you agree that the appropriate response in that situation would be to respond with lethal force in accordance with your previous stances here?

Now, why do you think ICE agents are not being taken to trial? Why do you think the federal government is doing all that they can to protect them? And why are you, specifically, working overtime to give them the benefit of the doubt?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Watch/comments/1pjye82/ice_agen...

[throwawayqqq11]

And my point is, apply regular human behavior to the scene. Drivers know the ground they are on and the acceleration curves of their cars. Arguing over split seconds to derive a malicious intention of the driver is cherry picking. We all know those near collisions we dodged closely from own experiences, thats why its so easy for us to imagine such an outcome in that video, which was prob her expectation too.

[bananabiscuit]

Alright, at the very least, can we admit that there is an argument to be made here? The innocence or guilt of the officer does seem to hinge on some fine details, I’m just surprised that anybody is already claiming with certainty that this is or isn’t murder.

[throwawayqqq11]

Its messy for sure. POs are allowed to use force to stop violent/aggressive suspects in cars, so he might get cleared of the coming murder charge. We will see.

The bigger picture isnt messy at all though. Deescalation is usually the way to go with protestors because they usually dont have harmful intent. This intention seems to be completely missing, from the exexutive layer down to officers in the streets.

[metaphysicalyes]

It is incomprehensible to me how the 2nd and 3rd shot from side window would not count as murder. A neighborhood isn't war zone where a sign of disobedience is a fair kill. Blasphemy of 1st amendment.

[metaphysicalyes]

First shot is a red herring. It might be legal in the US to shoot the driver trying to hit you when are already out of the vehicle's way.

The more condemnatory are the 2nd and 3rd shot from the side window. This is pure cruelty and disregard of human life which in a parallel universe could be one of your family member. Anyone justifying this deserves no sympathy from rest of the human populace.

[zahlman]

That is simply not supported by either facts or law. At this speed of firing, the decision must have been made in advance. The second and third shots are not "from" the side window; they hit there as a natural consequence of continuing to fire in a burst. I see nothing to support the claim that the officer was "already out of the vehicle's way" at the time of the first shot. In fact, he was struck by the vehicle; he did not succeed in getting "out of its way" at all.

A trained LEO in a self-defense situation is expected to fire multiple shots. Even civilians learn how this works in sufficiently advanced firearms training. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique_drill . A failure to follow procedure here would be more consistent with "not actually self defense".

[bananabiscuit]

Once the officer sees that Renee attempted to hit him with her car, he (tragically indeed) has the right to use lethal force. When somebody tries to kill you, I don’t think it’s reasonable to (in that same split second) give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they won’t try to immediately kill you or one of your partners again.

[empath75]

Have you stopped to consider how you got to the point that you are defending this. Like, I get sort of working this over in your mind to yourself, but you have gone out of your way to excuse a cop gunning down a mom that just dropped off her kid at school. She had stuffed animals sitting in her dashboard. Her kid is an orphan. You didn't have to do this. You could have just stayed silent. Now you're the guy that is going to defend secret police murdering people in broad daylight.

[metaphysicalyes]

I have been curious about this as well. So far what I have discovered, for a significant section, it is schadenfreude borne out of their past injustice. It roughly translates to: nobody was on my side when I was kicked down and this is my moment to rejoice where others like the victim do not have privilege to human dignity either and therefore assuaging the previous resentful assumptions to the contrary.

[bananabiscuit]

I think this situation is very tragic, and I wish it had not happened.

The reason I am taking this stance, is because I think that, unless they are fine with becoming a martyr, people should not go and mess with government officers in the streets.

Yeah, I know: “victim blaming”, but there is a difference between officers descending upon a blameless victim vs. you going out looking to make trouble with authority. Even in the first case, the right thing to do (if you value your life) is to comply with the instructions (even if illegal) and challenge them in court later.

[remich]

What if the instructions they give you would be to submit to them while they assaulted you, sexually or physically? Are you supposed to comply and then challenge them in court later?

That is a thing that happens. Rarely, I suppose, and #notallpolice and all that, but the idea that we should live in a country where everyone just has to "comply" with the instructions or be murdered is ridiculous.

