Who's to Blame in Minnesota? Five Cases Involving Police Shooting at Cars
For a long time, there was little data about police shooting at cars, let alone rules. Recently it's become controversial, but courts still vary wildly in their rulings. Five key cases
America is exploding in protests in the wake of the ICE shooting of Renee Good, with people mostly falling into two camps. One side stresses Good’s reported role as an “ICE Watch” activist whose car blocked a road and appeared to hit the gas with an officer in front of her. Another stresses Good’s unarmed status and the fact that the ICE officer appeared to fire even after the threat passed, with many politicians already declaring the shooting a “murder” in “cold blood.”
The history of cases involving law enforcement shooting at moving cars is remarkably varied. A review of them, guided by interviews with experts and police, suggests a truth nobody wants to hear: both parties were not just in the wrong, but obviously so.
Pedro Serrano, now retired, was a long-serving New York City police officer, famous for honesty. His recording of an inspector’s instruction to target “male blacks, fourteen to twenty” in random street stops helped end the “Stop and Frisk” regime in New York City. Serrano loved the job and took pride in doing good police work, and he felt Stop-and-Frisk wasn’t that. His first observation about Renee Good was blunt.
“She should not have been there,” Serrano said. “If there’s a federal convoy and you’re trying to stop it, you’re breaking the law. When a cop pulls you over and says to get out the car and you don’t, you’re breaking the law. When you try to flee from a cop, you’re breaking the law. And when you try to run a cop over, you’re breaking the law. She shouldn’t have paid for it that way. But she was not right, in my opinion.”
The ICE officer, identified in reports as Jonathan Ross, also came in for serious criticism from Serrano. New York City officers, like officers in many big cities, are trained not to shoot at moving cars at all, unless there’s a direct threat to life. The ICE officer in Serrano’s view however violated a more fundamental rule.
“Someone trained this cop wrong,” he said. “He walked in front of the car. Never should you ever stand in front of a car. You don’t walk behind the trunk, because they put it in reverse, they crush you. In front, they put it in drive and run you over. Who’s going to win, you or the car? Not you. This guy, I think he was asking for it, like, ‘I dare you to try to run me over so I can shoot you.’”
His summation was brutal:
