THE WASHINGTON POST: Protesters condemn ICE tactics as Renée Good’s family hires George Floyd attorney

Escalating tensions in Minneapolis were marked by more protests on Wednesday, as residents denounced immigration agents’ tactics and the family of Renée Good hired attorneys to investigate her killing by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer last week.

Good’s family announced Wednesday that they had hired one of the attorneys who represented the family of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 ignited national protests.

In the days since Good was fatally shot in her car, the federal government has sent thousands of additional officers to the city, leading to a number of violent encounters publicised on social media and complaints from residents that the operation to detain undocumented immigrants instead resembles an armed occupation.

Federal agents have used pepper spray outside a church, near a high school and on concertgoers; struck cars and pulled people from them on city streets; and stopped US citizens to ask for paperwork, according to residents.

In response, some residents have started carrying their passports with them, picking up groceries for immigrant families who are scared to leave their homes and patrolling their own streets with whistles to alert neighbours when officers are present.

“Everybody’s doing the little things that we all do for each other, just very out-loud right now,” said Jamey Erickson, who has lived in Minneapolis for two decades.

Clashes between residents and federal agents have seemed to intensify in recent days, some in Minneapolis said. Across the region, federal agents are staking out stores, apartment buildings and parking lots in areas where Latino people live, said state Rep. Mike Howard (D), who represents the suburb of Richfield. He said agents have broken car windows, pulled observers of federal agents out of vehicles and doused people with pepper spray.

“It absolutely is escalating considerably over the last week here, and it was already quite intense before that,” Howard said. “We’ve seen many, many examples of an escalating level of violence from federal immigrant officials, in particular targeting citizens, not just immigrants.”

On Wednesday, the Chicago-based law firm hired by Good’s family to represent them and her estate, Romanucci & Blandin, said her partner, parents and four siblings want “to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America.” Her family members “do not want her used as a political pawn, but rather as an agent of peace for all,” the law firm said in a statement.

One of the firm’s founding partners, Antonio M. Romanucci, a civil rights lawyer, was among those who represented relatives of Floyd after he was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

That legal team’s lawsuit against the city and the four officers involved resulted in a record $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family in 2021, the largest of its kind involving police misconduct.

The case involved Floyd’s relatives challenging law enforcement’s portrayal of him and commissioning an independent autopsy. Chauvin was ultimately convicted of murdering Floyd, sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison and later pleaded guilty to a separate federal charge that he violated Floyd’s federal civil rights.

In an interview with The Post in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Romanucci said that Renée Good’s partner, Rebecca “Becca” Good, was interviewed by FBI investigators at a hospital after the shooting, but that investigators have not visited her since and did not take her cellphone or video she had recorded.

“It’s routine for any agency to do that, so I’m not worried,” he said of FBI investigators speaking with Good after the shooting. Romanucci declined to say what Good told FBI investigators, given the ongoing investigation.

While the Goods could be seen on video captured before the shooting exchanging words with ICE officers and appeared to be monitoring them, Romanucci said, “there is no formality as to what they were doing.”

“They were two citizens who were concerned about the invasion of their city by their own American government,” he said. “They had the absolute right to exercise their First Amendment rights, whether it was through their individual efforts or whether it was organized. It makes no difference as to this tragic outcome.”

Romanucci took issue with President Donald Trump calling Renée Good a “professional agitator” and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem calling her a “domestic terrorist.”

“That is not who she was,” Romanucci said. “This was a woman who was a daughter and a mother. She was a committed partner. She was a PTA member. She was an animal lover. … She was not what she has been labeled.”

Renée Good and Rebecca Good were not legally married, though Rebecca referred to Renée as her wife in a public statement she released after the shooting. Romanucci described Rebecca as a “committed partner” and co-parent to Renée’s 6-year-old son.

Romanucci said he plans to examine federal procedures governing ICE officers’ use of force and was still evaluating whether “the best mode to get justice for Renée” would be suing Jonathan Ross, the officer who shot Good, or the federal government.

