Federal agents, leaders defy practices honed by police for decades

Drawing on decades of experience after dealing with the beating of Rodney King, the killing of George Floyd and more, American law enforcement leaders, civil rights advocates and other legal experts have developed best practices for police officers who make street arrests, conduct crowd control and protect public safety during mass protests.

Officers are trained not to stand in front of or reach in front of moving vehicles, to never draw their firearms unless absolutely necessary, and to use force only proportional to the corresponding threat. They are trained to identify themselves clearly, de-escalate tensions, respect the sanctity of life, and quickly help anyone they injure.

When police shootings occur, leaders are trained to carefully preserve evidence and immediately launch an investigation (or multiple investigations) to reassure the community that any possible wrongdoing by police officers will be fairly evaluated.

It has become increasingly clear in recent days, according to many of those same leaders and experts, that those standards are being ignored — if not completely discarded — by federal immigration agents who have descended on American cities at the behest of President Trump and the administration officials tasked with overseeing operations.

Experts said agents seriously violated those standards, both in small, increasingly routine ways and in sudden, stunning outbursts, such as the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, with no apparent concern or investigative oversight from the administration.

Agents enter homes without permission, swarm moving vehicles through the streets, and escalate clashes with protesters by using excessive force; Meanwhile, department leaders and administration officials justify their actions with simplistic, flippant rhetoric rather than careful, sophisticated investigations.

“This is a terrible disappointment,” former Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said. “These tactics – if you call them that – are a far cry from contemporary policing standards.”

“This is not law enforcement, this is terrorism enforcement,” said Connie Rice, a longtime civil rights attorney who has worked on LAPD reforms for decades. “They follow no laws, no training. It’s just banditry.”

“They are using excessive force against suspects and protesters, detaining and arresting people without lawful justification, violating the 1st Amendment rights of protesters and observers,” said Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor.

“These types of tactics harm all law enforcement, not just federal law enforcement, even though states and localities do not want such tactics and, frankly, have moved away from them for years, recognizing that they undermine trust in communities and ultimately undermine public safety missions,” said Vanita Gupta, assistant attorney general under President Biden and head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama.

The White House said Trump “does not want any American to lose their lives on the streets”, believes what happened to Pretti is a “tragedy” and calls for an “honorable and honest investigation”. But administration officials also defended the immigration crackdown and the federal agents involved; He accused protesters of interfering with law enforcement operations and critics of endangering agents. But many of those critics said it was the tactics that put police officers in danger.

Gupta said Trump’s wave of immigration has “deeply strained the critical partnerships” that local, state and federal law enforcement often have with each other and put local leaders in an “incredibly challenging position” in their communities.

“State and local chiefs have to spend 365 days a year building trust and establishing legitimacy in their communities … and the result is an influx of federal agents who are out of control in their communities and creating extremely unsafe conditions on the ground,” Gupta said. “That’s why you’re seeing more and more chiefs and former chiefs speaking out.”

Moore said the tactics were to “unnecessarily expose these agents to harm, physical harm, as well as provoke an emotional response and lose legitimacy with the public that they say they are there to protect as an institution.”

Problems on the field

Good was fatally shot as he tried to walk away from a chaotic scene involving federal agents. The Trump administration said the officer who shot him was in danger of being run over. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good, 37, of being a “domestic terrorist” without any evidence.

Experts questioned why the group of agents crowded into Good’s vehicle, why the officer who fired was positioned in front of the vehicle, and whether the officer was in danger of being shot, given that Good was steering away from him. They particularly questioned his subsequent shots at a passing car.

According to best policing practices, officers will never shoot at moving vehicles except in emergencies and are trained to avoid putting themselves in harm’s way. “You don’t put yourself in that situation because you have the option of getting the license plate number and then going and arresting them if you think they’re violating the law,” said Carol Sobel, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney who has been a pioneer of police reform for decades.

Moore said he was trained in the 1980s to avoid entering moving vehicles, but 40 years later, immigration agents saw “these tactics used not just once but multiple times.”

Pretti was shot and killed while trying to protect a woman who was violently pushed to the ground by an immigration officer who also sprayed her with an irritating chemical. The Trump administration said Pretti had a gun and that the officers acted in self-defense. Noem claimed, without evidence, that Pretti, also 37, “attacked” the agents and “brandished” the gun, while White House counsel Stephen Miller claimed Pretti “tried to kill federal agents.”

Experts questioned why the agents acted so aggressively toward the woman Pretti was trying to help, and why they reacted so violently (with a gunshot) when she was surrounded by agents, on the ground, and already unarmed.

Moore said the officer who pushed the woman used “brute force rather than de-escalation” and that spraying irritants was never appropriate to deal with the “passive resistance” that appeared to involve the woman and Pretti.

In both shootings, experts questioned why the agents wore masks and failed to provide aid and lamented the hasty decision-making by Trump administration officials.

Gupta said immigration officers’ tactics were “out of line” with local, state and federal policing standards and were “offensive to all the work that has been done” to establish those standards.

Bernard Parks, another former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said videos from the two incidents and other recent immigration operations make clear that agents were “totally untrained” for the operation, which he called “ill-conceived, ill-trained” and “completely lacking in common sense and decency.”

Ed Obayashi, an expert on police use of force, said that although the agents’ actions in the two shootings were under investigation, it was “clear” that Trump administration officials did not follow best practices for conducting those investigations.

“The scenes were contaminated, I didn’t see any evidence or anything you could call standard investigative protocols like freezing the scene, checking witnesses, canvassing the neighborhood, supervisors responding to determine what happened,” he said.

The way forward

Last week, California joined other Democratic-led states that have challenged the Minneapolis crackdown in court, arguing that Noem’s department “has mobilized an extraordinary campaign of disregard and disregard for constitutional policing norms and the sanctity of life.”

On Sunday, the International Assn. Police Chiefs, who played a central role in establishing modern policing standards in the United States, said he believes “effective public safety depends on comprehensive training, investigative integrity, commitment to the rule of law, and strong coordination among federal, state, and local partners” and called on the White House to bring those partners together for “policy-level discussions aimed at determining a constructive path forward.”

Governor Gavin Newsom and California Solicitor on Tuesday. General Rob Bonta reminded California law enforcement that they have the necessary authority. right to investigate federal agents For violating state law.

Gupta said the Trump administration has failed to investigate fatal shootings by federal agents, that local and state officials have been “shunned out,” amounted to “impunity” for agents and “put the country in a very dangerous place,” and that state investigators should allow the investigation.

Butler said the situation would certainly improve if agents began to comply with modern policing standards, but problems would remain as long as Trump continues to demand that immigration agents arrest thousands of people every day.

“There is no kind, gentle way to get thousands of people off the streets every day,” he said.