Shortly after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday, city leaders began looking into whether the officer had violated state criminal law.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, “We collectively are going to do everything possible to get to the bottom of this, to get justice, and to make sure that there is an investigation that is conducted in full.” Police Chief Brian O’Hara followed up by saying that the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is “investigat[ing] whether any state laws within the state of Minnesota have been violated.”

If they conclude that state law has been violated, the question is: What next? Contrary to recent assertions from some federal officials, states can prosecute federal officers for violating state criminal laws, and there is precedent for that.

  • OshagHennessey@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    They could. But they won’t. That would be more than just token resistance. Everybody knows the Dems are paid by corporations to only resist with words, motions, committees, and meaningless votes.

    If we want accountability, we’re going to have to demand it, like after George Floyd.

    Only once it becomes cheaper to appease us than resist us, will we be appeased.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    Look what it took to get Chauvin prosecuted. If we want pigs to face justice, we have to speak at a volume they can hear us in their mansions.

    • Cruel@programming.dev
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      20 hours ago

      Chauvin wasn’t assaulted with what’s legally considered a dangerous weapon. So this case would be much harder. Unprecedented, really.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Not an american but seems like US’ case law is very much precedented here. I don’t have a source at hand but there has been at least a dozen similar cases all sided with the victims. Even official training of ICE explicitly says “do not stand in front of the vehicle ever”.

        If there’s no justice here then it’s entirely on lack of will rather than law.

        • Cruel@programming.dev
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          5 hours ago

          Every case people cite are civil lawsuits for excessive force. And people usually don’t prevail, especially when an officer is actually in the process of being assaulted.

          At most, her family could get a settlement for damages for excessive force. But criminal charges are what would be pretty unprecedented.

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            I think it’s moot to discuss this without bringing up the actual law cases and I’m not going to lie - I’m a bit too lazy and this is too depressing for me to sacrifice my time for.

            My faith in US’ justice system is not great though so you might very well be right.

      • garretble@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        By the logic the government has tried to push on this murder, people should be able to shoot into the vehicles of ICE thugs when they try to drive through protest crowds. We’ve seen that on video plenty of times in the last year.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Chauvin wasn’t assaulted

        That’s not what he claimed at the time. A big part of every cop-killer story is the allegation that the person they murdered prompted the killing. Chauvin insisted through his entire defense that Floyd lashed out at him in his final moments, right before he spontaneously died of a drug induced heart attack.

        We’ve got video clear as day of the ICE agent casually walking up to the car and plugging the woman in the face. This was a mother who’d just dropped her child off at daycare, not some marauding vehicular anti-ICE assassin. She was given seconds to respond to a command and butchered for failing to act fast enough.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        17 hours ago

        I hope that you never find yourself opposite an asshole cop who doesn’t care whether you actually pose any danger to them.

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Yeah sure.

    How many National Guard went to jail for the Kent State massacre?

    Zero. Four murdered, 9 maimed.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Can’t prosecute someone of they can just walk out of the state unimpeded. Has he been detained in Minneapolis, even? He’s certainly not under arrest. We’d have heard about that.

    Remember that Kyle Rittenhouse was allowed to leave Kenosha, Wisconsin and drive all the way back to Illinois without city or state officials lifting a finger. After turning himself in, he was let out on bail and - not long after - spotted

    at a bar with his mother in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, drinking beers and posing for pictures alongside five men who sang “Proud of Your Boy”, a song used by members of the far-right Proud Boys political organization. In one photo with two of them, Rittenhouse flashed an “OK” sign, a hand gesture that some have associated with white supremacists

    And this was just some vigilante asshole, not a badged up capo in the Trump Army.

    • collar@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Can’t prosecute someone of they can just walk out of the state unimpeded

      Yes you can. You could issue a warrant for the person. That has nationwide reach. Rittenhouse left Wisconsin but eventually stood trial there. Not sure what your issue is.

