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Transcript
I’m going to offer some thoughts on the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. As it happens, I have some experience in dealing with officer involved shootings as a communications consultant, as part of the years of work I did in that area. I worked with several law enforcement agencies, especially one of them that I worked very closely with over a period of several years.
And I’ve also conducted trainings for spokespeople for law enforcement agencies and how to communicate effectively with the public, including after incidents like this.
The first thing I want to focus on is the logic behind the use of force by well-trained law enforcement officers,
And the second one is who law enforcement officers work for, and who every public employee works for. I think there’s a lot of confusion about both of those topics, especially now.
So first of all, the logic of the use of force.
Many people have misconceptions about this. I did myself before I started working with law enforcement agencies. And let me emphasize, the ones I worked with were excellent, highly trained, and deeply committed to protecting people’s safety while also protecting their constitutional rights, often at great risk to themselves. I understand the reasons why people are skeptical or even fearful of police.
I understand the history of policing, why that’s often involved a lot of injustice. But I also understand quite a bit about what goes into doing police work. Well, and I think the people who are doing it well are pursuing a noble profession, and they’re doing it with a deep sense of ethics and commitment and courage. And I’ve met some of the most impressive people I’ve ever met who are working in that field.
So back to the logic of the use of force. One of the misconceptions is that it’s the job of law enforcement to punish bad guys, and it absolutely is not.
in a democracy at least. And that’s a key point here. It’s the job of law enforcement to protect the public. It’s not to punish bad guys. Now, they often have to stop bad guys, and sometimes they have to use force against bad guys, and sometimes they have to use lethal force.
But at no time are they supposed to be punishing that person if there’s a threat, they’re supposed to be stopping the threat. If somebody needs to be detained and arrested. That’s what they’re supposed to do. And at that point, they hand them over to the justice system.
The police are just the leading edge of the justice system. They are not supposed to mete out justice on the street. If the police saw it as their job to punish bad guys on the scene,
They would be behaving as if we live in a police state.
And that’s what bad police do. And if that becomes normal, then we do live in a police state.
This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be a good law enforcement officer. If somebody is doing something that poses a threat to you or members of the public, if that person is acting very aggressively, if that person is clearly dangerous or violently crazy, and maybe they’re screaming insults at you at the same time.
The normal human response is to want to punish them or fight them, maybe even to harm them or kill them.
And part of the challenge, the very serious challenge of being a good law enforcement officer, is resisting what human nature prompts you to do and behave in a way that serves a higher purpose and that is protecting not just yourself, but protecting all of the people you work for.
And that’s the general public.
So this leads to the logic of the use of force. If somebody is doing something that draws the attention of a law enforcement officer and it looks like that person is doing something potentially very serious or even violent and dangerous, that officer is trained or should be trained to understand what to do to minimize the threat. So what’s driving the logic of their decision making is not how they feel about this person, not whether they’re personally feeling afraid or offended or even enraged.
The point is to minimize the threat, and that starts with the use of no force whatsoever. Well trained law enforcement officers will try to make the use of force unnecessary as their first approach, if that’s at all possible. So they will try to de-escalate the situation, as we hear in the jargon and analyzes of what we just saw with Renee Nicole Goode, and that very often means that you approach the person calmly, moving slowly and speaking reasonably and looking for ways to make them feel calm and make them capable of responding reasonably so that it doesn’t have to get any worse than it already is.
Most interactions go this way, and if you’ve ever had an interaction, and you were dealing with a well-trained officer, and hopefully we should be able to count on that, you will have noticed that that officer approached you moving with predictable motions, speaking in a calm, measured tone of voice, and speaking to you respectfully, even if you know, yeah, you did just run that stop sign, or you were going 45 in a 35 mile an hour zone.
They’re going to be speaking to you calmly and respectfully. That’s partly because they understand that that’s their duty to show you some respect. And it’s partly because it’s better for you and it’s better for them, and it’s better for the public at large, because it helps to minimize any possibility of threat if they approach you aggressively, if they’re moving quickly, if they’re yelling at you, they’re barking orders right off the bat.
