The Trump Administration, I.C.E., and those standing for the enforcement of the law are in the right, with the ethics of this incident and its context entirely on their side. The pro-open borders Left, including the “resistance,” radical progressives (but I repeat myself…) and the Democrats as well as the leadership of sanctuary states and cities, are entirely wrong in theory, practice and conduct. The group in the wrong, which includes much of the news media, is primarily responsible for the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good. However, she was part of that group herself, and bears some of the responsibility for her own death.
I do not believe any of the above can be challenged on the facts, nor do we need to have the results of the investigation to agree on them. Yesterday, in the comments to this post, commenter John Paul wrote, “I saw someone on twitter say how you perceive the video is what side of the political isle you stand on. Now I’m wondering if that’s true and if I’m looking at it objectively.” If your view includes the essential principle of the Rule of Law and the duty of our government to enforce it, as well as the right of law enforcement officers to use deadly force when they reasonably feel threatened, a principle upheld by the Supreme Court, then no confirmation bias is necessary or present to reach the conclusion I just stated.
There. Next question?
There are several more murky and contentious issues on the ethics side to examine, not that I am any more equivocal regarding those. To wit..
1. DHS, Secretary Noem and the conservative media have to stop saying that Good was trying to run down the officer who shot her. It seems pretty clear that this isn’t true. Nothing in the victim’s background indicates that she was prone to violence, other than the fact that middle-aged white women in this country appear to be going crazy. She had a six-tear-old child at home, and was not likely to have been willing to risk being sent to prison just because he politics were warped in The Great Stupid. Noem’s defense of her own agents aren’t “shocking,” but her characterization of the event as a terrorist incident is foolish, and feeds public distrust.
2. That does not mean, however, that the I.C.E. agent who shot her didn’t have every reason, given the totality of the circumstances, to fear for his life when a protester’s vehicle seemed to be heading his way. Apparently there had been other attempted vehicle assaults on the I.C.E. force that day. The tactic has been used elsewhere during the illegal immigration crack-down. The woman had refused to obey a lawful order to leave her car.
3. As usual, the Axis news media is exacerbating public confusion with partisan reporting. The New York Times: “Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis: An analysis of footage from three camera angles show that the vehicle appears to be turning away from a federal officer as he opened fire.” Well, to begin with, she was shot full in the face, so if the car was driving away from the officer, Good could spin her head around like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” It doesn’t matter what three angles in slow-motion “appear” to show. What matters is what the I.C.E. officer believed based on his vantage point.
4. The late Norm McDonald once did a stand-up routine about how the female victims in “48 Hours” true crime episodes were always described as wonderful, loving people who would never hurt a fly, that everyone loved, and who were as pure as the driven snow. The Axis news media is now bombarding the public with similar hagiography about Good. Her parents—no surprise—say she would never have gotten herself into a confrontation with I.C.E. The woman drove her car into the middle of an enforcement scene and had it blocking the path of agents trying to do their job. Fox News has been reporting that she was indeed one of the recognized leaders of the protest. Maybe Fox is making that up, but the fact is that she was there, creating the rebuttable presumption that she was on the scene for a reason.
5. As I wrote in the earlier post: Gov. Walz, the disgusting Mayor Frey, the sanctuary city nullification radicals, and the open borders advocates, as well as the Biden Administration that inflicted the illegal immigration wave on the country, are the major miscreants in the Good shooting (which was also a good shooting). If local police protected I.C.E. agents under siege for doing their jobs, which police have a duty to do, Good would be alive today. Frey and Walz have directed police not to protect I.C.E. If irresponsible leaders of the Democratic Party had not been characterizing I.C.E. agents as “Gestapo” and compared the removal of illegal aliens to the Holocaust, there would not be so many gullible, emotion-driven fools putting Federal agents—and themselves— at risk.
6. It seems clear to me that the Mad Left wants another excuse to hold mass demonstrations across the country, and that the death of Ms. Good is just another pretense, like the death of George Floyd. Andy Ngo reported that at last night’s Minneapolis protest, the crowd started chanting about how the U.S. was all stolen land, so no immigrant should be considered illegal.