    • phx@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      At this point having other prisoners know he was ICE might be just as bad for him. I don’t the modern SS is popular amongst inmates

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    24 hours ago

    “Should”. Whatever this is just an article nothing is going to happen. Also I don’t really think prosecuting one officer is enough

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      The FBI is taking over the case and as such MN state prosecutors cannot access any evidence. I don’t know if they can prosecute a case based on just the videos taken from bystanders, but typically there’s a lot more to a legal case.

      If the FBI takes over the investigation it will land on the desks of podcasters and grifters who have already gone all-in to protect their bosses from being investigated for raping children, so I don’t think we’re going to see anything satisfying happen here.

      I don’t know how many innocent people have to die or what skin color they need to have before people will broadly start to seriously think about regime change on our terms.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      23 hours ago

      “Should” typically means “must” in the legal sense.

      But also consider that getting ICE to leave their agent out to dry would would go a ways in breaking their sense of invulnerability. Same dynamic as getting a police union to dump a cop in the courts.

      • LogicalFallacy@lemmy.zip
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        21 hours ago

        That’s why the mayor and government should arrest first and ask questions later. The guy is clearly a flight risk, armed, and dangerous. Likely has a criminal record as well.

  • myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    Could. But they won’t. And if they do, Trump will pardon him. I mean, he can’t. But he will. And no one will stop him.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      He’s most likely being put up in a hotel with his family and hidden from public while the administration hires the biggest legal team they can and they’ve probably already started shopping for boats for Clarence Thomas ahead of time in case it heads to the Supreme Court.

      It’s absolutely maddening because as you browse the internet broadly, there are still people who either looked at the video and “still can’t decide what happened” or have refused to watch it and are open that they haven’t watched and won’t watch it, yet are still going to bat for a brute squad who would put a bullet in their heads just as easily as anyone else.

      A lot of people have zero interest still, and it wasn’t always like this. If this kind of thing had happened in the 90’s, it would be a national incident that would have led to entire cities being shut down for civil disobedience and rioting. Something is harming all of our minds, something happened to our country on a deeper level than just the creeping tentacles of fascism, something is harming our very being and sense of agency and it’s highly disturbing.

      The only reason we have our country being taken away by a dictator who wants to go to war with europe and dispose of his opposition is because broadly most people just don’t give a fuck about anything. You see it here in places like Lemmy with younger people who are utterly cynical and discourage activism or even hoping for a better future. You see it in exit-polling from the last federal election which despite having the highest voter turnout percentage in history, most people broadly had no idea who to vote for or who represented what. You see it when you try to order a hamburger and the 22-year-old cashier stares straight ahead looking tuned-out or confused. You see it on late-night comedy television where the audience just laughs on command at “jokes” about how France is preparing to fight a war with the US.

      We’re all gonna die if you guys don’t put down the phones and tablets and keyboards and start talking to each other face-to-face. Your brains are being rotted out of your skulls and nobody is DOING anything about it. We’re going to lose EVERYTHING.

      • Contextual Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        You’re wrong about about what’s causing the apathy and disinterest. It’s not being caused by phones and tablets, social media addiction, or doomscrolling. Those are symptoms of the real problem.

        That 22 year old cashier is zoning out because that’s their 2nd or 3rd job, and they’re exhausted. Those folks who refuse to watch the video? Some of them simply can’t, because they’re burnt out from just trying to survive. Those cynical kids with no hope for the future? After 2 recessions and a pandemic, that’s kept them out of the jobs market, I can’t blame them.

        A lot of people are struggling to survive. Struggling to ensure they can keep a roof over their head, struggling to afford groceries, struggling to afford that car they need to get to the 2 or 3 jobs they work.

        The cost of living is ridiculous now, and wages are stagnant. A large amount of people are simply surviving. All their energy is going to getting their basic needs met, and not all are able to meet those needs. They can’t spare the attention to care about the rest of the world, when they are worrying about which bill to pay and which can wait. Or how to keep that car running just a bit longer until they can get it fixed.

