Did the ICE officer’s use of force in the killing of Renée Nicole Good meet policy and legal standards?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner examine the killing of Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and poet shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis during a federal enforcement operation. Jacobsen sketches her family life and notes video that appears to show her car moving slowly from a dead stop on ice. Rosner interprets the footage using use-of-force standards, emphasizing that every shot requires independent justification and arguing later shots were fired after the vehicle had already passed. They discuss official claims, public skepticism, calls for investigation, and the protests that followed across multiple cities in the days afterward.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: René Nicole Good was a thirty-seven-year-old U.S. citizen and a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the mother of three children. She was a poet and was involved in creative pursuits. She had previously lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and was originally from Colorado. At the time of her death, she lived with her wife and young child. On January 7, 2026, she was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis during a federal enforcement operation. Her killing sparked protests in multiple cities.

She drove around the officer positioned near the front of the car. She was starting from a dead stop on ice. From the video, the vehicle appears to be moving slowly, though an exact speed cannot be determined. I have been hit by a car at low speed. I have also seen my dad—my stepdad—get hit by a car.

Rick Rosner: At low speed, a person can usually put their hands out and push away or step back if there is room. In the video, the officer appears close to the vehicle as it passes, but the exact distance—whether in inches or feet—cannot be measured from the footage. If his arms had been free, he could have pushed off. He may have done so.

In his left hand, he appears to be holding a cell phone. In his right hand, he has his gun drawn, whether he braced his forearm against the hood, the video does not clearly establish firing.

He appears to step back. At most, it looks like a half step. Based on the video, he does not seem to be knocked down or dragged. The vehicle may have brushed him, but that cannot be confirmed.

The vehicle then passes him. He had already fired at least once by that point. It is not clear how many of the shots struck her.

As the vehicle moves past him, his body is roughly an arm’s length away. He extends his arm and fires again. The gun appears to be very close to the driver’s side window when at least one of the later shots is fired.

Jacobsen: What did you feel when you first saw that image?

Rosner: My immediate reaction was that it looked like a criminal shooting. As I thought more about it and reviewed use-of-force standards, it appeared consistent with what people would describe as second-degree murder. First-degree murder involves premeditation, and this did not seem planned. But it still seemed to be unjustified.

In a shooting like this, it is generally against policy to fire at a moving vehicle to stop it, and especially to fire at a driver as the car is moving away. Doing so risks creating a driverless vehicle. That is what happened here. After the shooting, the car continued down the street and crashed, causing additional damage.

In use-of-force analysis, each shot must be justified independently. The only shot that might plausibly be argued as justified would be the first one, when the officer was closer to the front of the vehicle and could claim he felt in danger.

The officer’s identity was discussed publicly this afternoon after Kristi Noem spoke about the incident. Reporting indicates that the officer had previously been dragged by a vehicle in a similar incident months earlier and sustained injuries requiring stitches.

That prior incident may explain heightened fear, but it does not justify lethal force in a separate encounter. A previous traumatic experience does not excuse killing someone later.

Legally, if the first shot caused the fatal injury—though that is not clear—that is the shot examined when considering charges. If it were the second or third shot, or if it cannot be determined which shot was fatal, then each shot must be independently justified. The later shots were fired when the front of the vehicle was already past him.

Those are some form of murder or manslaughter, because he was in little danger for the first shot and in zero risk for the second shot. For the second and third shots, he would have had to justify danger to others, and that would be hard—maybe not impossible, but hard—because there were no other officers in her path. Killing the driver did not make the situation safer.

A person claiming to be a defence lawyer who specializes in cases like this said on Twitter that he would not take the case and that it is not a winning case for the officer.

Jacobsen: Have you seen the footage?

Rosner: No. You should watch it, because it is shocking footage. It is the kind of thing that Trump, Kristi Noem, and others on that side will try to gaslight people about, but the footage itself is extraordinary.

There are two central video angles. One is from farther away and partly obscured by cars and trees. The other shows the incident from roughly twenty to thirty feet away, from behind and to the left of the vehicle. That angle indicates almost everything. Are you pulling it up?

It is very clear in the footage that the officer was not hit or dragged. Based on what is visible, it appears that at least the second and third shots were unjustified. There are many people on X claiming otherwise, which is very disheartening.

Even if I am wrong, and the vehicle did brush him, that still would not justify killing her. She was not a domestic terrorist. She lived in the neighbourhood. Some tweets describe her as a legal observer. She may have been there to watch ICE activity. She may even have parked her car in the street, slightly impeding them. But by the time of the shooting, she appeared terrified and was trying to get away.

Some people claim she was fleeing the scene to avoid arrest. Even if that were true, you do not kill someone for that. The standard practice is to identify the person and follow up later if you want to arrest them.

Seeing people on the MAGA side lie about the circumstances, say she got what she deserved, and claim the officer was in the right is deeply disheartening. It goes against the evidence of what can be seen and heard.

It feels very much like the line from 1984 about rejecting the evidence of your eyes and ears. MAGA supporters are expected to accept whatever they are told, even when it is clearly contradicted by video.

