Joseph Rand Some thoughts about ICE and what’s happening in Minnesota right now:
A Nyack resident said that Rand should be paying more attention to Nyack and its problems like infrastructure, homelessness, pan handling and other quality of life issues that have a direct affect on his constituency NOT what is happening 2000 miles away in Minnesota.
No one is saying that people can’t protest against ICE if they want to. The one thing that people forget or don’t want to admit is that once you interfere with law enforcement, and ICE IS law enforcement, whether your agree with them or not, YOU have broken the law. If you attack an officer, regardless of what they are doing, even if you feel it is illegal, YOU CAN be arrested for that. If the officer feels their life is in imminent danger of being taken, they CAN use deadly physical force against the attacker. The law is that the person who is being attacked has to have a reasonable feeling that their life is in IMMEDIATE danger. The intent of the person attacking the person is not an issue here.
It is unfortunate that two people have lost their lives in Minnesota while protesting against the actions of ICE. The thing to remember here is that they had NO LEGAL right to interfere with ICE actions. One other thing that people do in these situations is AUTOMATICALLY blame the police for the incident. People need to let the investigation of the incident take place BEFORE jumping to conclusions. If the officer is wrong, he/she should face the consequences. If they were right then they should not face any actions by ANYONE.
Nyack Mayor Joe Rand decided to post his OPINION about the situation with ICE in Minnesota. After reading this post it seems that his claims were all on the side of the protesters. As Jay Maymi said in a comment on this post, “Accountability? Transparency? Joe, not looking to pick a fight with you here but I wonder if you were asking for the same things during the previous administration?”
Rand said, “I support law enforcement.” The general tone of this post is anti – ICE and anti-law enforcement. He claims that this is not law enforcement. But the one thing he fails to talk about is way the law looks at self-defense (as I mentioned earlier) His statements blame the Trump administration and the ICE agents as
I have immense respect for law enforcement professionals and the difficult, vital work they do every day to protect our communities and uphold the rule of law. And that includes DHS agents who protect our borders and enforce our immigration laws.
But what we’re getting from ICE right now is not law enforcement. Instead, we are seeing a corrupted federal agency empowering unscreened, untrained, and undisciplined bullies and thugs who are routinely violating the constitution, a masked occupying army running amok in a great American city.
We absolutely need to protect our borders, and I fully support efforts to enforce our laws, especially to jail and/or deport criminally violent undocumented individuals.
But the Trump administration has absolutely broken its campaign promises to prioritize hardened criminals. Instead, they’re instituting deportation quotas, a “quantity over quality” approach that incentives ICE agents to make as many arrests as possible regardless of an individual’s danger to society. That was not what they promised.
And that’s what’s causing the atrocities we’ve witnessed in Minneapolis. We’ve all seen the videos. In just the past few weeks, federal immigration agents have been involved in multiple shootings in Minneapolis, including the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, wife, and mother, whom videos show was shot as she tried to drive away from a confrontation with an ICE officer. Indeed, the shot that killed her came through the side window, when the officer was clearly not in any danger.
Rand is right about there were shots that came through the side window. What he doesn’t point out is that in a SEPARATE VIDEO the first shot was at the windshield, as is states below. Just because she was veering away from him when two shots went through the side window doesn’t mean that Ross didn’t have a REASONABLE BELIEF that she was heading towards him putting his life in danger when he fired the first shot.
The fact that the NYT and ABC News, not exactly pro ICE or Trump administration said this, lends a lot of credibility to the officers’ actions.
Keeping his phone in his left hand, Ross drew his gun, leaned forward, and fired three shots at Good in the departing SUV in under one second, all hitting her, at 09:37:13. He remained upright on the left of the SUV as it passed. According to separate video analyses by The New York Times and ABC News, Ross fired the first shot at the SUV’s windshield and the second and third shots through the driver’s side window.