7. The Axis wants protests, wants violence, and wants true insurrection, not just a one day riot led by drunks wearing horns on their heads. No, that is not a fact, but it is awfully clear to this observer at this point.
Ethics Alarms 
Not much to add.
I do find it ironic the usual suspects will get all torqued up over a white woman’s death. Isn’t she a land colonizer? Isn’t she an oppressor? She’s WHITE for God’s sake. And probably a Christian/WASP? And she could afford a nice car. She wasn’t unhoused or otherwise involved in the judicial system. Except for the fact she may have been a lesbian, isn’t this the kind of person who should be scorned by the woke and Anti-racists? She’s certainly not a saint like George Floyd but evidently, she was a poet? That makes her eligible for beatification and ultimately sainthood?
I’ll mention here that the previous post on the ICE shooting has prompted not one but three illicit comments by banned participant “A Friend,” as usual claiming that the New York Times isn’t the biased, partisan propaganda agent that it obviously is. The headline I quoted in this post is just more evidence.
My mind keeps wandering back to the Obama administration’s stern rebuke in federal court of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s efforts to arrest illegal aliens at workplaces and in Home Depot parking lots and other of the usual places. [I notice Sheriff Joe is no longer in the EA collage.] The Obama administration went to federal court to get the court to enjoin the Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies from enforcing federal immigration law on the theory that it was exclusively the federal authorities’ right to enforce federal immigration law, and the county had no authority to do so and should therefore stop and leave such law enforcement exclusively to federal authorities.
It always struck me at the time that the feds had no intention of enforcing federal immigration law and were intent on making sure no other authority did so. So ironic that in the Obama days, I.C.E. was deemed the sole arbiter of immigration law, now I.C.E. is in the Joe Arpaio chair and should be hobbled in every way possible. The Dems and the left are just so transparent.
As soon as I hear someone claim to know the motive behind an action, whether it’s “tried to run over an ICE agent” or “really just wants the oil in Venezuela”, I stop listening. I’m tired of asking myself “how do they know what was going on inside someone else’s head, someone that they’ve never met, and only ‘know of’ through news reports?”. Perhaps these people are in the habit of operating from their own hidden agenda, and assume that they can discern others’ as well.
There’s a difference between “they want to destroy our country” and “giving them what they ask for will destroy our country”. Like a toddler reaching for a jug of bleach, he doesn’t WANT to poison himself, but if he has the chance, he will, because he just doesn’t understand the consequences of his desire.
Except in this case, you can fairly infer what was going on in Good’s head. It appears that she realized she was about to get arrested, and thought she’d flee the scene.
Thus the backing up to make space, the forward movement, and turning of the wheels. She guns the motor (poor choice of words?), but on a patchy/snowy/icy road, there’s no directional effect because at the point she turns the wheel she’s broken traction. Now it’s just a vehicle with forward momentum and a racing engine (regaining traction only after it’s too late).
The ICE agent only sees a vehicle moving towards him with an engine revved up. He’s got no time to wait and see that her true intent isn’t to run him over.
Fleeing or resisting law enforcement at the point they’re standing in front of you never ends well, and pointing out that if you just comply you won’t die falls on deaf ears eternally.
Next, we’ll hear that white, earnest, Lutheran Minnesota parents are obligated to warn their children not to trust the police and run away whenever they are stopped by the police, for being white, earnest and Lutheran.
OB- Yes. It is already at the top of list of subjects being discussed at the Chatterbox Cafe in Lake Woebegone.
[BTW, we are not “old”, we are “seasoned”. h/t Rush L]
Two separate points:
Firstly is something that may be a bit of a nitpick: We do not know if she knew that agent was there. It’s a nitpick because it is true she was fleeing law enforcement who issued a lawful command and placed an officer in danger when she did. She may have been focused on the agent attempting to open the door, and never knew the one who shot her was in her path.
Secondly, if you look at the frame by frame analysis that several have done, the officer fired AFTER he had been hit. The smoke from the gun is clearly visible, and the moment it goes off is after the officer was sliding on the hood. It goes from theoretical danger to unambiguous danger when you’ve been hit by a vehicle.