If they’re speaking to you disrespectfully, they’re increasing the odds that you’re going to be excited or provoked or anxious or afraid. And that means you’re likely to do something irrational or move in ways that alarm them.
So under the logic of the use of force, the officer wants to prevent that. They don’t want an excuse to shoot you. They don’t want anybody to get hurt. They don’t even want to hurt you. If you’re clearly a bad guy, they may know you from previous interactions. They may know you’ve committed multiple offenses, including violent ones. They’ll certainly be on the alert, but they do not want to shoot you.
Assuming they’re a well-trained officer.
So, continuing with the logic of the use of force throughout the interaction, that officer will certainly be keeping a close eye on the person they’re dealing with, and they will be very alert for any potential threat.
But all throughout, they will be looking for ways to minimize the threat to everybody involved, including the person they’re talking to.
Now, if the person is resisting them, like disobeying their requests or commands, they will continue to talk to that person and try to convince them to comply. But if they have to use any kind of force to get the person to comply, it will be the minimal amount of force that’s required in that instant.
If the person becomes violent, they will reply with the amount of violence that is necessary to bring them under control. And they’re trained in ways to do that, that are minimally harmful to the person they’re bringing under control. Again, it’s not their job to punish this person for resisting. It’s their job to get this person under control, to contain the threat.
And when this incident is investigated later, as they all should be thoroughly and fairly, the determination will be made as to whether the judgment made by the officer in the heat of that moment was a reasonable one, and there was no other alternative than what the officer chose to do under the logic of containing the threat.
The moment the threat is contained, that officer is supposed to completely shift their mission to trying to save the life of the person they just shot.
Now, it’s hard for regular laypeople to imagine doing that sort of thing, but that’s exactly what they’re called on to do. The logic extends to this situation. To the point is to contain threats to life. Now that the threat to other people’s lives has been contained, the new threat is the threat to the life of the person the officer has just shot.
And it’s quite likely it’s going to be hard to save this person’s life, but they’re going to do everything they can to do that, assuming they’re well trained. And let me add to well-trained that the right person was hired in the first place, because if you hire the wrong person, training is not going to turn them into the right person for this job.
These are the factors that should be determinative in deciding whether or not the shooting of Renee Nicole Good was justified. Let me emphasize that justified legally justified is different from whether or not it was a good thing.
In any of these cases, it’s always terrible when somebody dies, even if the person who’s been shot is a violent criminal, it’s the end of a human life. And even the worst criminal was born as an innocent baby like everybody else was. And it’s a tragedy that their life ended up this way.
And it’s, of course, all the worse if it turns out that the subject of a police shooting was an innocent civilian.
Now I want to turn to who these officers are working for and who all government employees are working for. And it’s very easy to lose sight of what should be an obvious answer in a democracy. They’re working for you and me and everybody else in the country.
They are public employees. They work for the public. If they’re city police, they work for the residents of the city. But ultimately, under the terms of the US Constitution, which rests all power in the people of the United States.
Not, as our president seems to think, in the president, not in any other government official, not in any law enforcement officer, no matter how senior.
Not in any one person, but in the people of the United States.
When those ICE agents got out of their vehicle and approached Renee Nicole. Good. They were approaching one of their bosses. Now, sometimes one of their bosses is doing something that’s wrong. And we empower law enforcement to stop them from doing that. And if need be, arrest them and hand them over to the justice system. But in every case, the law enforcement agents are talking to one of their bosses, one of the people of the United States.
This is both the gift of democracy and the awesome responsibility of democracy. The responsibility is that all of us have to remember that we are in that boss position, and we have to be able to behave like good, responsible bosses and step up when need be and shoulder the burden. That includes shouldering the burden when the people who work for us are getting it wrong. Very seriously wrong, as we’ve seen in recent years.
In response to the more immediate case we have here of an officer involved shooting,
It might be understandable to think that their first instinct would be to defend themselves against accusations that something terribly wrong might have happened here. People behave that way all the time.
