The killing of Alex Pretti is a grim turning point |
By this point, you’ve probably seen the videos — or at least heard about what’s in them. They show a man named Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who is filming ICE activity in Minneapolis, intervening when federal agents assault a woman. In response, the agents grab Pretti, force him to the ground, beat him, and ultimately shoot the defenseless man repeatedly. Pretti was pronounced dead on the scene.
The footage of Pretti’s killing, shot from different angles by different bystanders, looks disturbingly similar to scenes in places like Syria and Iran — where people rising up against authoritarian regimes were silenced by baton and bullet. The resonance is especially chilling given the Trump administration’s response.
In a well-functioning liberal democracy, acts of official brutality against citizens are taken seriously by public officials. Yet the Trump administration responded almost immediately by smearing Pretti and lionizing his killer. In its statement on the incident, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Pretti was armed and was “violently resisting” arrest — that the officer who killed the man “fired defensive shots.” Stephen Miller called Pretti “a domestic terrorist [who] tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”
These are verifiable lies — the same kind of lies deployed against Renee Good when she too was killed by federal agents. While Pretti was indeed armed, carrying a gun openly is legal in Minnesota, and he had a permit to do so. At the beginning of the incident, he is holding a cell phone; at no point does he draw his gun. In fact, independent analysis of the footage confirmed that federal agents had secured Pretti’s gun before firing on him.
So it’s not only that federal agents kill an American citizen like........