In tense situations, a lot of people get themselves killed.
(This post is sort of an update of my Substack of the same name. Each time, I write something, I always seem to forget to add something in and this article was no different. Besides, the video of the shooting from the Agent’s perspective has now been released. The same thing will happen here as did with the O.J. Simpson trial. Those who believe the Agent is guilty will see his guilt in this and those who believe he acted in self defense will believe his actions were justified).
Above the latest video. Notice what the “wife” says to her just before she drives off.
Below, what I had previously written.
I was fortunate that in my law enforcement career I never had to shoot anyone. I aimed my handgun at more than a few illegal aliens all while I was on the southern border. Once was directly under the Hidalgo International bridge. One of our Agents was standing looking at a Mexican man who was in the middle of the Rio Grande River. Under the bridge, in the water, there were big cement blocks supposedly left there from the time of the construction of the bridge and he was standing on one of the blocks looking like Jesus walking on water. It has been too many years and I forget why I was walking towards the other Agent rather than driving up to him. The other Agent, who I’ll call Bridges (ironic, but close to his real name), said to me, “Careful, he’s got a rock in his hand. He’s already thrown one at me.” I noticed at that point that the Mexican was not showing the palm of one of his hands. He picked his hand back as if getting ready to throw a rock, and I drew down on him. He did the usual screaming of various insults, “Chinga tu madre!” and so forth. Eventually, he grew tired of it and swam back to Mexico. For me, I don’t know if I would have shot or not. I was told that a rock could be considered deadly force.
Another time, also near the Hidalgo Bridge, I had been walking the drag road that parallels the Rio Grande River. I came across an innertube that had been left behind by smugglers the previous night. I happened to get there at the same time that about four teenage Mexicans arrived at the beach that was down below the drag road. One of the Mexicans asked if he could have the innertube and I told him no. He turned to his friends and said to them that there were four of them and one of me (you can understand a foreign language better than you can speak it), at which point they started after me. Fortunately, they had to go up a rather steep incline to get to the drag road that obligated them to use their hands to claw their way up which they were doing single file. When the first one (the ringleader who had advanced the idea of taking me out) arrived almost to the top, he met my Beretta’s barrel pointed at this face. He yelled, “AYE!!! La pistola!!!” and spun around. The others did the exact same thing and went back down too. Crisis averted. I seem to recall there was a Mexican soldier walking the beach on the opposite side of the river. Thank God, I didn’t wind up shooting the kid and then have to deal with being shot at by a Mexican soldier. I was lucky.
This of course brings me to the shooting the other day in Minneapolis. I’m positive the mainstream media will be using this tragic death to vilify I.C.E. and try to hinder law enforcement.
It’s a bit like the left’s tactic to get rid of the death penalty. In states where the death penalty is still lawful, they tie up the cases in court for years. In the book “Twenty Five Milk Runs” by World War II bomber pilot Richard Riley Johnson, he tells the story of how his cousin Esther was gunned down by her jealous ex-boyfriend in the 1930s. They tried convicted and publicly hanged the murderer all within a year. (Pgs. 40 to 41). It sounded rapid and inexpensive. However, the reason the death penalty is so expensive today is because of the lawyers and the courts. The lawyers for their expensive fees, but the judges are complicit in dragging these cases out for as long as possible. It gives them more power.
Likewise, when it comes to preventing I.C.E. from doing their jobs, the strategy of left wing protestors is to cause havoc and violence. They will then point to the very chaos they themselves cause as a reason why we cannot deport all the new potential Democratic voters. The left is already exploiting this tragic death for propaganda purposes.
Anyway, here are the videos of the shooting.
In the above youtube video, good ol’ Scripps New Service put their logo right over where the ICE Special Agent was in the last video.
Below, here’s the same video, a little bit grainier, with a clearer view of what happened. (It happens quick, like in the first five seconds of the video).
You can armchair quarterback it all you want. I believe the shooting was totally justified.
One thing I will comment on is the bystanders. Really, they’re not bystanders just observing but active left wing activists trying to impede law enforcement from doing their jobs. President Eisenhower never had these nutcases to deal with during Operation Wetback. In college, I remember watching one of those “Faces of Death” videos. In one of the scenes filmed in one of the National Parks out west, a man is seen approaching a bear. The bear had been munching on something, probably food laid out by tourists. The man was doing a pretty good job of getting real close to the bear when a woman off camera started screaming in a very shrill voice about him getting too close to the bear (his wife?) Up until then, the bear had taken no notice of the man, but with the shrieking, the bear’s ears perked up and he saw the guy. It was over at that point for the man.
In these tense standoffs between rioters and law enforcement, a rise in adrenaline causes the fight or flight response. The adrenaline impedes “higher order cognition in the prefrontal cortex”. Things like working memory, attention, cognitive flexibility, decision making, impulse control and rational planning. “Amygdala hijack”. According to Grok, “…prioritizing immediate survival over deliberate thought.”
All these rape whistles being blown, the screaming, sometimes the use of bull horns etc… all these things are helping to raise the adrenaline and make tense situations worse.
If you want to know who is to blame for this tragedy, look no further than the left wing rioters themselves.
This reminds me of one more thing. One of the reasons I became fascinated with law enforcement was reading the novels of Dashiell Hammett. Hammett had worked as a detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His novels often depicted thugs in tense situations with firearms pointed at each other. Hammett said that in tense situations like this, a lot of people get themselves killed. They freak out, panic, act irrationally. “Victim” Renee Nicole Good had only to comply with Special Agents and she would be alive today. Whether she was trying to run over the ICE Special Agent, or, panicking while trying to get away in any manner possible no one can say, but I’m pretty sure she would rather be with her three kids today.
P.S. A friend told me the following story several years ago: He had been a police officer in Houston and he still had friends on the force. The Houston PD got a call about a robbery in progress at a convenience store. Normally, by the time the police arrive, the armed robbers have fled. The robbers like to get in and out quickly. Anyway, the Houston cop shows up and he sees the clerk standing at the counter ram rod straight. Something in the cop’s spidey senses told him this wasn’t right. Clerks are usually walking around upset, but happy the tense situation is over. This clerk looked tense. So, the cop un-holstered his sidearm and put it behind his back. He opened the glass door and said, “Is everything O.K.?” At which point the armed robber, who had been crouched down behind the counter next to the clerk jumped up like a jack in the box and screamed, “Do you see this?” while pointing a shotgun at the officer. The cop responded, “Does it look anything like this?” while leveling his handgun at the robber. At that point, the lead started to fly. The clerk panicked and dove…only, he dove right in the line of fire. My understanding was that the Indian clerk survived and sued the Houston P.D. Because why not sue and see if you can win the ghetto lottery rather than realize that you panicked and did something really dumb. I don’t know what happened to the robber, but I do remember that my friend was telling me he heard the about the situation from the officer involved, so, the cop survived.
P.P.S. The left loves it when someone dies. They did this and are still doing this with deaths in I.C.E. custody. They did this during the first Trump presidency too. Juan De Leon Gutierrez, an illegal alien from Guatemala died from a severe brain infection while in the custody of D.H.S. Many media reports neglected to tell of the surgery we paid for to try to save his life. In fact, the Time magazine headline on it made me laugh, “‘He Went Seeking Life But Found Death.’ How a Guatemalan Teen Fleeing Climate Changed Ended Up Dying in a U.S. Detention Center.” He wasn’t fleeing climate change. He was trying to get free medical care from the U.S. However, most people don’t read past the headlines, so, this is effective propaganda for the gullible.