It has been a disturbing couple of days. After Venezuela, it feels like Trump will do whatever he wants, and this feels like more of that. There were also reports today of two more people being shot in a similar incident, possibly in Portland. Those people may have been actual criminals, but it also seems possible that Trump wants unrest so he can declare a national emergency, postpone or cancel the midterm elections, and send more troops into cities.

So far, people have not rioted. As far as I know, there have been large protests but not widespread disorder. People understand the risks. Kristi Noem is already talking about sending another two thousand troops or personnel into Minneapolis, supposedly to keep people safe.

It is ridiculous. The whole thing is disturbing—slightly less disturbing today only because of the massive public indignation over how bad this is. But it has been one of the most disturbing couple of days of Trump’s second term so far, because of the lack of accountability, the blatant doing whatever they want, the cruelty, and the reflexive defence. Kristi Noem went out and, without any investigation, said that the murder victim was a domestic terrorist. The head of a normal agency, in regular times, would say that the officer has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation. Instead, she said he was not at fault.

They said he was hospitalized for his injuries, released, and is now spending time with his family—except he had no injuries. They said he was run over. He was not. There is additional footage showing him running down the street after the shooting to where her vehicle crashed, then walking away, then walking to his own car and driving off.

There is no visible sign of injury, because he was not injured. They are lying. The state of Minnesota, through the governor, said there would be an investigation, but that investigation has been blocked by the federal government and turned over to the FBI. Nobody expects the FBI to deliver a truthful result because Kash Patel, another incompetent Trump loyalist, now heads the FBI. Look at the footage. 

Jacobsen: It is very straightforward: three point-blank shots, and she was dead. It seems entirely unjustified. Someone was murdered.

Rosner: I am not looking forward to arguing with Lance about this. I have already yelled at enough people on X. I know precisely what he will say. He repeats what he is told to believe and says what he is told to say by MAGA figures.

I will either argue my points or say, “I know what you are going to say—why waste everyone’s time?” I do not know.

To be fair, there are at least some Republicans in government—senators and members of Congress—who have said an investigation needs to happen and who have expressed skepticism about the MAGA narrative.

Lance, of all people, is someone who professionally uses his eyes. He is a visual artist. He should be able to look at the video footage and see what is plainly visible. But he will have a list of excuses for the officer.

Meanwhile, Kristi Noem and JD Vance have been openly claiming that the victim was part of a network of agitators designed to disrupt legitimate police activity and undermine trust in federal agencies. That claim is simply garbage.

She was the mother of a six-year-old child and lived with her wife and their child. She had previously been married to two men, the most recent of whom died in 2023. She also had two teenage—or nearly teenage—children who lived with her first husband. She did not expect to put herself in danger. She had zero expectation of that.

Her wife was somewhere near the car. I do not believe her wife was in the car when she was shot, but I am not certain. After the shooting, her wife said that they had killed her and expressed regret, saying she was sorry for having put her in that situation. There were also witnesses at the scene, and different people reported different details. That is essentially it.

ICE’s jurisdiction is over immigration enforcement. It does not usually extend to U.S. citizens. What happened here was a federal enforcement officer killing a U.S. citizen. That raises serious questions about legitimacy and authority.

ICE officers can become armed enforcement personnel with as little as eight weeks of training, around forty-seven training days. By contrast, becoming a police officer in most cities requires attending a police academy, which typically lasts 9 months to 1 year, followed by a probationary period.

In many departments, including large cities, a new officer then spends significant time paired with a seasoned officer in the field. Altogether, becoming a fully credentialed police officer generally takes about 2 years.

By comparison, many ICE officers are conducting enforcement operations after only a couple of months of training. In this case, officials have said the officer had 10 years of experience, though it is unclear what kind of experience that was. Presumably, it was law-enforcement related.

For context, I worked as a bouncer for twenty-five years, including at some of the largest bars in the United States. One of them, Anthony’s Gardens, covered five acres—about two hundred thousand square feet—and could hold up to ten thousand customers. At one point, it held the world record for the most drinks served in a single day, with a security staff of about twenty on the busiest days.

I also worked at the Sagebrush Cantina, where they would get around two thousand people on a Sunday. In security crews, the culture—whether humane, cruel, or thuggish—depends on key personnel.

It depends on leadership, basically. When you look at ICE, you have Kristi Noem, who has no law-enforcement experience. She was the governor of North Dakota or South Dakota. Above her is Stephen Miller, then Trump. All of these people are inexperienced, indifferent, incompetent, and unaccountable.

They determine the culture of ICE, and it is a culture of cruelty, arrogance, and very little expectation of being held accountable.

Someone noted that Obama, who deported more people than any other president, did so without the flamboyant cruelty that characterizes ICE under Trump. Obama benefited from the poor economic conditions in the United States after the Great Recession of 2008. Possibly a million immigrants self-deported during that period, choosing not to stay if they could not make a living.

That likely helped Obama’s numbers. Even so, Trump promised to deport a million people a year. In his first year, ICE deported around six hundred thousand people, more than half of whom had no criminal record, and fewer than a third of whom had any violent criminal record. Trump claims that, in addition to those six hundred thousand deportations, another 1.9 million people self-deported. That claim seems dubious to me.

The system is cruel and incompetent. 

Jacobsen: I will see you tomorrow.

Rosner: I will see you tomorrow. Thank you very much.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash

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