El Salvador had serious and deadly gang problems. They then heavily cracked down on crime while reaching out to youth with programs offering alternatives to a life of crime. The crime crackdown came with human rights issues and a weakening of democracy.
The Minneapolis police chief said that ICE’s irresponsible behavior is creating great strain on the city’s police force. So is people’s aggressive antagonization and anger at ICE.
Viewing the incident where the ICE officer killed a woman, the chief said ICE officers appeared to create a situation that was dangerous and acted against good policing.
He made tough progress to rebuild the Minneapolis police department after the George Floyd protests, and he fears that ICE tactics are going to create a huge setback.
“For locals, the guard members’ effect on crime remains debatable, but the accompanying checkpoints and stops have been uncontroversially disruptive. The oddest part of the spectacle is captured in the photos that follow. Uniformed and armed men and women from across the country can be seen all over the city wielding leaf blowers, hoses, and brooms as they do municipal chores—tasks for which they are surely overqualified.
The deployment is costing taxpayers between $1 million and $1.5 million per day. But over Thanksgiving weekend, the cost rose sharply: A close-range ambush near Farragut Square killed 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and left 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in critical condition. The Trump administration immediately pledged to send in 500 more guard members. This act will further scramble the already confused logic about the necessity and utility of National Guard presence in American cities.”
“Minnesota officials said Thursday that federal law enforcement are freezing out state investigators from the investigation into the deadly ICE-related shooting of a 37-year-old woman.”
“According to the suit, the agents were patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2020, in response to civil unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd just 10 days earlier. The agents were allegedly confronted by a mob that included “hostile” individuals and young children. In an effort to de-escalate the situation, the lawsuit states, the agents took a knee.
“As a result of their tactical decision to kneel, the mass of people moved on without escalating to violence,” states the suit, which contrasts the tactic favorably against the actions of British soldiers at the 1770 Boston Massacre. “Plaintiffs did not need to discharge their firearms that day. Plaintiffs saved American lives.”
…
The lawsuit alleges that almost immediately upon becoming director of the bureau, Patel began working to terminate all agents that had kneeled on June 4, 2020 — and it goes so far as to argue that the agents would not have been fired had they had the same perceived political affiliations as those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
“NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has agreed to remain atop the nation’s largest police department once mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes over in January.
Her decision caps months of speculation over whether the high-society scion would work for a democratic socialist mayor and creates immediate tension for the embryonic administration.”
It is not normal for the justice department or the FBI to release the internal files of an investigation. Such files have lots of speculations and falsehoods in them, and releasing them can falsely destroy people’s reputations.
“The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, with only a handful of exceptions: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” In practice, though, grand juries rarely fail to indict. The entire process is nonadversarial, meaning prosecutors make their case to jurors without an opposing attorney making any counterarguments, and the burden of proof is much lower than it would be at trial. As the old saw has it, a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But failing to get indictments has been a hallmark of the second Trump administration.”
“President Donald Trump has sought to justify the summary execution of suspected drug smugglers by arguing that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with criminal organizations that supply prohibited intoxicants. Yet the Trump administration also insists that U.S. forces are not engaging in “hostilities” when they blow up boats believed to be carrying illegal drugs.
Those positions are consistent with Trump’s disregard for legal limits on his use of the military to prosecute a literalized war on drugs. But they are otherwise hard to reconcile with each other, and their implications underline the immorality and lawlessness of his bloodthirsty antidrug tactics.”