Intro, and the event

Boy howdy, a lot has happened lately, and I have been reluctant to really say much about it. Things have gotten pretty mean out there, and no matter what I say, I am going to make people angry on both sides of the aisle here, because what I have to say is not particularly helpful to either group’s short term goals.

Yesterday, a woman named Renee Nicole Good was either acting as a legal observer to an Immigration raid in Minnesota, or performing an act of peaceful civil disobedience by parking her car in a way that partially blocked an unmarked Nissan Titan with immigration officers in it.

Several immigration officers disembarked from the truck, and one positioned himself directly in front of the driver. Another took up a position alongside the driver’s door, and tried to open her door.

This appeared to spook Renee, who turned her wheel to the right, away from the officers, and attempted to drive away.

To which the officer in front of her responded by pulling out his sidearm and firing three shots.

She died at the scene.

I have not been able to verify the reports, but witnesses say that the immigrations officers did not allow local medical personnel to provide aid.

Immediately, Kristi Noem, the most under-qualified secretary of homeland security ever, painted this as an act of domestic terrorism, and claimed that the officer killed Good as an act of self defense.

There are a few things I want to break down here - I’ve seen the video, and while I am not a police officer, I have been a correctional officer, and I am also a combat veteran. I have not walked that walk, but there are times where my footprints in the sand would have been indistinguishable from some of these officers, except it was 25 years ago. My point here is that my opinion is not entirely qualified, nor is it entirely unqualified.

A quick analysis

First of all, I am going to start with what I believe should be obvious - the officer that shot Good is a murderer. He is also likely an undertrained idiot, playing at being a police officer. Just because you have the authority to stand in front of a car and demand that the driver perform an action, it does not mean that you have the physical ability to stand in front of that car - in the global game of rock, paper, scissors, car beats body. Realistically, nine times out of ten, car even beats handgun, unless you are in a situation like this specific one - point blank, with a terrified drive who is clearly trying to disengage.

Anyway, back to the subject - the officer should not have put himself in front of the bumper, for the same reason that police officers talk to you from the passenger side when you get pulled over on the highway - being hit by a car is bad, and being in a place where you can be easily hit is bad. It’s a matter of risk reduction - being a law enforcement officer is risky, and you want to retire someday with all of your bits, so you reduce risk as much as possible.

Choose your own adventure

Let’s quickly tabletop this - you are, at least nominally, a law enforcement officer. A non-violent individual positions her car in a way that slightly impedes your progress. Do you:

A - drive around her, or B - Stop to accost her?

One of these two is less risky - driving around her. But Nabil, I hear you say, what if she rams your car? Well, then it is a good thing you are in a car! There is much less risk of harm in the car then on foot.

Let’s then assume you erroneously choose the second option, and decide to accost her. Your options are now:

A - stand beside the car, where it is impossible for it to hit you (due to the size of the turning radius of the car) and where you have good visibility into the entire vehicle, or B - stand in front of the car, where it is easy to hit you?

Clearly, A is the correct answer here, if you are not an idiot.

And then…

So now we get to the point where the wheels fall off of this bus - none of it will matter. This mouth breather of an officer will be acquitted of any charges. He may have created the dangerous enviornment by being undertrained and poorly positioned, but the law will conclude that he had reason to fear for his life, and acted in self-defense. Even though he created the situation that scared him, the law empowers him to employ the government monopoly on force to protect himself and others, and that is how this will go down.

What I want

And now we get to what I really think about this whole thing, now that I have made my prediction. I believe that this should be the beginning of what will be a long road- one where ICE is put back in it’s place, and immigration goes back to what it used to be - a source of pride for those who seek a more wordly local community, a source of low cost labor for businesses, and an aspirational goal for millions around the world.

A tangent

The past year has been very bad for American soft power, and I fear the time will soon come where we need to really prove our hard power. I’d prefer to have more friends on our side when that day comes.