GENESEE COUNTY, MI- Imagine being a sheriff who works for the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office and getting involved in an officer-involved shooting similar to the one last week in Minneapolis where a woman struck an ICE officer, who, having reasonable belief that his life was in danger, shot and killed Renee Good, whom leftist politicians and the leftist media are portraying as a girl scout.
Sheriff Chris Swanson, who apparently puts his political aspirations as a Democrat above his status as the head of the sheriff’s department, decided to take sides against the ICE officer, joining such “luminaries” as Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal (clearly a DEI appointment), and Portland police chief Bobby Day. In Day’s case, he didn’t weigh in specifically on the Minneapolis shooting, but shed tears over two Tren de Aragua gang members who were shot by ICE in that city.
In the case of Swanson, he quite obviously didn’t see the various angles of the Good shooting that everyone else in America has seen. Only the most partisan hack can argue that Good was not specifically trying to run the ICE officer down. It was only by the fact that her wheels spun on the ice that she hit the officer with more of a glancing blow. Had that not occurred, she would have hit him directly.
Liberals have tried to paint Good as a “mother of three” who had allegedly just dropped off one of her children at daycare (the only one she has custody of; the other two were left in the custody of their biological father). In fact, Good was an anti-ICE agitator who spent the morning chasing ICE agents around the city and in the case when she was shot, was blocking the roadway, beeping her horn, and dancing around inside the car like some kind of deranged teenager.
Swanson, however, tried to claim that Good was not going toward the ICE agent as she attempted to flee the scene at the urging of her girlfriend, who yelled, “Drive baby, drive…drive” as Good began to speed away.
Swanson, who likely hides in his office all day instead of going out and attempting to deal with brain-dead radicals attacking ICE agents, said he was “disgusted” by what he saw in videos of the altercation.
“Law enforcement is held to the highest standard when it comes to deadly force,” Swanson bloviated.
“It’s called a force continuum. We are there to escalate as force escalates and de-escalate as force de-escalates…we can’t shoot people who are running away. We can’t shoot people who have a gun but aren’t pointing it at anybody. We certainly can’t shoot when we’re not in danger.”
Unfortunately for Swanson, who must have flunked constitutional law class, the standard is the objective reasonableness standard, as ruled in Graham v. Connor, U.S. 386 (1989) and Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985). In other words, if the ICE agent reasonably believed that his life was in immediate danger, the use of lethal force is authorized.
Under Graham, “in deciding whether an officer used excessive force in a certain situation, a court should consider similar factors to those described in the earlier decision of Tennessee v. Garner. These include the severity of the crime, any threat posed by the individual to the safety of officers or other people, and whether the individual is trying to flee or resist arrest.” As described in the case commentary, an officer “must carefully articulate facts and events that made their use of force objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”
In Garner, the court wrote, “...when the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.” Again, they wrote that the act of inflicting harm must be “objectively reasonable” when used to address a threat of serious harm.
In the Minneapolis case, the agent who used deadly force had recently been dragged by a car under similar circumstances and sustained an injury that required 13 stitches. It was objectively reasonable for the agent to believe that his life was in danger, as Good initially backed up a few feet and then accelerated forward at a fast rate of speed. Despite claims by people such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that the car was already moving when the agent stepped in front, that was not the case. It was at a complete stop as numerous videos of the incident show.
Yet Swanson, with the benefit of being a Monday-morning quarterback and someone whose biggest risk of injury is a paper cut, claims that he didn’t think the agent was in danger. That is not up to Swanson to decide. That is up to the agent who had a split-second decision to make.
Swanson’s mention of the force continuum is laughable. Going up against a 4,000-pound vehicle, the agent had no other options. The use of force continuum assumes that you are dealing with someone out on the street, where other options may be available, such as an impact weapon, pepper spray, or a taser. None of those options was reasonable for the ICE agent to use. Swanson called the agent’s use of his firearm “stunning.”
“This is what breaks down trust in law enforcement, across the board,” Swanson said. Everybody pays a price for what you just saw…when you have authority over people, and it’s used as a weapon, not a tool, it hurts all of us.”
It is easy, of course, to understand why Swanson is taking the side of a criminal. He is running to be the Democratic Party nominee for governor. It’s hard to appeal to the left-wing moonbat contingent of the Democratic Party unless you come out against the police, and especially if you come out against the federal government run by the “Evil Orange Man.”
Again, you have to feel sorry for the men and women who serve under this fraud.
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