(Dobbs) You defy them and they’re going to smash you.They don’t wait for the evidence. They stand up for murderers. They defend the indefensible.
After federal agents pumped bullet after bullet into ICU nurse Alex Pretti yesterday on a sidewalk in Minneapolis, I wrote, “After all the lies— all the situations where the Department of Homeland Security claimed something happened one way until actual video turned up to prove that it happened another way and federal officials were flat-out lying— I don’t believe a word this government says.” How sad to have to say that. But when people show no regard for the truth, how can anyone believe them anymore? Before DHS had any opportunity yesterday to actually investigate what happened, it put out a statement saying, “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” The trouble is, it didn’t look like that at all. This is yet another case where the government is asking us, “Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?” What the video shows is, when Pretti stepped in to try to protect a woman being pepper-gassed by an agent, he had a cellphone in his hand, not a gun. Yet he was wrestled to the ground because in today’s world of Immigration and Customs Enforcement— ICE— and Customs and Border Protection— CBP— and the whole Trump administration, he was defiant and would pay the price. I read a quote from one woman in Minneapolis who said, “You look at them wrong, and they’re going to smash your window.” I would add this logical extension to that: “You defy them and they’re going to smash you.” Pretti evidently had a handgun in his waistband, yes, but two things are important to know. First, there is no sign that he pulled it out “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” There is no sign that he pulled it out at all. Second, he had a license to carry it, so despite the foregone conclusions of government officials, that proves nothing about his intent. What it probably proves is, he was fully aware that simply by showing up where federal agents were conducting their “enforcement operations,” he was putting his life at risk. Isn’t that one of the arguments that gun rights organizations like the NRA have always made, that the Second Amendment was written to enable citizens to protect themselves against government tyranny? If what we’ve seen in Minneapolis the last few weeks isn’t government tyranny, nothing is. Ever since Renee Good was shot and killed in the front seat of her car two-and-a-half weeks ago by an agent from ICE, I have resisted the use of the word “murder.” I just felt it was too loaded, and other words would suffice. But after seeing all the videos and all the expert scientific analyses, first in Good’s case and now in Pretti’s, I think that’s exactly what it is: murder. Not necessarily murder in the first degree, which requires premeditation, but murder in the second degree, which is intentional killing, or manslaughter at the very least. The conclusion is supported by what we saw yesterday. After Pretti already was pinned down on the ground and an agent already had seized the handgun stuffed in his waistband, another agent (or two) fired into Pretti’s back. Then two or three seconds passed and they opened fire again, shooting him at least ten times. It looked like a mob-style execution right out of the playbook of Al Capone, pumping bullets into the victim’s body even after he’s already dead. But it wasn’t Al Capone pulling the trigger, it was agents of the United States government. I can’t help but compare it to something else too: Hitler’s Gestapo. The standard operating procedure for Gestapo goons was, shoot now, ask questions later, if they even asked any at all. Ironically, CBP chief Bovino reinforces the comparison by sometimes wearing a Gestapo-style overcoat on the streets of the cities he claims to be making safe. This photo was taken by CNN in October in Chicago. He defends it as a standard-issue CBP overcoat, but in the agency’s own standards manual, there is no mention of it. What his agents do typically wear are full combat uniforms that make it look more like they’re patrolling the streets of an embattled city in Iraq or Afghanistan, rather than the streets of an American city where the worst things federal agents face aren’t bullets and roadside bombs but citizens with whistles to alert others that the agents are coming. How pathetic is it that the Department of Homeland Security says that it will be the federal agency running the investigation into Pretti’s death? The same department that already issued its verdict in the form of its premature proclamation that he “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” that Alex Pretti “violently resisted” as “officers attempted to disarm” him. And how pathetic is it that earlier today, a federal judge had to issue a restraining order on the federal government, forbidding them from “destroying or altering evidence related to the fatal shooting…. including but not limited to evidence that defendants and those working on their behalf removed from the scene and/or evidence that defendants have taken into their exclusive custody?” Where things are now, I don’t even trust them to obey the judicial order. Share If administration officials, from the president on down, didn’t reflexively jump to the defense of their trigger-happy agents, despite the almost irrefutable evidence that they didn’t have to kill Alex Pretti (or Renee Good before him), maybe we could give them a pass and attribute the violence to rogue agents who are poorly trained. But they don’t deserve a pass. They don’t wait for the evidence. They stand up for murderers. They defend the indefensible. They try to defraud the American people of the truth. But the American people can see what really happened with their own eyes. If only they’ll look. Leave a comment Gregory Bovino said this week that the mission of his military-style force is to “make America a safer place, make Minneapolis a safer place.” That might be their biggest lie of all. |