To use Margaret Brennan’s preface to a question, “I’m confused.” Officer Byrd who shot an unarmed Ashley Babbit as she was coming through a broken window was heralded as a hero and given a Congressional medal for killing her but a woman behind the wheel of a motor vehicle she was driving toward a different federal LEO was just murdered by a federal agent. Shouldn’t Byrd been given the same evaluation?
But Officer Byrd is black.
And the fact that Officer Byrd is still alive tells me the right isn’t as violent as the left claims.
Jack,
I agree. I think you covered this well.
It’s pretty clear to me that the vast majority of the outspoken political left has/is completely losing touch with reality and digging themselves into a very deep political and moral hole over this. Like the absurd George Floyd reactions, this is NOT the morality hill to die on and they’re morons for trying to turn this into a politically expedient flash point.
I have no hope that the indoctrinated, brainwashed, socialist minded, immature, progressive left will ever be able to peacefully return to political and social moderation. Many of these people never matured beyond their mid adolescent years and are controlled by absurd propaganda and their inability to control their own emotions. I genuinely think many of them are verifiably delusional, which is “holding false beliefs or judgments about external reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary”.
“this is NOT the morality hill to die on and they’re morons for trying to turn this into a politically expedient flash point.”
They’re morons regardless, which reminded me of Taxi episode exchange between Tony Banta (Tony Danza) and Danny DeVito’s Louie De Palma:
Banta: “What do you care, you think I’m just a stupid boxer.”
De Palma: “No, I think you’re a STUPID PERSON; you’re a LOUSY BOXER.”
PWS
They’re not going to realize it for two reasons.
You’re right on the moron part. But they’ve also elected to put themselves in a bubble. The left has deemed themselves incapable of tolerating an opposing viewpoint. So put together stupid and ignorant and change becomes impossible.
Here is Jack Dunphy’s take on the matter of culpability of the ICE officer.
But while the officer may be standing on firm legal ground, there are other factors to consider. If a similar incident were to occur involving an officer with my former employer, the Los Angeles Police Department, the likely outcome would be no criminal charges from the district attorney, but the shooting would nonetheless be found “out of policy” by department brass, with the officer facing discipline and even removal from the department. The LAPD Manual instructs that “[a]n officer threatened by an oncoming vehicle shall move out of its path instead of discharging a firearm at it or any of its occupants.”
I am unaware if ICE has a similar policy in place, but even if the agent is found to have violated such a policy, it does not necessarily make the shooting unlawful.
We in the trade have a term for incidents like this one where the results are tragic, even avoidable, but do not rise to legally prohibited conduct: “awful but lawful.” This one surely was both.
https://pjmedia.com/jack-dunphy/2026/01/07/awful-but-lawful-n4948027
It’s a stupid and dangerous policy. But that’s LA…
It won’t be long until it’s “LA policy” that “[a]n officer threatened by an individual with a gun shall move out of its path – or out of the path of a subsequently fired bullet – instead of discharging a firearm at that individual.“
If not in written words, it is a position taken by many police agencies (in reference to the Dunphy item quoted). It serves to get the agency off the hook, but leaves the officer with civil liability, on his own.
There is much written and claimed in various legal channels about how shooting the driver of a moving vehicle does not often stop the vehicle or change its course. This was demonstrated in the incident we now discuss. Incapacitated drivers do not often take their foot off the gas and hit the brakes.
Don’t forget the deterrence factor. People who might try to run down law enforcement should know they might get shot. I think that is the best reason to have policies that allow it,
Agreed. Just like the death penalty.
Can’t tell if you mean that tongue in cheek.It is widely claimed that the death penalty is not a deterrent. It sure is a deterrent for the one whos is executed, however. 100% effective.
No tongue in cheek. DP has zero recidivism and there are probably some people alive because someone else feared the death penalty.
I think this is generally right.
So much of our media consumption right now is “Here’s what happened, and here’s how you should feel about it.” And like good soldiers, they’re fed their talking points like pablum and they go to war, facts be damned.
While I think there’s a political bend to this, I don’t think this is entirely partisan. I think the average person is very effected by having their attention brought to things they didn’t know about five minutes ago. We form opinions, there are predicable ways that we’ll interpret base fact patterns and influencers are getting very good at curating attention in ways politically beneficial to them. Our attention is being weaponized.