[bananabiscuit]

Yeah, at some point every rule will run into its exception and you will have to think on your feet about which of your bad options you should take.

Cops do need to be severely punished for abuse of authority, nothing I said so far contradicts that.

[metaphysicalyes]

Do you recognize the freedom and comforts you enjoy is due to the tiny brave and unhinged section of population willing to take actions against their self-interest? It is reasonable you yourself won't take the risk but discrediting those who do is another low.

What leverage do the citizens have when government can illegally constraint their rights including the right to justice in the courts which you speak of?

How would you challenge these masked gunmen when they have legal immunity conferred by the fascist in charge? How successful is your approach for the sitting president with criminal history and redacted links to Epstein? Are you willfully feigning ignorance of how fascism works?

[metaphysicalyes]

I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

Appeal to mental ineptitude is not a defense of murder. If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

[bananabiscuit]

I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

No, I am not claiming that. I explained previously why it looked to me that Renee intended to hit the officer with her car, very hard, and the only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice. [1] And also she did hit the officer, this was even acknowledged in the NYT analysis of the event. Again, he got lucky that he was able to jump out of the way, only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip.

At that point, I would think there is an argument to be made that the officer’s life was threatened, and he is allowed to use lethal force, he does not have the time to second guess if Renee is going to change her mind and not hit anyone with her car. I am NOT saying that the officer is definitively absolved, just that based on what I’m seeing, it is not as clear a case of murder as a lot of people claim.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that, the lethal intent is there with the 1st shot. Is it that we expect the officer to go from deciding that she is enough of a threat to be shot, to deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot?

[1] but just for posterity: a) when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center while the officer was directly in front of her. b) she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated.

[metaphysicalyes]

> And also she did hit the officer

She made contact with the officer. And that is only because he had to put down his recording phone and take out the gun instead of focussing on stepping out of the way. This framing feels even more egregious when you consider that he casually strolled to take a glance at dead mother and escape the scene.

> only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice.

> only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip

It is winter season and all roads are layered with ice. Ice was not a lucky coincidence at the spot she was shot. When you drive in ice for months every year you gain the intuition of vehicle motion. Before being killed, she had reversed in that spot and had a good idea how much gas creates how much traction like any other person driving in snow does. You can not claim her intent to hit based on how fast the wheels are spinning. Grip is immaterial, what matters is how fast the vehicle was actually moving.

> This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that

> deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot

If you can make a decision to step aside and fire subsequent shots from side window instead, your intention is no longer own safety but to kill, in common parlance, murder. A woman driving in different direction, clearly escaping is somehow more of a threat than the masked gunmen surrounding her.

> when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center

Do you drive? If you did you would know that it is not a discrete process of turning and forward motion. It is easier to turn when you are moving. Whatever the direction of wheel at the moment, the rotation towards right while the masked gunman is on left corner makes her intent clear.

> she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated

Because he is a masked gunman with ability to leave her child motherless which he actually did.

[zahlman]

> I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

As an objective legal matter, it is. There is abundant case law for this. Cases relevant to the specific case where the shooting victim is attempting to flee the scene include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner .

> If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.

The law quite literally does not work that way.

[dragonwriter]

> > I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life > > It is the actual intent that counts.

> As an objective legal matter, it is.

You are both wrong. The requirement for self-defense (which may or may not even be available here if it is ever charged, because it doesn't apply to all kinds of murder, notably generally not to felony murder, which given ICE's very narrow jurisdiction there is a very good case, IMO, applies here) is neither mere subjective perception nor actual intent, but objectively reasonable fear. Actual perception of a threat which is not objectively reasonable in the circumstances does not justify self-defense.

[zahlman]

Fair enough, I misspoke, implicitly accepting a false dichotomy. The case law I cited agrees with you WRT the standard.

But I don't understand the distinction in "kinds of murder" that you are describing; murder is always a felony and "misdemeanor murder" is a term of art not describing an actual statutory offense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor_murder). Nor can I see how the "narrow jurisdiction" of ICE is relevant here, given that it includes (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357):

> (a)(5) to make arrests — (A) for any offense against the United States, if the offense is committed in the officer’s or employee’s presence

Obstructing federal officers in their duty is a federal offense, and it necessarily occurs in the presence of those officers.

