[jbullock35]

Thanks. The link is to a Bellingcat analysis. They did great work on the Renee Good shooting, but in this case, they're describing stills from videos, and I can't see what they're seeing in the photos. The photos are just too fuzzy---at least for me, and I suspect for most other viewers.

I don't mean to diminish the importance of the shooting, which is horrific no matter what one makes of the photos.

[dekhn]

I think it's factually correct to say that none of the videos give a truly clear view of the order of events (specfically with regards to whether the protestor could possibly have wielded their gun while being restrained by agents, or whether he is disarmed by the gray-jacketed agent, or what caused the agents to fire when they did).

It might be clearer if the agents were wearing bodycam videos and that footage was released.

[ajross]

[flagged]

[dekhn]

I think you completely and totally misread my comment and incorrectly imputed my intent. I am in no way allied with ICE, what they are doing is abhorrent and wrong. I'm not sure why you're attacking me or assuming I have a position completely opposite of the one I have. I used caveat words- "I think it's factual". That's the way somebody states their subjective opinion of what they believe the facts are.

I have nothing to quibble with the video you linked (which I think must have been released since I made my comment, or I missed it), that makes the order of events a lot clearer, I can see the gun being taken now, and the timing of the shot.

[ajross]

This construction:

> whether the protestor could possibly have wielded their gun while being restrained by agents, or whether he is disarmed by the gray-jacketed agent, or what caused the agents to fire when they did

Is a list of excuses for the shooting (to wit: "maybe he wielded the gun", "maybe he wasn't disarmed", "maybe they had cause to fire"). It's all things that would have (arguably) made it justified. You'll have to forgive me if I took that for a clear indication of your opinion here.

Like, if you look at something and say "Well, it looks like X happened, but I don't know", it's neutral. If you say "It looks like X happened, but I don't know because it could have been Y or Z instead', you're pretty clearly constructing a sideways argument that "X did not happen". And thus, you'll end up being painted as an X denialist by people on the internet too lazy to find your comment history.

[zahlman]

LEO are also individuals who get due process rights. The law will generally require considering whether Y or Z happened if there's reason to suppose that it might have.

More importantly, when X is phrased in a way that implies intent or motives not in evidence, or plays up the injustice of X in legally irrelevant ways, that's reason to push back in an open Internet discussion.

[ajross]

[flagged]

[dekhn]

I think you're completely off base and this entire side thread is just a negative contribution to the discussion.

[zahlman]

> but by engaging in this kind of framing you're essentially saying that all [state] violence is excusable by default

I disagree that it has that effect. With the assumption of good faith, comments like GP aren't fishing around for an excuse; the point is to highlight what's legally relevant and where there is room to disagree with the interpretation of video.

I don't think it's plausible that defense for the agents would clutch for a straw like "maybe he had a second weapon". That seems sarcastic and not interested in engaging with the argument seriously.

I've seen a couple different videos now (not from any links ITT) and the most commonly shown one seems to have something obscuring the camera at a critical moment. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that the man is indeed disarmed well before the first shot. But there will still be more that matters:

* Was the first shot fired by an officer who knew that the weapon had already been taken? In particular, could there have been any miscommunication between the officers?

* Did the victim know the weapon had been taken? I don't think it would be likely to succeed in court, but to my understanding the defense could raise the argument that one or more officers perceived that the victim still intended to draw and fire it.

Ultimately, it boils down to establishing whether there was a reasonable perception, on the part of any officer that fired (I can't tell from the video I've seen who fired or how many shots or anything like that), of a threat from the victim meeting the legal standard to respond with lethal force. This is based on "totality of the circumstances" (as in things the officers knew leading up to the moment of shooting), but specifically based on what a reasonable officer would have been able to deduce in the moment (a high-pressure situation), without the benefit of hindsight.

Most analyses I've seen thus far agree that there was not any solid defense here. Certainly it seems much more likely that someone is going to prison for this than in the Renee Good case. The DHS says they will be investigating.

[TimorousBestie]

> (I can't tell from the video I've seen who fired or how many shots or anything like that)

You can’t count the number of gunshots? Huh. And here I thought your handle meant zahl + man.

[zahlman]

I can't hear or see them, no. The video footage available isn't high enough quality. There's too much chaos, people are using phones that they can't hold steady, etc.

[Bootvis]

The phone not being steady matters for sound recording? How?

[jbullock35]

> I don't know if this is your intent or not, but by engaging in this kind of framing you're essentially saying that all violence[1] is excusable by default. We're supposed to live in a society where the opposite is true, I thought.

> [1] All violence by your allied authority figures, that is. We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors.

This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack. The previous poster's comment is entirely sensible, and it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way.

[ajross]

> This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack.

An ad hominem argument is an argument constructed around characteristics of a person outside the bounds of what is being discussed. Inferring someone's opinion[1] about the subject under discussion from their text, and explicitly marking so in my text when doing so, is just "debate". Am I wrong? Say I'm wrong and cite why.

Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack. In fact the clear offense being taken makes it pretty clear to me that my point landed closer than maybe you're prepared to admit.

[1] You cleverly skipped the point where I even admitted I might be wrong!

