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One called it murder. Some need more information. How policing experts see the Pretti shooting.
www.nbcnews.com

... The Border Patrol's killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis has revived concerns about whether immigration enforcement officers are properly trained to deal with protesters.

In Alex Pretti's final moments, he was down on all fours on a frigid Minneapolis street, with multiple federal agents on top of him.

One agent emerged from the scrum with a gun taken from Pretti's holster, a bystander's video shows. An instant later, another agent opened fire at point-blank range.

Then more shots were fired, leaving Pretti motionless on the sidewalk.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was soon pronounced dead.

Some policing experts said the shooting appeared unjustified and one said it amounted to murder. Others said they could not form a judgment until they knew more, particularly what threat the agent who fired thought he faced at that moment.

The killing of Pretti, the second fatal shooting by a federal officer in Minneapolis this month, has also revived concerns about whether immigration enforcement officers are properly trained to deal with protesters.

"This video raises a lot of questions," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based organization of current and former law enforcement officials focused on improving policing.

"What happened that made these agents feel threatened? That should be the question that everyone is trying to get to the bottom of."

Whether the killing will be the subject of a thorough investigation remains an open question.

Multiple Trump administration officials have already defended the actions of the Border Patrol agent who opened fire, in some cases making claims that run counter to videos of the confrontation. ...


Was it a negligent discharge.

Nonsense.

As I posted elsewhere, there's closeup video showing the ICE officer shooting him in the back after he saw that the gun had been taken away:
Just watched this analysis of the shooting, including
some video I hadn't seen before.

Male nurse had no gun in his hands, and didn't draw his gun.

The agent shot him after he saw that the gun had been taken away, as it probably didn't even register with him that the guy was now disarmed even though he was looking right at it.

This is why there are protests, Bill Johnson:

www.rawstory.com

Exposed: Probe finds ICE wrongly detained staggering 2,300 people in just 6 months
Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
January 26, 2026 12:14PM ET

#528 Flag: The coward boaz is back to whine, whimper, whine and cry

#2 A most poignant point. Yav:

"It makes me ill that our nation murdered him, in cold blood, in the middle of him showing compassion for another human that was being victimized by out of control goons."

But don't expect any compassion from this list of liars and cowards, Yav.

Like empathy, they are completely lacking in that beautiful, human attribute, compassion.

"In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy." " this quote, taken from Captain G. M. Gilbert, reflects his insights after the Nuremberg Trials.

Like it or not, this is starting to look less like a protest and more like a war zone.

When people aren't just chanting, but actively interfering with arrests, blowing whistles to warn targets, swarming agents, and escalating every encounter, it stops being "free speech" and becomes street conflict.

And once that dynamic takes over, it's only a matter of time before someone gets killed. Not that it's "inevitable," but because chaos plus adrenaline plus weapons always ends the same way.

Instigators don't get to pretend they're innocent when they're deliberately turning every enforcement action into a confrontation.

I don't accept the idea that agents are "out of control" when shots are fired. These are trained professionals operating in a high stakes environment, and when they use force, it's because their training tells them they're dealing with a lethal situation. We may not like the outcome, but this isn't random panic. It's what happens when you mix a volatile crowd, armed resistance and nobody backs down. These agents are trained to kill. It's part of their job description if and when it's needed. I'm not endorsing violence, but like I said, this is becoming a war zone.

The way it went down, it looks like they weren't trying to send him to the hospital. Whatever their intent, they wanted him dead, not wounded

This is exactly how a city spirals. Crowds get bolder, law enforcement gets jumpier, and the gap between "order" and "violence" disappears.

If people really want to prevent more deaths, the answer isn't more hysteria. It's de-escalation and discipline and consequences for anyone who crosses the line into obstruction or violence.

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