Anyway, given the evidence I find it quite clear that the threat was "objectively reasonable in the circumstances" (i.e., with the available information in the moment, without benefit of hindsight and given the time pressure).

[luke5441]

I'm getting really depressed here that people watch those videos and actually think this was not murder.

It's like they live in a different reality or something.

[zahlman]

Please explain what you think the word "murder" means, first.

Then please explain your understanding of the law, with regards to the circumstances under which LEO are permitted to use their weapons.

Then please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDda-L_ZOE8 and cite at least one point of disagreement with the legal argument presented, on any objective grounds (factual or legal).

[_DeadFred_]

ICE has routinely done much worse driving, on video, to/at people protesting them. Are you saying ICE has REPEATEDLY, ON FILM, attempted murder? And that neither their leadership, nor the ICE protestors, cared about these video taped attempted murder attempts?

Are you calling for ICE to be prosecuted for attempted murder for such actions if they are on film? Up until now ICE administrators were just fine with their officers doing equal/worse than what this now dead woman did. Or is it this administration's policy that some animals are more equal than others. Reminder the day before this occurred the officials that called the murdered woman a terrorist said that Jan6 was peaceful.

[bananabiscuit]

Yeah, that would be good. ICE should be prosecuted for all their murder attempts. I just don’t think it’s beyond a doubt that this one in particular was a murder.

[metaphysicalyes]

Would you support shooting the ICE driver who made vehicle contact with the protestors when trying to make way?

Another scenario, imagine your family member pulling out her parked car when a group of masked gunmen with "POLICE" in very honest-to-god letters printed on their jacket emerge and surround the car. Your family member feels scared as couple of them approach her side door shouting to come out. She finds an opening to escape but makes contact with one of the masked man with gun who just walked in front of car. Does that justify the driver being shot? What about the 2nd and 3rd shot in the face when the masked man is clearly on side? And then the government calls that masked gunman very brave because the person in car was very clearly a terrorist.

Welcome to fascism. End of another great empire has begun.

[bananabiscuit]

You describe a very unfortunate situation, and it’s the reason why impersonating an officer is such a serious crime. In the case at hand, however, there is no mistaken identity.

I think for there to be any chance for government officers to do their jobs, and for there to not be any pointless deaths, their authority should never be challenged in the streets, and if they do abuse that authority, the officer should be severely punished.

[metaphysicalyes]

> In the case at hand, however, there is no mistaken identity.

No mistaken identity of no-name masked gunmen picking and killing random people in neighborhood. Clearly they must be the 1984 government!

> their authority should never be challenged in the streets

Interesting that you chose to emphasize that instead of having limits on their authority of actions like killing citizens in this case.

A stern reprimand will have to do because government would go bankrupt before finish settling for the scale of human rights abuse happening on the daily basis.

[kccoder]

> their authority should never be challenged in the streets

What if it’s the only way to save your life or the life of another innocent?

[UncleMeat]

Wait. Looking at the officer is a threat now?

[bananabiscuit]

This seems like an intentional misunderstanding to me, but I’ll clarify anyway:

What I said was that she was looking directly at the officer while having her wheels pointed in his direction and accelerating hard (to the point that she lost traction). The looking detail is important because then you can’t claim she didn’t see the officer was in her way because she was still looking back from her reversing maneuver. It makes it more clear that she was intentionally trying to hit the officer with her car.

[UncleMeat]

I really have no idea how a human being can look at this video and not see a murder.

I'm frightened of you.

[bananabiscuit]

That’s interesting, because I’m actually also frightened. But the thing that scares me is how quick everyone wants to jump to conclusions as long as it supports their existing world view.

[luke5441]

It's not about a world view. It is about watching a video and seeing what is happening.

Unless you mean "world view" is my knowledge about how cars and guns work.

[bananabiscuit]

I watched the video and I saw Renee attempt to hit the ICE agent with her car. After doing that, lethal force is unfortunately on the table. The officer doesn’t have time after that to wait and see if she is going to try to kill him again or not.

[kccoder]

Jump to conclusions like triple-tapping a soccer mom?