FBI opened probe on Minneapolis shooting; none exists now, Justice Dept. says
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In the immediate aftermath of the death of Renée Good in Minneapolis, FBI agents launched a civil rights investigation into the actions of the immigration officer who shot her, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
An agent in Minnesota conducted an initial review of the shooting and determined that sufficient grounds existed to open a civil rights probe into the actions of Jonathan Ross, the officer who shot Good, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The existence of the civil rights investigation stands in sharp contrast to public statements made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said on “Fox News Sunday” that the shooting of Good does not warrant a federal investigation.
“There are over 1,000 shootings every year where law enforcement are put in danger by individuals, and they have to protect themselves, and they have a lawful right to do so,” Blanche said. “The Department of Justice doesn’t just stand up and investigate because some congressmen thinks we should, because some governor thinks that we should.”
“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate,” Blanche added. “And that is not the case here. It was not the case when it happened and is not the case today.” Instead of a civil rights investigation, Justice Department leaders have tried to pursue a probe against Good’s partner, multiple people familiar with the probe said.
Legal experts said that there is a low threshold for the FBI to open a civil rights investigation, and prosecutors and FBI agents occasionally disagree about when criminal investigations should be pursued.
The FBI declined to comment about the decisions regarding the investigation.
Any federal use-of-force investigation into an officer’s conduct is considered a civil rights investigation because the provision under which officers can be charged is a civil rights statute that covers deprivation of a person’s rights “under color of law.”
On Jan. 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis shot three times into the car of Good, a 37-year-old American citizen. Good’s partner was protesting ICE officers nearby in the moments before the shooting.
About a dozen senior prosecutors in Washington and Minnesota have said they would be leaving their jobs amid turmoil over the Trump administration’s handling of the shooting death of Good.
At least five prosecutors in Minnesota — including the office’s second-in-command — were furious that Justice Department leaders demanded that they investigate Good’s partner, prompting them to resign, according to people familiar with their decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
In Washington, multiple senior prosecutors in the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division left, in part, because they were excluded from the Good investigation . People familiar with their departures said that, before the shooting, many of them had already planned to take early retirement because they believed that Justice Department leaders were undermining their work. The handling of the Minneapolis shooting, the people said, hastened their departure dates.
“No responsible prosecutor should determine what an outcome should be in such a case until a such an investigation is completed,” said W. Anders Folk, who served as acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota during the Biden administration. “I am concerned that without a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation, the public’s confidence in law enforcement, prosecutors and public safety professionals will suffer.”
A robust federal investigation could determine that the officer was justified in shooting Good, legal experts noted. Law enforcement officers are rarely charged for using lethal force, in part because the law provides significant leeway for officers to decide when use of force is needed.
An accurate conclusion can only be reached, however, if law enforcement officials examine all relevant state and federal laws, and their application to the facts in the case, the legal experts said. A thorough investigation, for example, might conclude that the officer’s first shot at Good was justified, but that the next two were not.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) have said that state officials have been blocked from conducting an investigation into the shooting, with the FBI taking over the probe and denying state agencies access to evidence. Justice Department and FBI leaders have not publicly explained what their probe entails, only saying that a civil rights investigation is not warranted.
The Justice Department has since launched a federal investigation into Walz and Frey, examining whether the two Democratic leaders are impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs in the state, The Washington Post reported Friday. Federal prosecutors are expected to serve the two leaders with subpoenas in the coming days.
Walz and Frey have denied any wrongdoing and have accused the Trump administration of weaponizing law enforcement for political purposes.
The post FBI opened probe on Minneapolis shooting; none exists now, Justice Dept. says appeared first on Washington Post .
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The killing of Renee Good is no longer being investigated.
Based on the evidence of all the videos collected, it does not take much to say they LEO did nothing wrong to get hit by the driver of the SUV.
Many seem to think just being in ice means you deserve to get hit by a car, harrassed, spit on, etc
How do you reach such a ridiculous conclusion?
Clearly you have not objectively reviewed the evidence. This is denial ... stepping in line with the corrupt Trump administration.
It is sickening to watch people willing to deny hard evidence in support of a corrupt administration.
Cool, since none of that happened in this case.
And who said ICE agents deserve to get hit by a car just because they are in ICE? You said “many.” It should be easy to come up with lots of names.
Other than the video, I haven’t seen any evidence at all, much less any that supports that conclusion. Curious also, that if evidence exists, it isn’t being shared with Minnesota law enforcement. If he did nothing wrong, why hide the evidence?
The level of blatant dishonesty from some Trump supporters is breathtaking. The lying from the administration must be shattering records.
That is all you need to see. There are several angles that show the LEO was hit.
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Partisan trump haters tend to ignore those
And continue to do so.
You can view a scene from a particular angle, and it will appear as if something that did not happen actually did. Hollywood often does this with fight scenes, where from the shooting angle, it appears as though one actor is genuinely punching another.
But we all have the opportunity to see this from multiple angles. And we can see that the officer's feet were always to the left of the vehicle, and the vehicle was turning right (the direction it headed on its own momentum after Good was shot).
It is irrational to ignore clear evidence in favor of a desire. That is pure confirmation bias. It is why so many people walk around with false beliefs.
Given the amount of video evidence on this killing, it is beyond foolish —it is absurd— to repeatedly claim that Good was trying to run over the officer or even that the officer was hit by her vehicle.
And it is despicable to claim this woman's actions justified her being killed and leaving this officer free of any responsibility for his actions.