[jbullock35]

> Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack.

You're right about that. I'm sorry.

No further comment from me in this thread.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

So, yes, the second sentence in their [1] is a clear ad hominem but this is a pretty wild take:

> it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way

Regardless of your opinion, I'll portray it as a defense of ICE, anyway.

> > So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process.... a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.

> This completely misrepresents what happened.

I don't strictly disagree with the idea that "solely for having a gun" is a misrepresentation, either (after all, the ICE agents had guns and they weren't executed), but it's not a "complete" misrepresentation. (The actual misrepresentation is that the victim was helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun.) Calling it a "complete misrepresentation" is seeking to emotionally prime the reader against the supposed illogic in the parent comment. That is indeed a defense of the ICE agents (and such defenses and excuses can be seen throughout their comment history, hence, I presume, the ad hominem).

Somehow, still, I doubt that's the framing zahlman would accept about the situation, especially given their (obvious) defense of ICE's actions in their initial comment. Yes, the ad hominem statement you refer to should not have been included. But it is surely not intellectually dishonest regardless of how inappropriate it is for this forum. Given the quote from their initial comment, it seems that said dishonesty cuts the other direction.

[zahlman]

The ad hominem attack was addressed to dekhn, not me. So whether I defend ICE generally is irrelevant to assessing the accusation "We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors."

But also, my defense is not about treating protestors uncharitably. Telling me "We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors." would still be ad hominem, because my arguments do not rely upon protestors being malicious.

Except for the physical obstruction of justice aspect, which isn't in question. 1A doesn't give people the right to get in an LEO's way when that officer is actively trying to enforce law. Protestors shouldn't physically be in the path of on-duty law enforcement if they expect not to get arrested. Arrest is a natural consequence of "civil disobedience". For a more extreme example, "freedom of assembly" for me and my friends does not extend as far as "assembling" in a tight circle around you that denies your freedom of movement. (Note: I am neither an American citizen nor an American resident, but these principles are not difficult to understand, and not sufficiently different from Canadian law to matter for this discussion.)

But for example in the Good case, I don't believe she intended to run over the officer, but that doesn't matter to the officer's perception of threat. And in point of fact, he was struck (although NYT reported that he wasn't "run over", and then other outlets presented this as if he wasn't struck).

At no point did I claim not to be defending the ICE agents, so let's please not talk about intellectual dishonesty there.

----

Regarding the bit you quoted from me:

I responded prematurely to the situation based on my experience from every single previous discussion of ICE agents I found myself in. I don't see how there's a problem with offering a defense of ICE in general. You can't just say that one side of an argument is barred, if you're going to have a discussion at all. (And the reason HN permits political submissions like this is because they want people in tech to have discussions. The relationship of the story to tech is tangential at best.)

I said "completely misrepresents" because "solely for having a gun" is completely false, and because it should be rejected as absurd a priori. That's just not how entanglements with law enforcement play out, and ignores that probably many lawful gun owners were rightly ignored (given that MN allows concealed carry of handguns). People are seriously now arguing as if they believe that a Republican government is stripping away 2A rights by force. I don't understand how that could possibly pass anyone's sniff test.

But I also said it because it's part of a long string of loaded language — the stuff I went on to dissect. The victim's virtue is played up, seemingly to make the event seem more egregious, even though it's clearly irrelevant to the cause of action. Or else it's being played up to try to bolster the "solely for" case by denying other reasons for the shoot. Regardless of whether it was justified (I agree that it will likely not be found justified), the actual cause of action is clear.

(Having seen multiple videos now, I can't hear the part where Pretti supposedly "informs a DHS officer that he is legally carrying". The part where one of the officers is shouting about he has a gun, would seem to contradict that; because it comes across that the officer first saying it is surprised to see that he has a gun.)

Most importantly, "effectively subject to summary execution without due process" is an unreasonable way to characterize LEO use of lethal force, both in general and I believe in this specific instance. One or more people messed up and this guy shouldn't have gotten shot. But that is miles away from what it would actually take to justify that phrasing. That would require:

* everyone who shot could clearly see, from their own perspectives, that the gun had already been taken away;

* before firing, they took enough time to respond to that change in the situation;

* at the time of firing, they had the mens rea that the victim should die as punishment for what had happened up to that point.

These are simply things that you can't prove with video footage like this. I can't even tell who shot. It's a chaotic scramble recorded from distant third-person perspectives, with important parts of the action obscured from line of sight by other important parts of the action. Yes, there's enough to see the gun being taken away before gunshots (apparently) but that's a lucky break considering everything else. (When I first saw the footage from the angle on the street, I thought it was happening on the sidewalk rather than in front of the parked car; of course the other angle being from the sidewalk disproves that.)

Anyway, I simply can't fathom how you think that the term "complete misrepresentation" is "seeking to emotionally prime the reader". Like, what words could I possibly use instead that aren't supposedly emotionally manipulative, given that I actually did sincerely consider the statement a complete misrepresentation?

For that matter, I think your characterization "helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun." is still misrepresentative. He was obstructing and resisting. And, yes, he had a gun, which is dangerous any time one gets in a physical altercation with any kind of LEO. People with CC permits should understand that.