The continued escalation of rhetoric is what’s brought us to the times we’re experiencing. Anyone who feels they must comment on the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis would do well to review and contrast the definitions of murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide and negligent homicide before pontificating on the subject. Running to social media, official websites or a newspaper’s opinion section to emote the narrative one’s chosen political party has told them to think, or even just the first reaction that comes to mind after watching a disturbing video of real-world violence, is fueling the breakdown of civil discourse regardless of what side of the issues they stand on.
Pretti wasn’t shot because he was carrying a weapon or recording agents; he wasn’t even being arrested for either of those things. He was being arrested for being in the street when he and several women were ignoring orders from federal agents to get off the street. Pretti was shot because one or more of the arresting agents thought he had a gun while he was resisting arrest. Those agents were demonstrably wrong. The most important question is why they were wrong: was it because they genuinely feared he was still armed and, in the heat of a moment, his cell phone looked like a pistol, or because they were trigger-happy and wanted badly to have a justification to shoot him?
Making biased assumptions between those two motivators is neither moral nor helpful; in fact, it’s inflammatory. But for some, that’s actually the goal.
One could argue that the federal agents unnecessarily aggravated the situation by macing Pretti and then deciding to take him into custody after he was out of the way of traffic. One could argue that, given the chemical irritant he received, his continued attempts to stand up were out of desperation and not intentionally resisting arrest. One could conversely argue that he was intentionally resisting arrest and in the heat of the moment, when he reached out of view for any number of things, one or two of the agents believed he was still armed and opened fire out of fear for their own lives. This will likely be argued over in court, but public opinion is rushing to judge based on emotionally biased narratives, political loyalties and even AI slop images.
What cannot be argued is the contrast in both violence and activist disruption thus far between ICE deportation operations in Minneapolis and the majority of the rest of the country, not to mention the deportations during the Obama administration. More deportations are happening in other cities in other states, but without the violence found in Minneapolis. Why? Because their state and local governments aren’t purposefully creating these conditions, yet, anyway. Both Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have encouraged disruption of legal deportation operations, literally telling people to “get in the faces of ICE agents and resist” them. They have ordered the city and state police not to cooperate with ICE or U.S. Border Patrol operations. No crowd control, no riot response, nothing.
Moreover, these are not organic, peaceful protests populated with regular, concerned Americans. This isn’t the result of an “authoritarian government” breaking laws, it’s hyper-partisan agitators taking disruption training funded by NGOs and following orders on signal chats to tail, dox and interfere with daily ICE operations, specifically designed to encourage naive people to escalate tensions with agents in volatile situations in order to increase the likelihood of a violent interaction that can be politically exploited. That fact has directly escalated the situation on the ground, creating the environment for both this and the Renee Good shooting to happen. Unwitting participants like Good and Pretti are the sacrificial lambs in an organized information campaign attempting to turn public opinion against deportations.
The political divide in the U.S. will continue to spiral to even more dangerous lows if basic understanding and respect for existing law, agree with it or not, is not shared between office holders at every level of government and “We the People” fail to think critically before reacting to even the most gut-wrenching scenes. That division will never reform agencies, respect laws or lead to a healed United States.
Self-written bio: David Jackson is a 2003 graduate of Iowa State, U.S. Army veteran and family man.
