Just when I think I can’t imagine any worse quotes from an ethics perspective than for example, the despicable rant by Minneapolis Mayer Frey, an Ethics Villain, or any number of Tim Walz’s attempts to foment violence and rioting, someone else says “Hold my beer!”
Imagine a law enforcement officer saying or even thinking this…
“Even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point, because there is so just much outrage and concern around what is happening in the city.”
—Minneapolis Chief of Police Brian O’Hara, siding with the rioters as he discussed the I.C.E. shooting of Alex Pretti
Let’s see: unethical, dangerous, irresponsible, illogical and stupid. In fact, Sidney Wang wants to get a word in but he’s been appearing here too often lately, through no fault of his own, so he’s sidelined.
So the position of law enforcement in Minnesota is that law, facts and reality must take a metaphorical back seat to “feelz”: if people are upset enough, it justifies law-breaking, rioting, threatening and harassing officers, anything, really. This is the world view of the progressives—anarchists, really—that Democrats are supporting now. There are no rationalizations that can excuse this. These are bad—okay, unethical—people who are preaching chaos and opposing everything the human race has learned about preserving civilization.
Jonathan Turley, who has a book out about the politics of rage in the U.S., appears to have had his head explode from O’Harra’s statement and those by others, like Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (Guess which party!), who said that she does not consider ICE officers to be “real law enforcement” and that Arizonans may have the right to shoot them. He wrote in part yesterday,
“Law enforcement officers do not expect blind deference on shootings. However, they have a right to expect a fair chance for an investigation to hear their side of a shooting — not a governor or a mayor rushing before cameras to effectively accuse them of murder.
At this point, it may not matter. Only the mob matters…Walz has demonstrated politics of the lowest kind, stoking anger as citizens and officers alike are injured. Walz is pledging to go to court to stop further operations—a lawsuit that would be another frivolous filing. Previously, the state, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed to prevent the federal government from increasing forces to investigate fraud and immigration violations.
Walz, Maye, and others are following a long line of demagogues who sought to use social unrest to advance their political careers. For Walz, sending people into the streets has the benefit of not having them at home watching and reading about the growing fraud scandal in his state.
It is not a defense of democracy, but mobocracy in Minnesota.”
At some point criticizing these terrible people and trying to explain why they are not just wrong but insanely wrong, diabolically wrong, isn’t enough.
Right now, however, I can’t say what is enough. Clearly the current response isn’t working.
Ethics Alarms 
Outrage and concern by progressive street thugs that their elected crime bosses’ corruption is going to be found out.
Oh yeah and something about immigrants or something.
(Same progressives that are really mad that Maduro isn’t president of Venezuela any more)
Again, you can’t reason people out of arguments they didn’t reason themselves into. I’ve given up trying.
I just want to point out that, while it’s certainly true that officers don’t expect blind deference in defensive shootings, they do expect and receive very broad deference.
How broad? Philando Castile was shot although legally armed and totally cooperative throughout, due to a momentary misunderstanding. The officer involved was acquitted. Daniel Shaver was shot and killed despite being totally unarmed, as well as cooperative, lying prone, sobbing, pleading for his life. That officer was also acquitted.
How bad does it have to be before deference reaches its limit? Consider the case of Justine Diamond, who was shot without warning by a Minneapolis cop when she approached his cruiser, unarmed and in her pyjamas, to report a crime. He did three years. Or consider the shooting of Botham Jean, who was shot in his boxer shorts on his living room sofa, a bowl of ice cream in his hands, when an officer supposedly mistook his apartment for her own. She was sentenced to ten years.
So as we can see, deference has limits, but they are set quite generously in favor of police.
The bar has moved since you examples, though. I doubt the officers that killed Philando Castile or Daniel Shaver would be acquitted today.
The fact that these officers are federal changes things though. There is even less accountability for federal officers so they’re probably pretty safe.
They were also really made about George Floyd.
So, it was okay for them to burn down the 3rd Precinct?
-Jut
Just today read an observation that ICE agents are traiend to enforce Immigration Law, not crowd, or mob control. That is the purvey of local law enforcement. Unfortunatley, at every level of municial government the locals are ordered not to do their duty strictly for political reasons. Thus, the lives of ICE and the mod are palced in danger.
I have retoted to many of my liberal aquantences that what we are seeing is not defense of freddom but mob anarchy.
O’Hara’s statement is a simple, straightforward description of the situation in Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota. I don’t see how a factual description can be unethical, and I expect a chief of police to have a good grasp of the situation on the ground.
There are, of course, protesters who want ICE out entirely, but many who might agree with getting illegal immigrants (I use that term despite a dislike for it) who also are dangerous criminals out of the country, there are many who are demonstrating against the brutality and fear ICE is engendering among ordinary citizens. It does not take very many videos or images of the tactics ICE is using to see where that fear comes from.
If you want a more controversial statement, O’Hara also said this: “The problem is not that enforcement is happening. It’s clearly the manner in which these things are happening. These tactics are very obviously not safe, and it is generating a lot of outrage and fear in the community.”
He literally said all that matters is the outrage and the facts didn’t.
The other statement is simply a lie. There is nothing unsafe about I.C.E. operations if citizens don’t actively interfere with them, and if local law enforcement does its job.
And how can you spin that statement coming from a police official? His duty is to say, “Folks, what “matters” here is the law, and that all that ever matters when officers are trying to enforce it. Your opinions, theories and political views don’t matter. Stay out of the way.” He wasn’t stating facts, and how delusional radicals see the fact is not an excuse for anything.