My stance (and I have interacted with Commonwealth LEO's, lawyers, and prosecutors about this very question) is this was a failure of training and procedure.
Forget this "last mile" analysis where you're looking at a crowd of agents about a car in slow motion and an officer standing in front with an already drawn weapon.
Less than a minute earlier that vehicle was motionless and parked up.
Everything that followed happened as a direct result of ICE agents acting as they acted.
One of them yelled and screamed at the driver from the get go, attempted to reach in through the window to open the door and waved a weapon. Another put themselves in front of the vehicle and drew a weapon .. which likely wasn't seen by the driver as they were busy trying to reverse, turn, and get out of there .. it's entirely possible the first time they saw the shooter was an instant before the shot.
As a reasonable good and honest citizen "on the Clapham omnibus" how would you react to people that beeline in on you in that manner?
Do that repeatedly and events like this will occur with frequency.
ICE is a clown show and politicised from the outset to maximise this kind of stupidity.
<< As a reasonable good and honest citizen "on the Clapham omnibus" how would you react to people that beeline in on you in that manner?
Honestly, I am not sure and tbh most of us will hopefully never have to find out. That said, I can tell you what I did when the raids were happening in Chicagoland. I stayed home and when I did go out, I took papers with. Why? Because there is one sure way to not get oneself in trouble: not being where trouble are. That is why my first question is: why was she there to begin with?
<< Do that repeatedly and events like this will occur with frequency.
I won't lie. It is a concern.
<< clown show and politicised from the outset to maximise this kind of stupidity.
Look at the bright side, if there is a chance to limit some of the police powers at federal level, I could not see a better opportunity.
> That is why my first question is: why was she there to begin with?
It's my understanding she and the other onlookers live there in that city.
Unlike the masked bandits airdropped in from elsewhere.
Further, IIRC, there was a note on Letters from an American to the effect that the woman had registered herself and had some minimal credentials at least as Constitutional Observer (?) and was there to watch and record the ICE activity.
That seems like an admirable patriotic concerned active citizen thing to do.
Again, that hardly matters - from a wide angle and looking at the footage from minutes before the shooting occured, she was set upon by masked thugs who were eager to kick doors, breach windows, and shoot fellow citizens at the drop of a hat for kicks.
It's a flawed country that allows that to happen.
> Look at the bright side, if there is a chance to limit some of the police powers at federal level
That sounds so last year, TBH - the US has deeper problems now that the veneer of safeguards, checks, balances has been thoroughly ripped open .. if I were a citizen there I'd be looking for some wider deeper constitutional reforms and restructuring - just as Benjamin Franklin advised when he signed off on the first draft as being a decent draft and sufficient until a despot ignores it.
We run a Washminster system, it has it's issues, but it was built upon looking at both the US and the UK systems and tweaking them; it's a lot easier to swap out the active head of state here if they're not serving the broad interests of the majority and grifting hard.
> if I were a citizen there I'd be looking for some wider deeper constitutional reforms and restructuring
Yep. It has become more and more obvious that there just isn't any actual mechanism to resolve the executive branch just doing whatever it wants the way things currently stand. As a US citizen, the rest of this term and the term or two after it are going to determine whether I remain in the country or not. How much farther do we slip? Do we realize this is all an awful idea? If the opposition takes power next time, do they use it to actually resolve the underlying issues, or do they just wield that same power against the other side?
If the presidency and congress don't work to fundamentally implement an actual enforceable division of powers over the next decade, even if things don't "get worse" from here, I don't think it's a place that makes sense for me to stick around.
Forget this "last mile" analysis where you're looking at a crowd of agents about a car in slow motion and an officer standing in front with an already drawn weapon.
Less than a minute earlier that vehicle was motionless and parked up.
Everything that followed happened as a direct result of ICE agents acting as they acted.
One of them yelled and screamed at the driver from the get go, attempted to reach in through the window to open the door and waved a weapon. Another put themselves in front of the vehicle and drew a weapon .. which likely wasn't seen by the driver as they were busy trying to reverse, turn, and get out of there .. it's entirely possible the first time they saw the shooter was an instant before the shot.
As a reasonable good and honest citizen "on the Clapham omnibus" how would you react to people that beeline in on you in that manner?
Do that repeatedly and events like this will occur with frequency.
ICE is a clown show and politicised from the outset to maximise this kind of stupidity.