An Elise Stefanik Facebook post explains some things that those CURRENT Anti – Ice protestors will not tell you:
And just yesterday we all witnessed the killing of Alex Pretti, another citizen who was a nurse with the Veterans Administration. Again, we can all see what happened in the video. He was filming the agents and attempting to assist others when he was swarmed, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and ultimately shot multiple times by an ICE agent. Yes, he was carrying a gun, because he had a license (and a Second Amendment right to bear it), but he never brandished that gun or threatened to use it. Moreover, an agent had already taken away the gun when Pretti was shot. He was, in fact, unarmed at the time he was shot. 10 times.
Video recordings of the incident showed Pretti filming law enforcement agents with his phone and directing traffic. Pretti stood between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around the woman. He was subsequently pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several federal agents, with around six surrounding him when he was shot and killed. Bystander video verified and reviewed by Reuters, the BBC, the The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press appears to show an agent removing a gun and moving away from Pretti less than a second before another agent fires at him; AP reported a voice is heard saying “gun, gun” right before the first shot.
A bystander video showed that a gun that was removed, The question is, was it the gun that Pretti had or the one from the agent’s holster after someone yelled GUN, GUN?
But it’s not just those two shootings. It’s the stopping of people on the street and demanding their “papers” without any probable cause other than their accent. It’s breaking into houses without a warrant. It’s detaining children to punish parents.
I don’t care whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, conservative or liberal. This is simply not acceptable in a civilized, free society.
Not the shootings., not the beatings, not the pepper-spraying of harmless protestors, not the detaining of little children, not the brazen incompetence.
Not the lies, not the gaslighting, not the Orwellian “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears” commands of Kristi Noem and her unfathomably incompetent organization.
None of it.
This isn’t tough policing. It’s not border control. It’s not immigration enforcement. It’s what you see in totalitarian, fascist states that oppress their people, but never thought could happen here.
But it is indeed happening here.
And it has to stop. If you think that it was a justified shooting, then fine — let’s have a real investigation, one that the Trump administration is blocking. Let’s let law enforcement review this, prosecutors decide whether to charge it, and if necessary let the judge/jury adjudicate. That’s what’s generally done in these types of shootings, and I can’t see why we’d treat this differently.
We deserve accountability.
We deserve transparency.
We deserve law enforcement that respects the law.
And we deserve justice.
There are people who disagree with Rand and call out his evaluation of the ICE situation:
Accountability? Transparency? Joe, not looking to pick a fight with you here but I wonder if you were asking for the same things during the previous administration?
I agree with a number of points you make in this post (overreaction by the officers, for sure) but fair and balanced means you are fair and balanced. Don’t ask for accountability and transparency in this situation if you didn’t ask for it in the prior administration’s numerous situations where accountability and transparency was lacking. Make sense?
Everything has a cause and effect. Why are we here in this terrible place today? An important question that should be thought of an answered critically not politically.
I don’t know, call me crazy but I still believe in calling balls and strikes no matter who the team is.
Zero accountability for Frey/Waltz? These aren’t “peaceful protesters”. The country is in this position because of the previous administration. If you wish to discuss gaslighting/lying: “The borders are secure” said by JB, Kamala, Mayorkas etc…. Remember that?? Has anyone ever heard of “cause and effect”?
If you or anyone else can’t see “fault” for the actions in Minnesota ‘s pathetic so-called leadership then you are just dishonest.
People are making poor decisions going to law enforcement operations to assault, disrupt and perform illegal actions against law enforcement, yes ICE is law…Why is that acceptable behavior?
All or at least the majority of blue states or blue cities in red states are allowing the public to interfere with federal law enforcement operations. In fact, it’s being promoted.
Does anyone actually believe if Kamala won the election that anything would have been done about these savage criminals all around our country?? She was part of the weakest presidential administration that caused this mess.
Don’t just be another politician Joe Rand. Be honest and exploit the poor decisions on both sides and not just one.
For the record, I’m not suggesting that ICE or any other law enforcement agency are without fault.
If you are gonna be honest, this wasn’t a well-rounded post. It is one sided. Be better, be different and be honest even if it’s against your party……
Consider trying to be at least respected by everyone and not just democrats.