The influencers don’t pick the good cases. They don’t highlight John Crawford III, they highlight George Floyd. They do this because their soldiers are motivated, and they don’t want to confuse the issue by finding cases we can agree on.
There’s a term of phrase online: “Bitch Eating Crackers”. It’s shorthand for someone you hate so much that even the most inoffensive thing they could possibly do offends you. Trump is the ultimate example of this – If people are going to lose their minds over him eating Tacos on the 5th of May, then what chance does he have for anything politically? Things as uncontroversial as Nicholas Maduro’s illegitimacy and criminality are suddenly controversial because Trump did something about it. And it goes further: The left treated the Gulag Queen of North Korea like a debutante because her government was beefing with Trump. The people treating these things like controversies are so brain broke that they undermine their own legitimate grievances.
There’s no bottom to the well for these guys, and in this case, what is obviously a good shoot is suddenly controversial because ICE was involved.
Nice explication, HT.
Whew. Good to hear from you…it’s been a month. I worry….
The Federalist is going all out, and is asking for the President to send in the troops in more than one article, in order to prevent the BLM disaster from 2020.
“It’s an almost unbelievable series of statements from a sitting governor. If taken at face value, it amounts to a threat to use the Minnesota National Guard for an anti-federal insurrection — something that has never quite happened in American history (the late 1850s armed conflict between the Mormons and the U.S. Army comes to mind, but Utah was a territory at the time, not a state). If Walz actually follows through with that threat, it will be an open act of sedition.
In that case, the moderate response would be to immediately arrest Walz, federalize the Minnesota National Guard, and declare martial law. Is Walz radical and clueless enough to actually do this? He was willing to let Minneapolis burn in the 2020 BLM riots before he activated the National Guard to restore order, so who knows.”
https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/08/top-democrats-are-agitating-for-insurrection-and-political-vigilantism/
In another article Jordan Boyd asks the President to send in the troops now, or risk losing the country to lawlessness like in 2020.
The video I saw on Fox of the “mostly peaceful protesters” attacking the Federal building in Minneapolis (and breaking a window) appeared to only involve fifteen or so white people from the nearby Lutheran church. I don’t see widespread rioting and looting as a likely result. The Somalis and the black people don’t have a dog in this hunt. The Hispanic illegals don’t want to be out and confronting police. That just leaves the Minnesota nice social justice Lutherans. Antifa even seems to be in retreat these days. Plus, I think Walz and the Boy Mayor would have hell to pay politically from the normies if they let Minneapolis burn yet again.
I hope that you are right, however the hard left in Minnesota has no incentive to de-escalate. There are a number of reasons for that, the first and obvious one is that this whole issue detracts from the Somali day care scandal, in which many top Democrats such as Walz and Ellison may even be criminally liable. The second reason is that the Democrat party as a whole has radicalized the base for years, leading to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, plus the election of Jay Jones as AG in Virginia despite his disqualifying statements. So Walz indicated that he would be willing the use the National Guard against ICE in his state, which borders on sedition.
The thing is that the Trump administration also has no reason to de-escalate. Immigration enforcement is the signature issue for the administration, it is the promise on which he was elected. Backing down in the face of Democrat intransigence and nullification is weakness, and lethal from an electoral perspective as this would depress his base.
Both the party bases rather see blood than political defeat. Both parties will preach to their own echo chambers regarding the facts of the shooting. This will get worse before it gets better.
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2026/01/08/pr-fallout-of-the-ice-shooting-the-worst-is-yet-to-come-and-more-bloodshed-is-now-inevitable-n4948039
I just wonder how the national guard would respond to such an order?
I can’t imagine any of the NG members want to go against the federal government. Marion County v. Kotek suddenly becomes very pressing. In this case, the deputies of Marion County, Oregon are suing in federal court asking the court to clarify what the legal framework is for deputies when they’re confronting Oregon’s “sanctuary state” laws. They want it explicitly stated where the line is, so they can never be placed in the choice: break state law or break federal law.
“DHS, Secretary Noem and the conservative media have to stop saying that Good was trying to run down the officer who shot her. It seems pretty clear that this isn’t true.”
