"As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage ....

"[T]here is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression. ...

"[W]henever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge ... against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty ... "

~ John Locke from his Second Treatise of Government

Minnesota is not a happy place at the moment, what with the multi-billion-dollar welfare fraud story and now this:

After an immigration agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump portrayed that use of lethal force as clearly justified. Noem averred that the dead woman, Renee Nicole Good, was engaged in an “act of domestic terrorism” because she was trying to “run a law enforcement officer over.” Trump went even further, saying Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” (Reason magazine.)

Bystander video of the incident immediately cast doubt on those accounts. Footage from various angles “appears to show the agent,” later identified as Jonathan Ross, “was not in the path of [Good’s] SUV when he fired three shots at close range,” The New York Times reported on Thursday. “The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it,” The Washington Post noted. “But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him.”

I am not going to get into the “who did what?” side of this, but I think that to some extent, this is what happens when people who are pressured to “get results” and operate in a system where they are encouraged to do so. For many years, law enforcement in different countries has had this issue, with the US in the lead. We are seeing the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. Radley Balko, who now works at the Washington Post, has done important work in shining a light on where this is going for many years. Things are seemingly getting worse the current administration but this did not come from nowhere.

Several Samizdata commenters are, if I recall correctly, those with law enforcement experience, so I’d be interested to know what the rights and wrongs are here.