CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller, has questioned the narrative ICE is rolling out to justify the deadly shooting of a mother in Minneapolis.
On Wednesday, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer on a residential street in Minneapolis, where more than 2,000 federal officers and agents have been deployed to conduct raids for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. Good’s six-year-old son is now an orphan.
Video from the crime scene shows an ICE agent shouting for Good to get out of the “f—ing car” as he approached her Honda SUV on a residential street. The officer attempted to open the driver’s door as Good’s vehicle began to move forward. She was then reportedly shot at least three times through the window of her vehicle, which then crashed into another car.
President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security have placed the blame for Good’s death directly on the victim, claiming she tried to drive into multiple ICE agents before an unidentified officer fatally shot her. Video of the event, however, disputes their account.
Speaking on Anderson Cooper 360 on Wednesday, Miller pointed out how the video shows the officer placing himself in front of the moving vehicle, which he says created a situation where “this is almost bound to happen, the car starts to move forward, you’re going to perceive that as a threat.”
Miller said audio from the footage reveals there were three shots fired at Good’s vehicle.
“That is basically against DHS policy, which is… you‘re not supposed to shoot at a moving vehicle,” Miller said, adding it is “inherently dangerous” and “usually ineffective.”
He said DHS policy stated that “law enforcement officers are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle… unless the use of deadly force against the operator is justified.”
According to Miller, the policy also states that if you are forced to shoot at a moving vehicle, you must also consider what could happen if you shoot the driver of a car as it is moving.
“What is the danger to others?,” Miller said of the tactical considerations an officer must make. “From a tactical standpoint, was this a smart way to operate?”
Miller came to CNN after a role as the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence & Counterterrorism. He has also held high-ranking positions within the FBI and LAPD, as well as working as a correspondent for CBS and ABC News, where he managed to secure an interview with Osama bin Laden in 1998.
Miller found one piece of intel delivered by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem particularly “fascinating”: she claimed that the officer who fired the deadly shots had been rammed by another vehicle in June and dragged for approximately 50 yards.
“We haven‘t isolated what incident that was or where it was,” Miller said. “And we are aware from past descriptions of encounters with people in vehicles and ICE that they have a tendency at DHS, at least on the headquarters level, to exaggerate the occurrence.”
Miller noted that in addition to determining whether the officer’s actions were within DHS policy, “there’s the legal part, which is: was it criminal?”
For her part, Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” by Good. She also deflected any criticism of the ICE officer who killed the U.S. citizen, calling it an act of self-defense.
“What happened was our ICE officers were out on an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis,” Noem said, despite no released video of the incident showing any vehicles or officers stuck in the snow.
Trump backed up Noem’s account of the incident, saying Good was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.”
CNN’s Law Enforcement Analyst Jonathan Wackrow pointed out that the ICE officers in the released video did not make any verbal commands to Good.
“There was no ‘Show me your hands, put your car in park,’ there was no identification of police,” he said. “It’s implied by their markings, but there were moments this could have stopped.”
Wackrow also seemed dubious of Noem’s insistence that the officer killed Good to protect his own life as well as the lives of the officers around him.
“The rest of them seem shocked,” Wackrow said.
“You had the license plate, you know who this is, pick her up later,” he added. “It’s not worth the consequences that could happen from this, but it did [happen].”
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