By now, you’ve all witnessed plenty of ink and airspace devoted to the murder of a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis, which occurred Jan. 7, and it was a cold-blooded murder, by any definition.
Thanks to video footage, we’re all able to see what occurred. The victim, Renee Nicole Good, was attempting to drive away from a scene where agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were on site. Good’s killer, later identified by the Minnesota Star Tribune as Jonathan Ross, has since been lionized by some of the more extreme voices on the political right, and even made potentially wealthy through a Go Fund Me drive, whereas Good has been a victim, again, of posthumous character assassination by those same voices, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
Ross is heard calling Good a “f---king b---ch,” after firing three shots into her car, and fatally wounding her. This action, and many other incidents as of late, have raised grave concerns about the training and accountability of ICE.
All of this seems a world away from here in rural east Texas. I’m willing to bet that most people reading this newspaper haven’t set foot in Minneapolis in a long time, if at all, ever, but the concerns of its citizens are very real, with ICE presence within the city. Officials such as Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have weighed in, and while many of us down here in Texas, more than 1,000 miles away, can pick sides and surmise the situation, we’re not there, so we can’t assess it first-hand.
The function of law enforcement within a society such as ours is to serve and protect life and uphold the law, but the killing of Renee Good illustrates a breakdown of that principle. Many analyses of the footage attest that Ross fired at her while he was not under an imminent threat, and while recording the incident on his phone.
The claim that she attempted to run him over with her car seems, from the footage, to be a case of a strong dose of hogwash cut with bull manure, and Ross’s actions appear to be an incident of escalation, instead of de-escalation.
Good was dropping off her youngest child at an elementary school in Minneapolis, which, according to reports was her and her partner’s new home, after having relocated from Kansas City, Missouri. Also, according to reports, she was no activist and had never been charged with anything beyond a single traffic ticket, despite a fabricated criminal history that circulated on social media, thanks to brain-rotted character assassins.
To further the point of character assassination, immediately after the killing, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly characterized the incident as an act of self-defense, with Good cast as a villain; claiming that she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack Ross.
The Department of Justice has declined to investigate the incident, which is a departure from how the feds have handled other high-profile, fatal encounters with law enforcement, such as the 2020 killing of George Floyd, which happened about a mile from where Good was killed.
Public outrage and protests have ensued, and not just in the locale where it happened. Nationwide demonstrations to pay homage to Good, as well as call for transparent accountability for ICE, have taken place, and the heated, ongoing situation in Minneapolis, where ICE presence continues, has continued to cause friction and concern from residents and officials.
To say that Good’s killing has threatened to widen the already huge gap between communities and agents who are supposed to protect them, under a federal mandate, is one of those ridiculously obvious statements. ICE is tasked with enforcing immigration, and its actions range from civil enforcement to deportations. Under President Donald Trump’s current watch, the mandate has been for ICE to remove dangerous illegal aliens, but time after time, video footage demonstrates a lack of training in the methods used by the agents, and numerous incidents of harassment of U.S. citizens, and now this.
Split-second decisions can mean life or death, and without robust training in de-escalation, constitutional policing and emergency medical response, agents who are supposed to protect the public become agents of harm, and even, potentially, killers, like 45-year-old Jonathan Ross.
Training, alone, isn’t sufficient. Accountability must be real and consistent, and unlimited immunity by ICE agents needs to be re-examined by Congress. The DOJ’s refusal to examine Good’s killing also could further embolden misconduct.
All of this might signal a need for change at the top ranks. It might be time to give the boot to Noem, and put the agency in more competent, capable hands. No U.S. citizen wants Trump to fail, or for dangerous criminals to operate, unfettered, but incompetent leadership and poor training within the ICE ranks, as has been apparent, is not boding well for us.
Renee Good was more than a headline, or the butt of unfortunate jokes at the hands of trolls who might have disagreed with her politics. She was a mother, a neighbor to folks, a wife, daughter and friend.
Given what I’ve read about her, she seems like a fascinating, insightful person, and I’m sure there’s many things on which I’d disagree with her, but who cares. I’d much rather, given my druthers, sit down and converse with someone like her than any of the sociopaths in Congress or the White House.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