This misalignment with what the videos actually show would no doubt be a persuasive argument to Secretary Noem! Although, wait, here’s a prediction for a line soon to be trotted out by the commentariat:
Videos that show anything different from the “deranged domestic terrorist intent on assassinating LEO” narrative (really, God must have intervened to insure the noble officer who was viciously run over was completely unharmed!) must of course have been generated by AI! Those evil Axis propagandists will go to ANY lengths….
Note: he had to go to the hospital. He wasn’t badly harmed, but her car did knock him down. That he wasn’t seriously hurt is moral luck: Good gets no credit for that.
I don’t see your point, Holly.
Oh but I think you do!
What else would “moral luck” be but divine intervention?
The Good Lord didn’t bother to save the woman from being shot in the face, but hey, she was probably a Democrat right?
All she had to do was simply obey the officer’s command to get out of the car. How hard would that have been?
We’ve seen statements that he went to the hospital and that he was treated. We have not seen evidence that the had to go to the hospital nor that treatment actually was needed. Frankly, I find it just as difficult to believe statements from ICE as I do those from Frey.
The legal standard is, generally speaking, by means likely to cause death or great bodily injury. Not that it actually does cause that, only that the person using defensive force reasonably believes either of those is likely to occur. One does not have to be killed or suffer great bodily injury before applying the force… for obvious reasons.
I handled an appeal in Boston for a guy convicted of murder for going to his room, getting a gun, and shooting a neighborhood bully who had beaten him badly once before and who had told everyone in the neighborhood that he was going to “get” the shooter. I thought the Mass. law was pretty clear.
Also, I have not seen video that he was knocked down. In the video linked in the original post, the officer who fired the shots, after firing what appears to be two shots, walks toward the vehicle Good was driving, at first hesitantly and then what appears to be normally. Based on an image of Good’s vehicle and the video, it appears that the first shot went through the windshield and the second through the open driver’s side window. Either or both could have been a shot into the face of the driver.
The name has now come out: The officer is Jonathan Ross.
Officer Ross was not knocked down. It is possible to see in all three videos when going frame by frame that officer Ross was hit by the car, and he was shoved backwards but never lost his footing. If you look at the video filmed from the back of the car, you can see that he is stepping backwards, and his planted foot slides on the ground. As he is sliding he fires the first shot.
Officer Ross fired a total of three shots. The first is when he is being shoved by the car, the second is into the side window back and the third is at the car after it is driving away.
Ross was also dragged by a car earlier this year. I’d say that belongs in the “totality of the circumstances.”
Yeah I saw that and that helps explain why he (apparently an experienced LEO with many years of service, not a raw recruit who might not have extensive training) might panic and overreact.
I kind of doubt that ICE has a good system in place to help officers process and move beyond any potential PTSD, which can result in someone responding to any analogous trigger as though they are suddenly reliving the original traumatizing event.
And even when there ARE such systems in place, LEO will often not use such services unless they are mandated because mental health services often carry a stigma in such settings.
I don’t see “panic.” I see “learning from experience.”
Continuing to shoot after any plausible (in the present circumstance) danger to himself or other officers had passed (the car was travelling AWAY from them all at that point) doesn’t suggest to me that he was following his training.
Do you have a different understanding of appropriate use of force?
Including the timing of when one should (according to standard rules of engagement for LEO) stop shooting and instead call a medic to render medical aid to the person shot?
Common misunderstanding. Once you start shooting, you keep shooting until the threat is eliminated. In a matter of seconds, with a semi-automatic piston, multiple shots are likely. Are you going to ask why he didn’t just “wing” him? That’s usually the next question from someone who has never had to defend themself with a gun.
Nope, I’m familiar with protocol. It is in fact one of the reasons I don’t carry a gun. I have other ways to defend myself that have worked just fine so far. And I haven’t been in a profession in which a gun was required equipment.
The issue here is whether the threat has been eliminated when the car is moving AWAY from the shooter. Or is that not what you saw happening during the last shot he took?
No, that’s what I saw. But the last shot and the car moving away were more or less simultaneous.
Which is why those slow motion breakdowns are misleading…because the event didn’t occur in slow motion.
