Comment by CMay

Comment by CMay 5 days ago

43 replies

As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest. He had a gun on him, which is not in itself a problem, but he had already broken the law 3 times by this point and the fact he had a gun on him instantly escalates the potential threat. They don't know if he has multiple guns on him or just the one. Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.

He wasn't killed for owning a gun or carrying a gun.

He wasn't killed for laying hands on the officer.

He wasn't killed for resisting arrest.

It was likely the entire combination of things that caused him to demonstrate he was a credible threat to their lives and reaching for an object. No matter what you think, Alex made a whole string of mistakes. The officer may have also made mistakes. With any luck investigation will reveal more details.

I'm not predisposed to assuming that Alex is innocent and the officer is guilty, because there is a lot of activist pressure to push exactly that perspective. I prefer to preserve the capacity to make up my own mind.

spacechild1 5 days ago

I have seen the videos. He was already on the ground, fixated by several ICE agents, when he was shot 10(!) times. That was after he had been peppersprayed and beaten to the head. At no point did he actually draw or reach for his gun. There was absolutely no reason to shoot him.

> With any luck investigation will reveal more details.

Kristi Noem said: "This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement." She even went so far as calling this an act of "domestic terrorism". At this point, do you seriously believe there will be a neutral investigation?

  • CMay 5 days ago

    Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.

    I don't know why he was being beaten on the ground, that seemed a little excessive. Not sure how many times he was shot, but generally if law enforcement ever makes the determination to shoot they do it to shoot to kill.

    They knew he had 1 gun, so he could have 2 guns. The officers don't see the angle most of the camera angles see. They see the perspective they see, from themselves. That is the perspective that will matter by law. What situation were they in and what did they see when they made their decision?

    You have the luxury of seeing a perspective the officer did not see, and the officer has the luxury of seeing a perspective you did not see.

    People who are in favor of throwing the officer's life away without knowing all of the details are doing basically doing exactly what they're accusing the officer of in suggesting that he threw away this person's life without knowing all the information.

    I don't know what Kristi Noem is on about, but she's a political appointee and not an investigator.

    • spacechild1 4 days ago

      > Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.

      When the shots were fired, he was restrained by several agents and did not pose any immediate threat.

      > Not sure how many times he was shot

      It was ten shots, fired by two agents. That is a lot of shots.

      Yes, the shooting itself was very likely an accident by grossly incompetent agents. (You can hear an agent shout the word "gun", which probably triggered the other agents to immediately start firing.)

      However, it was the ICE agents who started the very situation that led to this tragedy: One agent violently pushed a women from behind. Why? Alex tried to help her and he immediately got peppersprayed in the face. Why? Then he was wrestled to the ground. Why? Then he was beaten to the head. Why?

      All these actions are already outrageous in themselves. It is worrying how police brutality has been normalized in the US.

      It is pretty rich to blame Alex when it was really the ICE agents who started this whole mess!

      In fact, the videos are so damning that even Stephen Miller had to backpedal and admit that these agents "may not have been following proper protocol".

      > I don't know what Kristi Noem is on about, but she's a political appointee and not an investigator.

      What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?

      • CMay 4 days ago

        It's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that. Saying it doesn't make it true. Even if your honest perspective is that this is the case from the camera angles you've seen, that isn't necessarily what the officers see. What the officers see matters in cases like this. They can only make decisions based on the information they have.

        It may very well be an accident, miscommunication, or people even misinterpreting some of the things shown in the video. We'll find out eventually.

        It could be argued that both the activists and the officers contributed to the situation getting to where it was. The activists shouldn't be following them around and harassing them, even if it is legal to do so up to a limit. The officers should have kept their cool, even with the whistles. The activists shouldn't have broken the law, whether the officers broke their protocol first or not.

        Do not harass anyone who has a gun if you aren't willing to accept the risk that it could escalate into you losing your life. If he went in knowing that risk and accepted it, then he went out doing what he believed in. If he was misinformed that he was entering a safe situation where his life wasn't at risk, then he was lied to.

        It's not rich to blame Alex at all. That doesn't mean it's entirely his fault or that his own mistakes justify his death, only that if you're going to make a string of mistakes don't choose that moment to be when you are harassing people who have guns. If anything good comes from this being so public, it'll be that if people do choose to harass law enforcement at least they can learn to be safer about it.

        These officers know that the second they kill someone they will be unmasked. They don't get to kill people and remain anonymous. Each officer has a gun assigned to them and they know which bullets came from what gun. Generally, if an officer kills someone, it's because they felt justified in making the decision. They'll have to sort out what that justification was, even if it involved a chain of mistakes by the officer or other officers that created a cascade.

        > What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?

        I do not have any particular positive or negative opinion about DHS or their capacity to investigate. It has to be better than the local justice system there.

        What I do know based on past performance is that Minneapolis courts have severely underserved justice. I think JD Vance referred to them as kangaroo courts. Not sure if that's precise or accurate by whatever definition, but I would never trust their court system.

  • solaris2007 5 days ago

    The Sig P320 that an agent took off of him went off while it was in a federal cop's hand. This is the same Sig P320 that the US Army rejected and was mass recalled for going off on its own.

    Unfortunately, when the shot went off he was still fighting with them, actively resisting and not complying. Fighting with federal cops like that is a good way to get killed. He played a stupid game and won a stupid prize.

    • spacechild1 4 days ago

      Please do not spread misinformation! There is no indication that Alex' weapon went off.

      • solaris2007 4 days ago

        There is audio and video footage that shows exactly this. The Sig P320 was REJECTED by the US Army and RECALLED by Sig for doing exactly this.

        "There is no indication", yeah so about misinformation...

