Posted on 02/01/2026 11:27:42 AM PST by L.A.Justice
The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation in the shooting death of Alex Pretti, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters on Friday.
"We’re looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to what happened," Blanche said during a news conference on Friday. "That’s like any investigation that the Department of Justice and the FBI do every day. It means we’re looking at video, talking to witnesses, trying to understand what happened."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Deputy Attorney is talking about the video showing the nurse spitting and then attacking the federal vehicle...
I think President felt that he had to order DOJ to take this action...
I do have to state that this Minnesota nurse is no Gandhi or MLK...But, some people think this guy was a saint...I guess they think that spitting at a federal agent is no big deal...
In the end, I don’t think who he was or what he was like in general matters a great deal. I think what matters is that he was resisting violently, someone yelled “GUN GUN GUN!!” and Pretti rose up and reached behind him where that holster was. The agents who shot, and Pretti himself, apparently didn’t realize the other agent had already taken the gun, or that it went off in his hand. They saw Pretti reach, they heard the warning, they heard a shot, and they opened fire. It’s an unfortunate sequence of events, but I don’t think they reacted unreasonably.
It is a Biological assault.
The guy with the gun who was fighting with the cops?
Yes, the very Florenz Nightingale.
A few things bother me about this -
Don’t you already have law enforcement procedures to the effect of, a legal shooting should be examined internally within a couple of weeks? Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, negotiated contracts, codes of conduct/practice and all that. That’s as much to protect the officer and the force as it is to protect a person who may have been accidentally shot etc.
If so, why don’t ICE seem ever to have to follow anything similar without being dragged into compliance? If ICE is a professional law enforcement outfit it should be abiding by professional rules of conduct and engagement, and being a bit perturbed if the events at a scene suggest that the conduct was unbecoming.
You shouldn’t need POTUS to order DOJ to do something here, and you shouldn’t have other politicians coming up with defensive knee-jerk reactions.
You don’t have to think someone’s a saint to think the manner in which they were shot may have been out of line. Spitting at a federal agent is not a capital offence. Nor is (merely) body-blocking an ICE agent with both his hands raised up.
While it’s true that the Minnesota nurse has previous for going on protests where he might’ve deserved an arrest and a pepper spraying; in THIS case it isn’t clear that any of the attending ICE officers would’ve known that.
Bystander accounts, and their videos, suggest he was wrestled to the ground and pepper-sprayed simply because he body-blocked an ICE officer (while having both hands up). There are people who were present who describe the ICE agent’s behavior leading up to the body-block as more like something you’d expect from a street thug than from a law enforcement officer.
Of course the officers on scene have a completely different interpretation, but that’s why incidents like this should be investigated and the SENSIBLE position for politicians and conservatives to take is, in principle it’s a bad idea to obstruct law enforcement but equally, mistakes can be made in the heat of the moment and “let’s wait for the outcome of the investigation”.
“In the end, I don’t think who he was or what he was like in general matters a great deal.”
It was interesting how Pretti was portrayed by the leftists as just a nurse who worked at a V. A. hospital, who was murdered by I. C. E. Almost like he was wearing surgical scrubs, with a first aid kit on his hip (similar to Kyle Rittenhouse) and a stethoscope around his neck, clearly identifying him as a medical personnel.
But the truth is that the I. C. E. agents only knew this person as an aggressive agitator, doing what he shouldn’t have been doing, with a loaded firearm on belt instead of the first aid kit. And, apparently, they found that this wasn’t his first riot and that the firearm he was reported to have been carrying legally, because he had a concealed carry permit, was in fact not being carried legally because he had neither the permit nor government issued picture ID on him as required by Minnesota law when carrying concealed.
Just an “innocent nurse” . . .
Your post #6 is spot on. Well said.
When will Blondi open a civil rights investigation into the shooting of an unarmed, non-violent woman by the name of Ashlee Babbitt?
A kid by the name of Chase Allan was basically executed by Farmington, Utah police back in 2023.
He wasn’t cooperating during a traffic stop for his lack of license plates as he was a “sovereign citizen”.
The police surrounded his car and noticed a gun on the right seat floor and started shouting “Gun! Gun! Gun!”. They all pulled their pieces and blasted away.