He fired three shots rapidly. That can be done in half a second, maybe less. With a car moving towards you, there’s not time to fire one shot, stop and process what’s happened… if the car is starting to turn, whether it will continue sliding towards you on the ice, etc. and then fire again. The first shot went in through the front (windshield), seeming to indicate he was facing the car from that direction. All of this will have to be sorted out.
Thank you that’s helpful.
Many agencies train a “triple tap” on the initial confrontation, replacing the double-tap taught when revolvers were the usual sidearm. Three quick shots while in a fast moving situation is almost reflex…
I did see an additional video, a search prompted by your comment, Matthew, a video that shows Ross being bumped by Good’s vehicle as she seems to be trying to leave the area. It is not clear why he would walk to the front of the vehicle, although as he walked there, he seemed to be using a cell phone camera. He did draw his weapon and fire very quickly, almost simultaneous with Good’s vehicle starting to move forward. Why the second, and especially why the third shot? Dunno. I wasn’t there and don’t care to speculate.
I think Ross was crossing in front of the vehicle from the other (passenger) side …maybe to help the officer arguing with Good and/or viding that exchange.
See my note to Holly A on the three shots. I’d add that Ross appears to be right-handed. If his first shot hit the driver’s side of the windshield and he was crossing from the other side, that could mean all or the bulk of his body was in front of the car at that point.
Regarding #1:
I do think Christi Noem is somewhat justified in her rhetoric though. She’s taking it too far, and I’ll also argue being inarticulate.
I think it is too easy to dismiss the fact that a car is a deadly weapon. A gun has a singular purpose: to be something that can destroy what it is pointed at. That makes shooting a gun at someone a very definitive thing to do that is unequivocal in intent. Pull the trigger when pointed in someone’s general direction is clearly attempted murder. Shooting and killing someone lacking legal justification is murder. Brandishing a gun is clear on intent too. It clearly is a statement: “Here is something I can harm or kill you with. Comply or I’ll use it.” Because being a deadly weapon is not the primary intent of a car, it is more ambiguous in its use as a deadly weapon. But let’s not forget, cars kill almost as many people in the United States as guns do. Cars make very effective weapons if they are intended to be used that way. They’ve been tools of murder, they’ve been tools of mass murder.
So in this specific example, the anti-ICE protesters are using a vehicle as a means to obstruct federal law enforcement conducting official business. A trap the left is getting into is they’re thinking this is just some sort of game. They presume that they can block a vehicle in an no one is going to get hurt. They block, the agents get stopped, no intent for physical harm. But they’re doing that blocking with something that is capable of being a deadly weapon. They’re being very reckless. They’re doing it also while committing a federal crime. It isn’t as bad as brandishing a gun, but effectively isn’t all that far apart.
So let’s list those out explicitly:
Yeah, that’s the textbook definition of terrorism.
What would I rather she point out? Those opposed to immigration think this is a harmless game that will slow down ICE. But this isn’t some fun caper. It is a dangerous thing to do, and people need to stop before there are more deaths.
Regarding #4:
The woman who was standing on the right side of car was the woman’s wife. After the shooting, she ran to the car. At some point later, she was sitting on the stoop of the house next to where the car crashed. She was weeping and talking quite a bit, and the man who lived there recorded her. He later uploaded this video.
In the video, the woman is expressing remorse about how the attempts to stop ICE was her (Good’s wife’s) idea. She admits that it was their intent to use their vehicle to block ICE. Fox is the only one reporting it, because it betrays the narrative, not because it is untrue.
When it came to the actual incident, we’ll never know the true intent. Perhaps Good didn’t see the agent? She may have been focused on the agents by her car door, and in particular the one trying to open it and having no idea there was one more who had walked over when she stopped. Perhaps she was in full panic at that point, realizing this suddenly went from a game to something very real. Or perhaps she knew and was intention.
The reality is, as you point out, her motive doesn’t matter. When someone accelerates at you with their vehicle, you have the right to self defense. This officer can’t be prosecuted by the state. This administration won’t. All I question is if Trump will pardon this guy before leaving office to preclude future prosecution.
A different FRONTAL VIEW vid (FF to ~03:00); after watching, you wondering why this one wasn’t plastered all over the known Universe?
PWS