        • spacechild1 4 days ago

          BS! You can clearly see/hear on the videos that the agent fires the first shot. You've claimed that Alex' weapon went off as if this was a fact. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Otherwise the DHS would have included it in their report.

inetknght 5 days ago

> As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest.

That's not how I understand it.

> Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.

It would be good if you'd watch this review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIOwTMsDSZA

  • buckle8017 5 days ago

    The very start of the incident is an officer chasing a woman, she slips and falls, the officer chasing her catches up and then Pretti pushes the officer away.

    • CMay 5 days ago

      That's almost certainly not the start. It's very common to not show what you did to agitate the officers and to only record after they come after you. If there are longer videos I haven't seen them, but its a very common tactic to cut out critical context to maximize emotional reaction on social media.

  • CMay 5 days ago

    So I checked it out, but it's not really relevant. These activists appear to have followed the federal law enforcement. That highly suggests they knew exactly who they were. The officers didn't show up unannounced to the front door of someone who happened to be an activist. No reasonable court is likely to determine that they were unaware who they were dealing with.

    • inetknght 5 days ago

      > it's not really relevant

      It's relevant because you said you didn't know. The review provides information that helps you to know.

      > These activists appear to have followed the federal law enforcement.

      Nothing illegal about that at all.

      > That highly suggests they knew exactly who they were. ... No reasonable court is likely to determine that they were unaware who they were dealing with.

      That's not relevant.

      What's your point? No reasonable court would find that the activists did anything wrong, while they certainly would find two federal employees ("officers") are culpable in the murder of one of those activists.

      > The officers didn't show up unannounced to the front door of someone who happened to be an activist.

      So?

      • CMay 5 days ago

        You probably linked the wrong video, because the video you linked is not relevant.

        > Nothing illegal about that at all.

        The first thing I said is that it's not illegal.

        > No reasonable court would find that the activists did anything wrong, while they certainly would find two federal employees ("officers") are culpable in the murder of one of those activists.

        The videos don't show all the events leading up to the moment he was shot, but multiple federal laws were broken just in the videos we do have. Murder has a specific definition and nothing here suggests murder.

avcloudy 5 days ago

This is just lunatic speech. The one place he didn't have a gun was in his hands. You're out here acting like if he'd had a gun strapped to his ankle it would have been proof beyond any doubt he was intending to shoot and kill ICE officers.

He was pepper sprayed and on the ground surrounded by 6 agents when he was killed. At the time when an agent said that he had a gun (this was after his gun was removed), he was physically pinned with his arms restrained. He wasn't 'reaching for an object'. He was carrying his phone in his hand before he was restrained and shot a dozen times.

  • CMay 5 days ago

    They don't necessarily know that's the only gun he had and the officers aren't Neo, seeing every camera angle at once. What you see from your outside perspective is not what they see. They have to act based on the information they have, which is why it's important you listen to law enforcement for your own safety. All the whistles make that harder, which might be part of the point.

    • avcloudy 5 days ago

      Again: he was on the ground, with his eyes sprayed with mace, and he was, at least until seconds before he was shot, physically restrained. It doesn't matter if he could potentially have had another gun. They aren't Neo but there were six of them surrounding him, and the one who shot him only took eyes off to mace another protestor.

oceansky 5 days ago

There are multiple videos from multiple angles and a multitude of witnesses.

The only investigation being done is by the DHS, who is blocking all other state level investigations. The same DHS who lied about easy disproven things that were recorded and destroy evidences.

What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?

  • CMay 5 days ago

    In the case of George Floyd, that was local police. In this scenario, these are federal law enforcement officers so it probably is correct for this case to be handled federally as far as I know.

    I don't know what you're referring to about DHS lying about disproven things and destroying evidence. If you can give me links I'll look into it.

    > What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?

    I've seen enough video to know that it's not impossible the officer reacted within the spirit of the law. To get a sense for that requires testimony from the officer that fired the shot. Please watch court cases some time and you'll get a sense for how the application of these kinds of laws work. I'm not a lawyer, but if you ever have to defend yourself against someone you'll be thankful the laws work the way that they do.

    We have a justice system for a reason. It doesn't always work, but it lays out a process for evaluating evidence. Why do we do it that way? We do it that way, because it is not that uncommon that perceptions, witnesses, videos and many other things can be deceptive. They can make you believe things which are not true. So you try to establish all of the relevant facts as they apply to the law. Not based on how you feel, but based on the law.

    It actually hurts some of the witnesses that are obviously activists, because it means they aren't unbiased objective observers, but are predisposed to a perspective and have a possible agenda in mind which risks reducing the quality of their testimony. A law enforcement officer that thinks he might be found guilty also risks their testimony being weak. The video quality is also often bad and there are people obstructing important details at times. All of those things have to be considered.

    Of course when you are emotionally invested, you might want them to just rush to what you obviously see. Again, you will be very thankful that the justice system generally doesn't rush to those conclusions so readily if you ever have to defend yourself in court when you know you're innocent.

    • jaybrendansmith 5 days ago

      Good lord. There's no helping you if you cannot see with your eyes, my friend. I'd have to be blind to not see this poor man trying to defend a woman, then tackled, beaten, disarmed, shot dead in the back and head with 10 bullets.

      • CMay 5 days ago

        I've seen enough of these kinds of situations to know it's easy to trick people into seeing what you guide them to see. It's like lying with statistical charts, but more insidious.

        Why is it so important to you that other people see what you see before any investigation is complete? Look at how courts handle video evidence to gain some perspective on why your thinking which seems to rely so heavily on video evidence alone is simply flawed.

platevoltage 5 days ago

He was killed for carrying a gun. How do I know that? Thats what they've been saying over and over again. Absolutely gross.