When his mother sued, a magistrate judge dismissed it all as necessary force since he had a gun and was “resisting”. There’s a reason police scream “stop resisting” - it’s a predicate to lethal force.
There is no constraint on the police to try to disarm someone. They are told that if they even think you have a gun, they have a right to blast you out of your socks (cop buddy of mine used those exact words decades ago).
Such an assertion can break down in a court when a jury hears all the evidence. But so far, in the world where the Rat party doesn’t have a dog in the fight, anytime someone gets dead this way - especially White males - there’s basically no controversy: the cop had the right to do it.
So all the crap about Pretti being just a nasty protestor, not really going for his gun, etc is just legal noise: the fact that he was engaged in resisting legitimate police orders to desist and then being discovered to be armed gives them (supposedly) the right to nullify the threat...that means making you dead.
Some one might want to point all that out. In the cases of Ashli Babbitt and Chase Allan, the verdict has always been “the police had the right”.
“When will Blondi open a civil rights investigation into the shooting of an unarmed, non-violent woman by the name of Ashlee Babbitt?”
___________________________________________________________
Never.
Yea, I know.
It was rhetorical.
“So all the crap about Pretti being just a nasty protestor, not really going for his gun, etc is just legal noise: the fact that he was engaged in resisting legitimate police orders to desist and then being discovered to be armed gives them (supposedly) the right to nullify the threat...that means making you dead.”
____________________________________________________________
The ICE officers removed the gun Pretti was legally carrying, and took it away from the fight before Pretti was shot 10 times. Once the gun is gone, the threat is gone.
It was a legally unjustified killing, and it’s amazing that so many here who routinely distrust all federal law enforcement now think of ICE as their heroes.
Well, that’s the point of the post, isn’t it?
Chase Allan never went for his gun and Ashli Babbitt didn’t have one.
In both cases, it was “justifiable force”.
So we’ll see if the scenario measures up to that...but note that in lotsa previous cases, it really doesn’t matter.
ICE are my heros. OTH you are a nutless old fart.
I get all that. As long as it’s done consistently though...
Ashley Babbitt is a great example of her posing no direct threat to a cop, but the counterargument in her case is context: an armed cop was warning several people who (from his point of view) were trying to break through a closed door. He didn’t know if they were armed or not. At the very least there was going to be a warning shot and the likelihood of SOMEONE getting a bullet was high.
I don’t swing from being 100% binary on one side, to being 100% binary on the other, simply because of who’s the shooter and who’s the victim. I go by PRINCIPLE.
As far as I’m concerned, all cops should act professionally and proportionately at all times. If they’re acting within the law and their code of conduct, civilian recordings may vindicate any wrongful accusations made against them. But if they’re acting unprofessionally, and the cameras are catching them crossing the line, then of course the citizen has every right to film it.
That principle doesn’t care if the protester is MAGA or Antifa, and it doesn’t care if the shooter is ICE or a Capitol cop.
Half the reason why the USA is such a tinderbox right now is that partisanship has taken the place of principle to an insane degree.
If there was an exact replay of the Babbitt incident tomorrow, but with an ICE cop instead of a Capitol cop, shooting a pro-immigration libtard instead of a MAGA protester, I’d put a big bet on the MAGA commentariat saying “she got it coming” without any attempt to fact-check, AND the liberal media saying “it was murder!” even if it patently wasn’t.
Republicans have “principles”.
Democrats have goals.
Republicans will sacrifice achieving their goals in order to preserve their principles.
Democrats won’t let anything get in the way of achieving their goals.
You’ve summarized well what I’ve been thinking about the shooting.
And I hope they look into the atmosphere where this happened. Walz, Frey, and the media are 100% responsible for the atmosphere of hate that put the officers on edge and created a volatile situation.
“At the very least there was going to be a warning shot”
There’s no such thing as a warning shot.
That’s Hollywood crap.
As noted in my post, a buddy of mine enlightened me about “we can blow you out of your socks” if they think you have a gun.
Know what the preface to that was? The question, “How many warning shots do you normally fire”.
He laughed. And then enlightened me.
thank you
needed to be said
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