Do you know what might have saved Renee Good’s life? A necktie.
Bear with me.
Good’s death was the result of a lack of professionalism on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Whatever silly shenanigans Good may have been up to before the shooting, the video of the incident makes it clear that it was the federal agents, not Good, who escalated the situation to the point at which it became dangerous. Good may have been guilty of a traffic violation or two, possibly even a misdemeanor, but she did not set about trying to ram ICE agents, in spite of the obvious lies told by Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in the case.
What did happen: ICE agents approached Good’s car bellowing obscenities and giving her contradictory orders, one telling her to clear the street and the other demanding she “get out of the f—–g car,” with one of them calling her a “f—–g bitch” after she had been shot in the head. Good seems to have been complying with one of those demands and not the other, for reasons that are not difficult to imagine. The contradictory demands and the obscenities are prima facie evidence of a lack of ordinary professionalism on the part of the ICE agents, which comes as no surprise: ICE has abandoned any pretense of high standards when it comes to recruiting, its most recent classes of officers having been recruiting from the bottom of the same barrel from which we extract Transportation Security Administration creeps and thieves and corrupt Customs and Border Protection agents.
The ridiculous mall-commando get-ups in which ICE agents are costumed are an affront to republican manners: The masks—which should be forbidden, categorically, to all American law enforcement—symbolically violate the fundamental promise of public accountability for public servants. The tactical vests and plate carriers and helmets and the rest of that imbecilic fantasy dress-up gear is almost always inappropriate, and it is comical in light of the fact that this particular ICE squad apparently did not have the tactical acumen to deal with the challenging environment of an ordinary Midwestern city in a relatively mild January and kept getting their vehicles stuck in the snow—but I suppose snow is not what one is planning for when one is dressed for Fallujah.
Allow me to address the ladies and gentlemen at ICE in what apparently is their mother tongue: Take off the masks and put on a f—–g tie.