Editorial | Oh, when will they ever learn
For those of us old enough to remember the ’60s, the times they aren’t a-changin.’
The current administration’s decision to wage a boots-on-the-ground “police action” is not the first time an administration, citing preservation and protection of country ideals, has been willing to shoot for long-term gain at the cost of short-term pain to achieve it.
This is not the first time citizens, with equal vigor and a whole lot of moral outrage, have risen and pushed back hard in protest as headlines put a human face on the kind of pain that can, too often, live forever for those caught in the crossfire.
Like Mary Ann Vecchio 55-plus years before her, Renee Nicole Good became the face of a divide between government action and those contesting what they believe to be both governmental overreach and an abridgment of the very democracy national policy is intended to protect.
Mary Ann Vecchio was a 14-year-old girl, pictured dropped to her knees and wailing in anguish over the body of Jeffrey Miller on the Kent State University campus back on May 4, 1970. Her photo was taken by student photographer John Paul Filo after National Guard troops trying to disburse anti-war protesters opened fire on the campus, killing four and wounding nine.
She became the face of what history remembers as the Kent State Massacre.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was a dog-toting mother of three. Last Wednesday her smiling face, and her last words, were captured for all time by, ironically, the man who killed her.
“I’m not mad at you, dude,” as she said as the phone held by ICE agent Jonathan Ross videoed her car improperly parked in a roadway on a Minneapolis, Minnesota, roadway a few minutes after she had dropped her 6-year-old off at school.
Forty seconds later, she was dead, shot in the face and head three times by Agent Ross.
The after-incident analysis and investigation are continuing.
On the one side, President Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, et al., were quick to hail Agent Ross’ quick response to what they say was Ms. Good’s attempt to run him down during an act of “domestic terrorism.”
Social media is full of commentary posted by those who agree.
On the other, we have those who have watched Agent Ross’ body cam video, which caught Ms. Good’s smile, and other recordings which they say belie the official rhetoric. These individuals have taken to the streets by the thousands upon thousands to protest her death and this administration’s deployment of, on American soil, what constitutes a troop of armed policy enforcers unconstrained by fear of collateral damage or public opinion.
In the range in between is something worth noting as it may well be a pivot point upon which history defines and remembers this administration’s Enforcement and Removal Operations policy: The “Thin Blue Line” is proving that it is not blind.
From Immigration and Customs Enforcement comportment on the streets within communities to the last week’s specific tactic of shooting into a moving vehicle, police agencies have raised questions — and answered them.
Law enforcement leadership is confirming that most agencies prohibit shooting into a moving vehicle as such action endangers both officers and the public.
Many are questioning the training ICE agents are receiving to prepare them for interactions with a sometimes non-supportive general public exercising its First Amendment rights in a non-respectful or even violent fashion.
Among them is Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who addressed the situation in his city as post-shooting protests there have continued.
As reported by The New York Times for an episode of “The Daily,” Chief O’Hara told host Michael Bararo that ICE agents are “using tactics that generally are not viewed as sound — that may unnecessarily endanger the lives of both law enforcement officers and the community.”
As a result, interactions between ICE and protesters and residents caught in between have undone efforts he and his department have put into restoring trust in a community that was brought to “ground zero for a global reckoning on policing,” by the police-caused death of George Floyd on its streets five-plus years ago.
Training of officers or agents, he emphasized, is key and an incident, such as the one that resulted in the death of Renee Nicole Good, was predictable given how ICE and the protesting public have been interacting.
Chief O’Hara was blunt when asked if he had foreseen that “something awful was coming.”
“This was predictable and preventable. I had been saying it for weeks. I literally said it at a press conference the day before,” he responded in “The Daily” interview.
A snap in time, a human face that captures “policy” with anguish or one last smile can define history more than all the words and all the rhetoric.
Whether you sided with the guardsmen and Nixon when our country feared the dominoes were at risk of falling or those who called the war in Vietnam an illegal overstep of presidential authority, whether you support ICE agents assigned to tough duty and President Trump in his deportation of those who came here illegally or through what he says was political policy favor, Jan. 7, 2026, like May 4, 1970, is a turning point.
Historians often cite Kent State, captured in the agonizing grief of a child, as the beginning of the end of popular support for Nixon’s policies.
How will history reflect on the final heart-breaking smile of a mom of three?
How Americans react in its wake, and time, will tell.
Breeze editorial