Just sick.
In my opinion, none of them show he was hit. But we can agree to disagree on that point because it’s not relevant. The important issue is how the situation was created.
Renee Good had stopped her car in the street. She was not moving when agents approached her. So how is it that the agent could even possibly be in danger of being hit?
I’ll tell you. He put himself in that position. He wasn’t mowed down while minding his own business in a safe place. He deliberately put himself in front of the car. And worse, he did it, approaching from her right, while Renee was distracted by other officers to her left, so she could not see or focus on the officer moving in front of her.
It is a long-standing principle of the law that while self-defense is a justification for killing someone, it does NOT apply when the killer has created the danger.
As agents approached her, aggressively trying to open her car door, Renee was understandably panicked, and sought to leave. Her first move for this effort was to REVERSE.
As she was doing this, the officer was drawing his weapon while holding his phone in the other hand. Nothing about that moment reflects proper training or policy.
Then she went forward and to the right, which she thought was away from the agents. That is what a fleeing person does. They go away from the agents.
She managed to miss the moron who had positioned himself in front of her car, but he leaned WAY over so he could shoot her through the windshield, even as she was trying to drive away.
It was not necessary. It contradicted procedure. It did not make the officer or anyone else safer. In fact, shooting the operator of the vehicle increased the danger for the general public. He murdered her and unnecessarily endangered the public, in my opinion.
While juggling his phone from one hand to the other so he could use that hand to shoot her it appears he slipped on the ice a bit and from a distance hit the car with one hand. But, in no way was he in danger of being run over. The angle of the first shot proves this. The next shots were pure murder!
At least be accurate. They never said they were no longer investigating killing, just that there will not be a civil rights investigation.
That paragraph doesnt strike me as hard to interpret.
It must be. They are talking about civil rights investigation, not criminal investigation.
There are a couple of ways there could be a civil rights investigation. FBI would do it as a criminal violation of federal civil rights law. This would also be done by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. While both are part of DOJ, they are technically not the same department. That is, the Civil Rights Division is not part of the FBI. So, they sometimes both investigate the same case simultaneously.
Neither of these scenarios is necessarily a homicide investigation.
So far, based on reports, it seems that none of these investigations are happening for any purpose. If true, there is no excuse for that.
Yeah, they did.
I guess we know why the DOJ refused to share evidence with the locals. They didnt collect any.
A corrupt administration is burying a senseless killing that makes them look bad.
Somewhere, deep inside, the people in this administration know they are doing wrong. And they can’t face it. So they lie and deflect when questioned about absolutely anything. They are so insecure, and their consciences so guilt-riddled that they refuse to even risk an investigation.
I agree. People are not as dumb as they appear. I keep watching Rubio and wonder how he can live with himself. Rubio is clearly violating his own principles to be SoS. Other members of the cabinet may have fewer moral convictions, but they are not entirely stupid. They have decided to sell their integrity and honor to hold their positions. Quite sickening.
And then we turn to those who spend their time making excuses (pathetic at that) for this corrupt administration and the liar in chief. Other than 'trolling libs' (apparently a deep emotional desire with most), I am at a loss to explain how someone can feel comfortable about looking like a fucking fool every day.
One of my friends believes that since they have committed to backing Trump, they feel obliged to keep defending him rather than admit that voting for this buffoon was a horrible move. Sounds reasonable at first blush, but then which is more embarrassing: acknowledging that Trump turned out to be a very bad choice (admitting a mistake ... easy to do when selecting a politician) or illustrating a lack of character/integrity/honesty on a daily basis?
If I had voted for Trump, I would have acknowledged my mistake when he started trolling our trading partners with threats of excessive tariffs ... all while lacking the legal authority to impose them in the first place. After that, Trump just kept making the acknowledgement easier with crap like trying to eliminate jus soli, firing inspectors general, extorting law firms, et. al., using lawfare against political 'enemies', renaming the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Panama, Greenland, etc. On and on.
And so here we are today, Tacos!, after all that Trump has done in his first year we watch this corrupt administration now blatantly try to cover up and squash a major failure of ICE that resulted in the illegal and unnecessary killing of a woman — a citizen. The level of visible corruption here is staggering. Nixon was going to be convicted because he tried to cover up Watergate after being an otherwise very successful PotUS. Trump has been a nightmare and is so far beyond Nixon that there is no comparison. Yet there is no indication that Congress is going to impose the checks it is authorized and expected to do with a rogue PotUS.
We are living in very strange and ugly times.
That guy! This actually kinda breaks my heart. He use to be man with his own mind and the courage to speak his own thoughts. He was clear eyed on foreign policy, and just generally seemed like a smart, reasonable person. But ever since he debated Trump and basically endured an assault of 5th grade insults, he hasn’t been the same person.
It illustrates how politicians (people, actually) can be so easily corrupted.
Not true. Complaints - whether they are from private citizens or a member of Congress - are the main driver of investigations. It’s how prosecutors even know that there might be something to investigate. Media coverage and general public outcry are also important impetuses of investigation. On top of all that, this was a homicide, so the very nature of the incident raises stronger concerns.
Truthfully, I don’t expect anyone in government - be they federal or local - to condemn the actions of any officer without a complete investigation. Critics and media often want a commander or an administrator to do exactly that, and while that might be refreshing from time to time, it’s not generally a reasonable expectation.
However, it IS a reasonable expectation that an investigation occur for a controversial homicide.