The ICE Invasion of Minneapolis

Like millions of people around the nation and in my home state of Minnesota, my heart goes out to the families of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti who were shot dead by federal agents during the ICE invasion of Minneapolis this past month.

My wife Sandy and I also had a child murdered by gun shot. That was six years ago, and I can assure the families of Renee and Alex that their anguish will lessen over the years. But I can’t tell them it will ever go completely away, because mine hasn’t.

What I think is going to be especially hard is watching the authorities decide whether to prosecute the perpetrators. And, if they do prosecute, following the trials.

Following our son’s death, we got to know many family members of several murdered people. Every single one of them wanted the killers prosecuted. If the prosecutions didn’t come, the families felt a bitter loss of faith in the judicial process.

If prosecutions do come, the families focus on every little agonizing detail of the judicial process that follows. They show up for every hearing. They send emails to the prosecutors. They contact any friends who are lawyers to help them understand the contorted procedure of the courts. Each step along the way revives the anguish. Some of the people I knew were in tears every time I saw them.

And this can go on for a long time. In George Floyd’s case, it took a year. In our case it took almost two years. The families of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti will be lucky if it happens that fast, given the highly politicized nature of their cases, the bitter federal-state divisions involved, inevitable questions of court jurisdiction, and persistent attempts by ICE to deny crime scene evidence to Minnesota’s investigative agency, its highly regarded Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

If there is a trial, it eventually results in a verdict, and some of the people I knew were dissatisfied with their verdicts. In my son’s case, two people were prosecuted, and I don’t think anybody doubted that they were the killers. The first was acquitted, because the jury didn’t believe that the evidence was beyond a reasonable doubt. As an adult, I can understand how the jury could decide that. But the two small children my son was helping to raise sobbed incontrollably when they heard the verdict. And that was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that Renee Goode had three small children.

The second killer admitted in court that he had set up the scene and that he had brought the gun to the scene. Rather than a trial, his attorney proposed a plea bargain. At the sentencing hearing, I begged the judge to reject the plea and force the two attorneys either to go to trial or come back with a stronger sentence. But the prosecutor was in no mood to delay things. She’d already lost the first trial and needed to salvage some sort of victory. The judge had a crowded docket of cases and was in no mood to delay things. He praised the killer for his good behavior while he in jail awaiting trial and gave him credit for time served. My son, a former combat medic spent more time in combat zones defending his killer’s freedom than the killer spent in custody for a murder he admitted orchestrating.

I hope that the cases for Renee Goode and Alex Petti go better than the ones did for me and most other people I knew. My point is that we all need to be sensitive to the anguish their families are going through and will continue at least until the legal issues are resolved.

The memorials being established and the flowers at the scenes of the killings must surely be of some comfort. I know that on a much smaller scale, things like that brought some comfort to my wife and myself.

Other than showing support, there are no words sufficient for the anguish that has been thrust on these families. The word grief does not even begin to capture what you feel in the wake of your loved one’s murder. And if somebody told me I needed to start the healing process, I would have been outraged.

Maybe we should focus on not making things worse. People inclined to besmirch their reputations can stop doing that. Leaders can stop calling them terrorists. Those who say the victims themselves were at fault simply for being there can stop talking like that. The agencies involved can cooperate rather than compete in the investigations. Reporters can refrain from asking the families pointed questions. And ICE could withdraw, recreate itself, change its name, and figure out how it is ever going to reclaim enough moral authority to carry out its legal responsibilities.

As I said, my heart goes out to these families, and I don’t know how to bring them solace. My wife and I visit our son’s grave at the Veteran’s cemetery 3 or 4 times a year, and most of the time someone has put a flower by Tom’s headstone or a coin on top of it as a remembrance. We have no idea who put them there, but it gives us some comfort that Tom is still remembered. I hope that someday the Goode and Pretti families also get some comfort from the millions of their fellow Americans who have been expressing their own anguish over the past few weeks.