If my emotions bounced back and forth between extreme anger and inconsolable sadness after Renee Good was killed, it’s been worse since ICE shot and killed Alex Pretti yesterday. My hopes after Good was killed that Team Trump would seek an off-ramp were overshadowed by fears Good wouldn’t be the first peaceful protester to die. The title to this article ought to be ‘ICE/DHS feelings get hurt from being insulted: Hurt feelings is ‘injury’ and ‘injury’ gives them an excuse to break out the ‘I was in fear for my life’ defense and allow them to use Deadly Force.” Well, that of course wasn’t practical but it’s really at the heart of ICE shooting and in two cases killings in Minneapolis.
People are NOT submitting to their occupation and the brutality and cruelty they are visiting on Minneapolis and St. Paul too. Worse (to ICE) people are protesting, alerting folks when ICE is roaming around. Filming them and their cruelty and brutality since they refuse (on orders it seems) to wear body cameras so there’s an objective record of what they do and say. And protesters say MEAN THINGS to/about them. Here they go dressing up in tactical gear to play tough-guy like they are special ops troops and people are INSULTING them! MOCKING them! Their FEELINGS are hurt! For all the bullying and the escalation of it the citizens they are ordered (and enjoy) terrorizing keep showing up. Criticizing them. Mocking them. Insulting them and worst of all recording things on cell phones. It was said it was only a matter of time before ICE escalated to killing people and we are there.
In an article by News Nation Dan Bovino is spouting the Team Trump bullshit, blaming protesters for allowing the subject of their so-called targeted operation to get away in the chaos despite the dude being ‘only a few feet away.’ Naturally Bovino says the guy was dangerous, yet he has no criminal record. In fact, he was detained back in 2018 when lest we forget TRUMP was President and ICE told Minnesota to release him! So that was interesting to read about. What pissed me off though was Bovino’s LIE about protesteng the ones doing the escalating:
Bovino said evidence is being gathered from the shooting, which determines if a “good use of force” was applied. According to Bovino, the officers used a series of de-escalation techniques, such as pushing the crowd back and using pepper spray, before shots were fired.
“I’m not going to do a freeze frame adjudication here, but at least two that I see, de-escalation techniques were used before any shots were fired,” Bovino said. “So that lets me know the officers were going by their training, trying to use that minimal amount of force necessary to affect the operation and or the arrest.”
I call bullshit and I’ll explain why. I should also mention that while on active duty in the Marines (decades ago) I was an infantryman but found myself attached to an MP unit so yes, I’ve worn a badge. I’ll include an excellent video from a local news station in Minneapolis but I want to point out a few things.
First, IF you encounter someone with a weapon you DON’T just walk up to them and start shoving them in the chest. Repeatedly. You keep a safe distance and draw your own weapon. Depending on whether you’re dealing with someone with a gun or something like a knife will determine whether you take aim at your suspect. You give clear commands to drop the weapon or slowly set it on the ground. Kick it away and get on their knees with their hands either fully raised or behind their head. You do NOT as I said just casually walk up to them and start repeatedly shoving them to push them back!
Second, if you have other officers with you, you allow them to join with you, again at a safe distance, and try to keep the suspect’s attention so someone can get behind them, albeit well off to the side in case you have to shoot. What we see on the videos is additional officers joining in, and shoving/knocking a woman six or seven feet to the side of Pretti to the ground. All this while as DHS from Noem on down insist Pretti was brandishing/waving a gun and ‘charging’ at agents. Again, bullshit. THEY calmly walked towards HIM because they could damn well see he had not a gun but a PHONE. They didn’t like some guy recording them and decided to try and provoke him into doing something that would give them an excuse to give him a beatdown.
From the beginning it was the federal agents doing the escalating. I’m speculating but it looks to me like they took in a guy who wasn’t scared, or at least enough to allow any fear to show calmly absorbing the shoves, agile enough to stay on his feet. And keep recording. So they turned their attention to a woman and picked on HER. When Pretti tried to help her up they pulled him away. Then they escalated AGAIN, pepper spraying him in the face! He still tried to help that woman, and paid for it with his life. The agents escalated again, swarming him and putting him on his face on the ground. Hitting and kicking him. Hit hands and arms are held in front of him. Then an agent comes up from the back and finds, then removes the gun he had a permit to carry and spins away.
THAT is when the first shot was fired. Into the back of a man with at least a half dozen agents restraining him (if he was struggling I can assure you being pepper sprayed triggers an instinct to get that stuff wiped/washed off!) and yet someone decided he was ‘in fear for his life’ (you KNOW that’s what he will claim) and after a short couple of second a BARRAGE of shots were fired into Pretti. Every one of those asshats will claim to have been in fear for their lives.
However the facts are the facts and there’s plenty of video to back up the FACT they either weren’t trained or ignored their training. Less than three weeks ago agents escalated things with Renee Good who before being killed was recorded by ICE agent Jonathan Ross smiling and saying she wasn’t mad at him. Yet Ross and the others ignored standard, basic LE practices and Good wound up shot and killed. Alex Pretti doesn’t appear to have said much of anything, if anything at all as agents steadily walked up to him. He just kept recording and backing up as he was shoved over and over. Again, it was the AGENTS who either weren’t trained or ignored training and escalated a situation that was under control with no threats being made. And Pretti is now dead. Anyone else seeing a pattern here? Well, as promised I’m attaching a video. The first couple of minutes or so confirm everything I said and prove Noem and Bovino are LYING. If you’ve got ten minutes to spare I urge you to watch the entire segment which delves into the life of Alex Pretti. It drives home what a tragic loss his killing was:
One thing you can be sure of. Stephen Miller, who back in a Nazi Concentration Camp in WWII would have been the ‘Kapo’ in charge of beating Kapos who didn’t beat their fellow Jews enough is urging Trump to pour ever more gasoline on this fire. Yet there are ever so faint signs Trump is seeing polling, and getting an earful from GOPers on Capitol Hill about a disaster in November. Despite all his efforts to provoke it Minnesotans aren’t giving him an excuse that will pass muster to invoke the Insurrection Act. Trump, hard as it is to believe uttered a long overdue phrase – that at some point ICE would be leaving Minneapolis. When? No clue but that he’d even say that much means he’s worried and thinking maybe he’s doing himself more harm than good.
I have no doubt at all that lots of Republicans both on the Hill and inside the WH are begging him to STOP LISTENING TO STEPHEN MILLER. Maybe even with suggestions to throw ICE Barbi under the bus. Here and there some conservative pundits have ‘wondered’ if Trump was ‘getting bad advice’ on this. In other words preparing an off-ramp. Is Trump ready to use it? I don’t know. If he does tomorrow won’t be soon enough as far as I’m concerned. But Miller needs to get slapped down and right quick. IF Susie Wiles can get it through Trump’s thick skull that his approval ratings are cratering on freaking immigration, and even among Republicans it’s slipped significantly because of policies Miller sold Trump on enacting then and only then will things change for the better.
Yes, Trump needs to STOP listening to Stephen Miller. Ideally he’d fire that despicable asshole but I’ll settle for Miller no longer having as much influence as he’s attained.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
The state of ‘me’ has been see-sawing between crying and rage, although since Mr. Pretti was killed, the rage is taking over. Fortunately, I know better than to do anything stupid. He has been ordered to leave Minneapolis. I would prefer he leave the state.
Stephen Miller pushes my buttons worse than Bovino has. Miller needs to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Good gods, do I detest that man.
This an administration of evil.