But that is not supposed to be the behavior of elected officials. Just like it’s not supposed to be the behavior of law enforcement agents.
Very shortly after the shooting, Kristi Noem issued a statement in which she called Renee Good
domestic terrorist and accused her of deliberately trying to murder ICE agents with her car.
As we’ve all seen from the videos, this not only is unsupported by the evidence, it’s contradicted by the evidence. This kind of lie was also told by Vice President Vance and by President Trump, and repeatedly and emphatically.
This is absolutely the wrong response.
The idea of prejudging an incident like this should be shocking to all of us, assuming we want to continue living in a democracy. It is not the role of Kristi Noem or the vice president or the president to judge the justice of a situation like this. That’s the job of an independent justice system, one. Unfortunately, we can’t be confident we still have.
The investigation has been taken over by the FBI, excluding the state and local authorities, who would normally be investigating this as well, and who apparently have the intention of conducting independent investigations.
But the federal officials have tried to exclude them from it and have been walling off the evidence, apparently refusing to share it with state and local authorities.
This looks like a cover up, and it looks like what we would expect from an FBI led by an unqualified toady like Kash Patel and a Department of Justice led by a qualified person. In terms of her resume, Pam Bondi, but an unethical toady in her case.
We cannot allow this to be the situation in the United States of America, the world’s first modern democracy and a country that, until recently has taken pride in trying to be a model of democracy for the world.
Even if the evidence were to show that Renee Goode was somehow at fault in this situation and somehow a shooting might be justified. Personally, I can’t imagine what that evidence will be at this point, but it’s conceivable that there could be such evidence in any case, even if the authorities were confident that the shooting was justified.
It’s important, just from a point of view, of building public confidence, that you will fulfill your duty to investigate fairly, to acknowledge how terribly disturbing it is to see an incident like this.
Then there should be no comment whatsoever as to who is at fault in this case. Until the investigation has been conducted and the public can be assured that it was a fair, thorough investigation.
The public can have no such assurance in this case, even if the FBI under Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and really under Donald Trump, somehow does conduct a fair, thorough investigation. We would be foolish to believe it. That in itself is a terrible blow to democracy.
In the past, we’ve certainly seen federal government bodies, state and local government bodies behave in ways that are unethical, unprofessional or outright corrupt. But the norm has always been the norm set in the Constitution
And I’ll interject here and say that I’ve worked alongside FBI agents, ATF, Homeland Security Investigations and Secret Service in various capacities, mostly just being near them while they’re doing their work. And I can tell you, I’ve been, without exception, impressed by their professionalism and commitment to doing a good job for the people they serve.
I no longer can have that confidence in any part of the federal law enforcement apparatus. Just like I can’t have confidence in the rest of the federal government. That’s a position that’s new to me. I’ve never been conspiratorially minded, and since I have a lot of experience working with public officials at the federal, state and local level, I can tell you I’ve been deeply impressed by many of them.
Many of them, frankly, are better people than the people who make it their business to hurl abuse at them all the time.
But I can no longer be confident in the people who are supposed to be serving us at the federal level, even though I’m sure that the great majority of federal employees remain committed to serving the public, the problem is they’re being prevented from doing that by the people in charge who are not the people, ultimately, who are supposed to be in charge. The people who are supposed to be in charge are us.
It is our responsibility to step up and realize that ultimately, we are supposed to be the leaders. All power rests in the people of the United States. That means peacefully but determinedly. We have to take that power back.
And that doesn’t mean taking it back just for people like us. I actually don’t like this phrase. We must take our country back, that we often hear in political campaigns, because it strongly implies that we have to take the power back for people like us, for our people.
“The people of the United States” is all the people of the United States.
So we have to take power back for all the people of the United States. And the only way that all the people in the country can have power is in a democracy.
Let’s remind ourselves democracy means rule by the demos: the people.
We’re losing our democracy right now. It’s no exaggeration to say that.
And only we can save it.