Marshall Helmberger

Will Renee Good, the victim in last week’s fatal shooting by a federal ICE agent in Minneapolis, and her family ever receive justice? That’s a question that’s undoubtedly on the minds of many Minnesotans following the death of the 37-year-old woman and mother of three.
First, let’s consider what we know. Had the ICE officer, identified as Jonathan Ross, been a member of the Minneapolis Police Department, he would be on administrative leave during a thorough investigation and would very likely face felony charges, the nature of which would be determined by the investigation.
There are key questions that we still don’t have answers to, and they are critical to determining exactly what occurred on that Minneapolis street and what kind of charges might be justified against the officer involved.
Among the biggest questions is where did two of the three bullets apparently fired by the ICE agent go? From all the available video it appears that the officer involved shot at Good three times. Only one bullet appears to have penetrated the front windshield, and that was on the very lower right corner of the windshield. That shows that the officer was positioned to the front of the windshield at the time of firing. From the available video, it appears he was positioned near the front driver’s side corner of the vehicle, and may have (here, videos conflict) come in contact with part of the vehicle’s fender as Good tried to exit the scene. Good’s tires clearly turned to the right as she did so, indicating she was trying to avoid the officer, not run him over, which she easily could have done had that been her intent. Her intent is revealed as well in the officer’s own body cam video from just before the shooting, which shows Good smiling and talking cheerfully to the officer, telling him “I’m not mad at you.” Ten seconds later, that officer would end Good’s life.
At this point, none of the videos that have been published by media show signs that the other two bullets penetrated the front of the car. Indeed, the videos appear to clearly show Ross firing through Good’s open side window, while he was standing well to the side of the vehicle. Bullets fired through the side window are completely inconsistent with the Trump administration’s claim that the officer was being run down and faced imminent threat. Keep in mind, every bullet fired is a potentially separate act, each one legally accountable.
The forensic evidence will be key, here. Good’s vehicle should provide evidence of the bullets’ trajectories, showing from where the bullets were fired. An autopsy will hopefully provide evidence of which bullets most likely killed Good and the angle from which they were fired. While the officer could try to argue self-defense for firing the first bullet, if Good was killed by bullets fired through the side window, at a point when the officer was clearly not at risk, that’s not self-defense. It’s murder.
The Star Tribune reported this week that Good was shot in the head. If true, that was likely the shot that killed Good. And that shot could only have come from the shots through Good’s open window. The bullet hole in the windshield appears far too low to have struck Good anywhere above the torso.
Unfortunately, all of the evidence needed to demonstrate this is now under the control of an FBI that Americans can no longer trust. As we have seen, the Trump Justice Department has executed a scorched earth policy toward any FBI officials who act professionally in the performance of their duties. Hundreds of experienced investigators have been fired for their mere assignment to investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 assault on the Congress, or investigations of Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as his theft of classified documents.
The message from the Trump White House could not be more clear. They have already rendered judgment on the killing of Renee Good and any investigating officials know full well that their results will need to match that verdict or they face the end of their careers. News reports have indicated the federal investigation is focusing on Good and her wife (in a desperate effort to link them to…something), rather than the officer who killed Good. Nearly a dozen career Justice Department prosecutors have already resigned over that appalling abuse of discretion.
It gets even more troubling when you consider that the Trump administration is just getting started with ICE. Over the next year, they’ll be hiring thousands more ICE agents and they are dramatically lowering their standards to do so. Those agents will be watching the outcome of the Good shooting closely, and they’ll know whether they could ever face accountability for their own actions while out in the field.
An honest federal investigation could have gone a long way toward restoring at least some confidence in federal law enforcement. Yet it’s not clear that public confidence is even a goal of this administration. As has been obvious from the start, the Trump administration is using ICE — with their unidentified, masked gunmen — to sow fear in our major cities. There’s no better way to ramp up the fear factor than seeing Trump’s agents killing American citizens with impunity.