        Trump and his goons are absolutely taking advantage of this too. Don’t fight back, or we’ll make things worse. Argue with us and we’ll take away that benefit you’re using to survive. So you’re absolutely right when you say something has to be done. And the sooner, the better. But understand that for those folks we are talking about, they won’t be able to help. Not yet. Unfortunately, things will have to get worse before they are forced to act. And not “ICE is killing more people” worse. It’ll be “I’m getting evicted, I can barely afford to eat, and a lot of people I know are the same.”

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          I will agree that the system is now a cycle, that it’s now self-sustaining apathy that breeds exploitation that breeds apathy, etc. It’s a downward spiral, but I will not budge that our dead internet of mindless dopamine hits isn’t a strong link in that chain of despair or a major factor in people’s lack of willingness to organize to actually address those problems that are making people want to escape reality. To say nothing of what it’s done to our atomized perspectives and inability to agree on a shared world anymore.

          But that aside, the crux of what I’m talking about is community. In other times, we were much better as a species and society at creating community that reinforces both the laws of the land and provides us with opportunities to either change the system or to reinforce it and help each other. Whether or not you think that doomscrolling is responsible or not for the conditions we’re in, it’s absolutely keeping us divided and isolated and alone. We are a species wired to have face-to-face socialization and it’s on the decline. Rates of young relationships are dropping like a rock, birth rates are dropping, people don’t go out and hang out and enjoy being around each other anymore because we all have a billion voices of strangers stomping around in our heads making us fear and hate each other and ourselves. Social pressure is what drives people to want to make better choices, it’s what drives people to want to not look stupid so they will be pushed to learn about issues and ideas. Social pressure is a stronger guiding hand for morality and ethics than any legal or religious system. Instead of nurturing community we all have discord servers with other self-diagnosed people unwilling to answer the phone or even say hi to a stranger.

          This might not be the only problem we have, but it’s a huge one and we’re broadly not addressing it or caring how much harm it’s doing, and people, particularly in places like this, will feel so triggered by the mere suggestion that their online habits are depriving them of a better world and more opportunities that they’ll rage and drop essays about how much being online all the time has helped them, and then 5 minutes later make another post in another forum talking about how lonely and depressed they are. Make it make sense.

          • Contextual Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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            14 hours ago

            I agree with you about the harms social media causes. It’s not helping matters at all, and actively harms people. But so does alcohol. Drinking can relax people, make them feel numb and happy for a short while. Doesn’t help them at all. But we don’t point the finger at alcohol, we say it’s a symptom of a larger problem. In this case I’m saying social media consumption is the same, just a symptom of a larger problem.

            And like alcohol, it doesn’t actually help at all. It just takes a person’s mind off their problems for a while. It lets them unplug and just mindlessly scroll Tiktok or Instagram. Say stupid shit on Twitter.

            Building community is an answer to this problem. Arguing on the internet is like yelling at the void, where speaking in person tends to make someone think more and be more mindful of what they say, since the repercussions are immediate and right on front of you. And it’s just better for the person too, getting to feel that connection to other people.

            The problem though, is that it takes a lot more effort, time, and money to participate in community. The people I’m talking about, simply can’t. They don’t have that time, energy, or money. They can’t afford to meet friends for dinner, even at each other’s homes. They can’t go meet friends at a nearby park because they’re exhausted from work. They can’t go hang out at a friend’s place because of the time commitment. The couple of hours they might have at the end of the day is spent browsing simply because it’s low energy and doesn’t cost them anything more. It’s the only thing that lets them unwind, or unplug, or blow off some steam.

            I think the answer is to have the community meet these people where they are. That’s a huge undertaking though, which is probably why we haven’t seen very much of it yet. But it’s going to be sorely needed.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          Good comment. You see a lot of why dont all Americans just strike? type comments from people living in countries with workers protections.