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By Thaddeus L. Johnson and Natasha N. Johnson
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In one week, Minneapolis has become a national flashpoint for the country’s immigration crackdown.
Two shootings by federal agents—one killing Renee Nicole Good and another injuring a man in the leg during an arrest—are now being narrated in real time by officials, activists, and viral videos. In the rush to interpret, facts get replaced by emotion and politics.
That is exactly why the public needs transparency and compassion, not a press release verdict.
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But within hours of Good’s death, senior federal officials publicly framed the shooting as self-defense. Local leaders demanded answers. Following standard protocol, Minnesota law enforcement leaders sought a collaborative role in the developing investigation, but said they were shut out after the FBI took control of key evidence and interviews.
This is not just about Minneapolis. It is a test of whether authorities can investigate a fatal shooting in a way the public will trust. That means sharing evidence with appropriate state partners, allowing oversight and giving the public a clear account of what happened.
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Rhetoric that declares a verdict before the full record is assembled raises the temperature and makes a careful, transparent review all the harder. Some officials, including the secretary of Homeland Security and Vice President JD Vance, moved quickly to label Good a “domestic terrorist” and characterize her as a professional agitator. But even ugly facts about someone’s politics, past or personality are not a legal basis for an agent’s use of deadly force.
This isn’t about whether you support or oppose immigration enforcement. The real questions are more fundamental to democratic policing: Was deadly force objectively reasonable at the moment each shot was fired? Was it avoidable? And, most importantly, can the community trust law enforcement’s investigation into the shooting?
The stakes are high. When communities suspect an investigation will be decided by politics, press conference and restricted access, mistrust hardens, cooperation drops, and future law enforcement operations become more perilous and challenging for civilians and agents alike.
The January 14 shooting shows what that pressure cooker looks like in practice. Federal officials again cited self-defense. Protesters again filled the streets. Tear gas again drifted through neighborhoods. Whether the use of force was justified in that second incident is a separate question. But the cycle itself is the warning that, absent legitimacy, every encounter gets riskier and more combustible.
As criminal justice scholars, including one who trained officers in firearms and defensive tactics, here is what we can say without getting ahead of the investigation. Deadly force is justified only when an officer has probable cause to believe a person poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. This “reasonableness” standard is evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, not with hindsight.
Video helps, but it isn’t the full record. A clip can show angles and timing; it cannot capture everything an officer perceived, what they heard, what they believed in that instant, or what alternatives felt safe.
That is why “self-defense” cannot be a political slogan. It is a fact-based judgment that depends on details we rarely have early on. These include where the officer stood and why, what the vehicle was doing, what commands were given and whether safer choices were realistically available when each shot was fired.
A credible review should answer three questions in plain language: (1) What was the imminent threat? (2) Was deadly force avoidable? (3) What happened after, including medical aid?
If the claim is that a vehicle posed a lethal danger, investigators should determine whether the officer was actually in the vehicle’s path, whether there was time and space to move, and whether firing reduced or increased danger. Shooting at moving vehicles is widely discouraged by major police organizations like Police Executive Research Forum because bullets rarely stop a car and can miss, ricochet or strike bystanders. If the driver is hit, the vehicle can quickly become an uncontrolled weapon. The same messaging holds true in many police departments, which train officers not to put themselves in positions where they must shoot their way out, and aligns with Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security guidance.
DHS use-of-force policy also requires officers to obtain medical assistance as soon as practicable once the immediate threat ends. Yet public reporting and video accounts raise questions about whether access to care was delayed or prevented. These questions belong in the use-of-force review, and investigators should pin down a minute-by-minute timeline of the 911 call, who rendered first aid, when paramedics arrived and how transport and access to treatment were handled.
While the consequences of these tragic shootings will no doubt be complex, the path for federal investigators is straightforward. Share the evidence. Stop treating local authorities and citizens as adversaries. Restore meaningful joint oversight. Let constitutional and agency standards speak for themselves.
The officers deserve due process. Good’s family deserves answers. And the public deserves accountability it can see, not conclusions it is told to accept.
Thaddeus L. Johnson, a former police officer and firearms and defensive tactics instructor, is a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and teaches at Georgia State University. Natasha N. Johnson is an assistant professor of educational studies and research at Augusta University.
The writers' views are their own.
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