A DAY TO BE BROKEN HEARTED
Here we are. Again.
I’m kind of broken hearted today over the fatal shooting in Minnesota by a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis. According to Minneapolis leaders, Nicole was a legal observer - a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action. Nicole left behind a mother, a father, a spouse, and three children - 6, 12, and 15 years old. Nicole described herself as, “a poet, writer, wife, mom and shi*ty guitar strummer from Colorado.”
The administration is claiming that Nicole – against the backdrop of an apparent entire life-time of non-violent kindness – suddenly became a monster who tried to run over and kill what the federal government blithely refers to as a “trained law enforcement officer”. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem conducted a spur of the moment interview dressed in one of her many costumes. This time as a cowboy.
Remember, Ms. Noem is the former governor of South Dakota who led her year-old puppy down into a gravel pit and shot it to death because it wasn’t taking to her training “quickly enough.” Then she turned her gun on her goat and wounded it to death because…well…because she’s Kristi.
The president chimed in, of course, with his own “…fact-free post lying that the shooter had been run over: ‘I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot at her in self-defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe that he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.’”
The attached clip…here you go. You can watch it here if you’ve got the stomach. The NY Times does a deep dive analysis. But all you need is your eyeballs. The so-called “trained officer” fires his first round through the windshield, than rather calmly steps aside and fires several more rounds from beside the car through the side window. It would have been difficult for Renee to have run over the so-called “officer” unless she could move her vehicle sideways. The cop shot her because he could. For the thrill. Because in today’s environment he knew he did not need to be concerned about being prosecuted. He could shoot, kill, and walk away – which is precisely what he did. Neither he nor any of the many officers on scene rendered life-saving assistance. They – on scene law enforcement officers – called 911and casually went about their business.
But here’s the thing…why was ICE and Immigration in Minneapolis in the first place? They were there because a bunch of people had been defrauding the federal government. The rush of enforcement came after a right-wing online influencer alleged that a number of childcare facilities run by Somali residents in Minnesota had committed fraud.
The FBI launched investigations into the allegations, with Homeland Security Investigators knocking on the doors of Somali businesses since last week. Unfortunately, there does seem to have been a great deal of fraud being committed. And even more unfortunately many of those involved are Somalis. But if those involved in the fraud had been Norwegians, or White Afrikaners from South Africa, to whom Trump has given a free pass to immigrate to the United States, I would have never become involved, because ICE would never have been deployed to Minnesota. And Renee would never have been rendered dead. Trump, who has made a career of defrauding people out of their money, probably would’ve given Norwegians or White South Afrikaners a commendation. But they weren’t White Afrikaners. They were Brown people. Dark Brown. You know that song, Send In The Clowns? (Judy Collins) The Somali’s were the excuse he needed to send in the clowns. He did and Renee – along with her mom, dad, kids, and friends - paid the price.
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In 1995 Stephanie Mohr was a new canine handler with the Prince George County, MD, police department. In the middle of the night on Sept. 21, 1995, a local Prince George’s County, MD police burglary stakeout unit found two homeless men on the empty roof of a business, eating food they had found in the trash. Ordered down from the roof, Ricardo Mendez and his friend willingly climbed down. Lit by a police helicopter above and facing a brick wall, the two men were surrounded by police officers, some with guns drawn, and Mohr holding her German shepherd on a leash. Both men obeyed commands and stood facing the wall with their hands up.
A police sergeant later testified that he was approached by Mohr’s supervising officer who said, “Hey Sarge, we got a new dog. Mind if it gets a bite?” The sergeant gave consent, and Mohr set her dog to attack Mendez, a Brown-skinned, undocumented immigrant whose crime had been seeking a safe place to eat and sleep. Mohr testified that Mendez needed “only” 10 stitches.
This was no accident or split-second decision making mistake. It was a deliberate act of cruelty. It was also not Mohr’s first deliberate act of cruelty — and there was a pattern to her violence. Evidence at trial showed that Mohr had previously released her dog on a Black teenager sleeping in a hammock in his own backyard. In another incident Mohr had threatened the relatives of a fugitive that she would let her dog attack their “black asses” if they did not tell her where he was.
In 2020 - the same year that a law enforcement officer slowly, casually, and agonizingly squished the life out of George Floyd - Trump forgave Mohr for her vicious act and provided her with a pardon. A pardon does not erase the record of a crime. But it does offers forgiveness to the perpetrator by the president of the United States.
You’ll forget the dog attack incidence soon enough and eventually you’ll forget about Renee Nicole Good, although her friends and family never will. So why did I choose to write about these two events? Because they’re connected. It is unlikely that Trump would have deployed ICE to Minneapolis if the fraudsters had been White. And it is unlikely that he would have forgiven Mohr if Mendez had likewise been White.
I used to I have a friend, Kerby, from my days in Vietnam. We flew together on Marine Corps Boeing CH – 46 helicopters as arial gunners. In later years he used to tell me with a bit of anger that the reason I saw racism everywhere is because I was constantly looking. But that’s not the reason I see racism everywhere. I see it everywhere because here in America it IS everywhere.
It bothered me when Kerb voted for Trump in 2015. Trump hadn’t tried to hide the fact that he was a racist. He bragged about it. He used it for leverage. But when Kerby started to wag his finger at me and tell me that Black people contributed to their own problems by burning down their own schools, the friendship was over. Martin Luther King used to say that riots were, “The voice of people that were otherwise not heard” and God knows there have been many race riots in this country. A lot of buildings have been burned down. But in the Black community churches and schools are sacred. They are not burned down.
So today I wrote about those two events that will soon pass from your memory to help you understand how deeply America’s Thing With Race is baked into the foundation of America. Again, I ain’t gonna lie. I don’t like living in the country the way it is. But I’m not moving. I’m staying and fighting for the democracy and the constitution that I believe in. Here at the Civil conversation project we’re doing what we can to fix it…to fix America’s most intractable, widespread, and devastating problem. Race. If you are in a position where you can help us, please help. We could use your support.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/renee-nicole-good-minneapolis-ice.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pardons-former-officer-convicted-023614957.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/29/trump-pardons-stephanie-mohr-prince-georges/
There's another thread of racism in this incident that you didn't mention here. Renee Good is not the first person who was killed by Ice. So why is this the incident that is inflaming the nation so much more than the others? I guess it's possible that there's another reason but it seems pretty obvious that it's because she was WHITE.
Brilliant breakdown of how enforcement disparity actually works in practice. The parallel between the Mohr pardon and this shooting exposes something I've seen firsthand in public policy work: discretionary enforcement almost always skews along racial lines, even when the rules technically apply to everyone. It's kinda depressing how selectve prosecution can mask itself as "law and order" while fundamentally being neither.