“Ross was not solely the cause of what happened here,” Romanucci said. “… We strongly believe that it was this invasion of an American city by our American government in a manner which we have not seen in anyone’s lifetime. … Renée is an American citizen exercising her First Amendment rights, and she should not have her rights violated under the Fourth Amendment by an excessive use of force.”

Ross has retained Chris Madel, an attorney with a history of representing law enforcement officers, as legal counsel, Madel confirmed to The Washington Post on Wednesday. He added that Ross has applied for legal representation from the Justice Department.

Good’s shooting, on a residential street where neighbours were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, has stirred national outrage on the left and the right. Most Americans said in response to a new CNN poll that they felt the officer’s use of force when he killed Good was inappropriate, and 51 per cent said it illuminated bigger problems within ICE operations.

On Monday, Minneapolis and Minnesota officials sued the federal government, claiming the Trump administration’s “unprecedented surge” of immigration agents is politically motivated and violates the US Constitution. They asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order to stop or limit the Department of Homeland Security’s operation there - a request a judge denied Wednesday.

Multiple videos recorded by witnesses and Ross himself show the moments before the shooting when ICE officers approach Good’s vehicle, which is parked across the roadway. Officers order her to get out of her car. She is heard talking briefly with an officer, saying, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” When officers reach for the door handles of her car, Good reverses the vehicle and then pulls forward and to the right.

In their statement, the Good family’s attorneys described what they say happened next: “As Renée begins to slowly move the vehicle forward, the agent near the front left of the vehicle fires into the vehicle. The agent continues to fire through the driver’s side window as Renée pulls away, with no one in the path of the vehicle.”

Romanucci - whose Minneapolis-based co-counsel is attorney Kevin C. Riach - said Good’s family is seeking transparency.

“People in Minneapolis and across this country truly, truly care about what happened to Renée Good,” Romanucci said in a statement, “... and are committed to understanding how she could have been killed on the street after dropping her child off at school. They want to know what could and should have been done to let Renée live and pick her child up safely from school that afternoon. As often as possible, our team will promptly and transparently provide updates on what we learn.”

The statement said the law firm is launching a “civil investigation” into Good’s death at the hands of the ICE officer. Based on its investigation, it plans to file a claim against ICE, the federal government and potentially other “responsible parties,” a spokeswoman for the firm said.

The FBI has said it is investigating the shooting, but a number of senior Justice Department prosecutors in D.C. and Minneapolis resigned from their jobs this week after the head of the Civil Rights Division said that office would not be involved in the case.

Minnesota’s top state prosecutors are conducting their own review after the state’s criminal investigative bureau said the FBI excluded it from its investigation.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the state-level review Friday, saying it would ensure state authorities have access to investigative materials, such as video and witness statements, if the case merits state-level charges.

“The community is not receiving transparency about this case elsewhere, so our team will provide that to the country,” the law firm said in its statement, promising “to share information learned in the investigation on a rolling basis so that both public officials and concerned individuals across our American communities can see and understand the facts as we learn them.”

Romanucci said he expects to face numerous obstacles.

“It is always challenging to pursue litigation against state and local law enforcement officers because of the many immunities they are afforded. But legal action against the federal government is even more complex,” Romanucci said, calling the process “byzantine” and “time-consuming.”

“Even after following those processes, a lawsuit filed in court is then argued in front of a federal judge - not a jury of community members - to determine how justice is served,” he said, adding, “This process will not deter us in any way from fervently pursuing justice on behalf of Renée Good.”

Ahead of Wednesday’s announcement by their attorneys, Good’s parents, Tim and Donna Ganger of Valley Falls, Kansas, and their family released a statement via their attorneys praising the woman they called “Nae” and “Nae-Nae” as “the beautiful light of our family” who “brought joy to anyone she met.”

“She was relentlessly hopeful and optimistic which was contagious,” they wrote, “with a seemingly infinite capacity for love.”

The family has not yet announced funeral plans.

“Be Good. That’s all Renée wanted to be. Good to her partner, her family, her children and her community. She wanted to see a better world for her kids,” Romanucci said. “As a Christian, she would pray for all of us to do better, to be better. We will honor her memory by seeking accountability and change in her name.”

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Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

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