The Americans are engaged in furious debate over yet another shooting. The debate is highly polarized, one side saying the death was murder, the other saying it was justified. I refer of course to the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week.

Renee Nicole Good was a 37-year old mother of three, a U.S. citizen with no criminal record who described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She had apparently been involved in a demonstration against ICE and was sitting in her vehicle preparing to leave. She failed to get out of her car when ordered by an ICE agent, instead turning her car away from him. Another agent had positioned himself in front of her car, and as the car moved forward he shot her three times at point blank range.

Just how, one must ask, can this possibly warrant a debate? The answer is because ICE supporters insist the agent was justified in shooting Good. He was in fear of his life, they say. Nonsense, says the evidence. A thorough analysis of footage of the incident from three camera angles by The New York Times showed that the moment the agent fires he is standing to the left of the vehicle and the wheels are pointing to the right, away from him.

In any case, did he seriously think that this woman was attempting to kill him in the middle of the afternoon on a public street in the midst of a crowd? What sort of feverish mind would come up with that notion?

This was an atrocity, pure and simple, an atrocity that simply should not occur in a civilized society. There is no justification for shooting Renee Good. The perpetrator should be charged and the authorities should take steps to ensure nothing like this happens again.

President Trump disagrees. He has declared the shooting justified, even before the incident has been properly investigated. And he has also, as he habitually does, lied about it, claiming Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” which she manifestly did not. His vice president has stated that federal agents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution.

Absolute immunity is ridiculous, nonetheless the possibility of bringing the perpetrator to justice doesn’t look good. The investigation is in the hands of the FBI who normally could be counted on to do a thorough and objective job. But these are far from normal times. The FBI is headed by Trump appointee Kash Patel, a lawyer who has promoted such theories as the FBI being responsible for the January 6th insurrection and the 2020 presidential election being fake. His only credential for heading the bureau is total fealty to Trump, and we can expect he will deliver the conclusion his boss wants.

An impartial investigation could have been expected from the state authority, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but that won’t happen. The U.S. attorney’s office has shut the Minnesota authorities out of the case. The Trump administration is going to keep this safely in house. Furthermore, while The Justice Department does not intend to open a criminal civil rights investigation into Good’s killing, incredibly it is investigating her partner! All this has caused half a dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota to resign in disgust.

In the meantime, the administration has brought more ICE agents into Minneapolis, bringing the total to some 2,000, now greatly outnumbering the Minneapolis Police Department’s 600 officers. Apparently the agents already there weren’t provocation enough.

Heavily armed men tramping around your neighbourhood hunting down your neighbours would offend any civilized community. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is simply a blue city in a blue state being taught who’s boss. With Renee Nicole Good as collateral damage.