Chapter 1: What warning did Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara give before the ICE shooting?
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Follow it wherever you get your podcasts. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Just hours before a federal immigration officer killed Renee Good in her car, the Minneapolis police chief warned that a tragedy involving ICE and the people of his city seemed inevitable.
Today, I speak with that police chief, Brian O'Hara, about his experience with ICE in Minneapolis and why, in his mind, the president's campaign of mass deportation is undermining faith in police departments like his. It's Monday, January 12th. Chief O'Hara, thank you for making time for us on a Sunday, no less, and a very busy weekend for you.
Sure. Thank you for having me.
The past 48 hours. were pretty extraordinary from the perspective of an outsider. There were these enormous protests. I believe you yourself ended up in the middle of one of them. I've tried to make sense of the video. I mean, what has this been like for you?
So what happened was we had a protest start outside of a hotel where people believed federal law enforcement might be staying.
They believed ICE agents were staying there, right?
Right, exactly. During the course of that protest and march, it sort of transitioned into an unlawful assembly. And things that typically happen in cities happen, and a woman who was disoriented drove her car onto a sidewalk, and the police were called to respond. So while the police car was there dealing with...
regular police work, suddenly they realized they had become surrounded by this crowd, which had become unruly. So our officers called in that they were unable to drive out. And I was in the area personally with other police officers. We quickly ran in to back the crowd out to get a path for the police car to come out.
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Chapter 2: How does Chief O'Hara view the impact of ICE's presence on community trust?
He described it as a community that was sowing disorder, committing crimes. Basically, in so many words, a community of troublemakers who should be deported. And I wonder what you made of that and if it felt like that had been your experience as chief.
Sure.
Well, I'm from about 10 miles from lower Manhattan is where I grew up. I was a police officer for over 20 years in Newark, New Jersey, but I had not known any Somali Americans until I moved to Minnesota. And the Somali Americans that I have met here, including many of whom are police officers in this city, have been incredibly welcoming of me. So from a personal perspective,
It was just bizarre because I'm also aware that the overwhelming majority of people from that community are American citizens.
Well, from a crime perspective, was anything the president was saying true?
Well, there is a real problem with fraud in the state. And unfortunately, that is sort of lost now. in all of this political rhetoric and sort of the extreme reactions that occur.
You're drawing a distinction between fraud and kind of traditional street crime.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you're acknowledging that there's some level of fraud occurring perhaps in this community. Perhaps that's what the president is referring to. Yes. In your mind, that's distinct from perhaps the crime that you and your officers are dealing with day in and day out.
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Chapter 3: What events led up to the shooting of Renee Good?
Because if this person isn't the target of a preplanned enforcement action, then what are we doing? Are we trying to de-escalate and try and resolve the situation? Are we trying to take an enforcement action and enforce some law here? Or what exactly is the goal?
We're focusing here on the ICE officers. I do want to ask you about the driver's decision-making in this moment. Her refusal to get out of the car, even after ICE agents demand that she get out of the car. Her reversing, then driving forward. She appears to disobey spoken orders from these officers. As somebody who thinks about this stuff, let's just ask this really plainly. Was she in the wrong?
Well, I can only speak to conducting the traffic stop from my perspective as a police officer. What is our policy? What is our training? Number one, you approach the driver, you introduce yourself by rank, by name, by what agency you work for, and you tell the person, explain why the person is being stopped.
You do these sorts of things to try and ensure, number one, to identify yourself, but to try and ensure that a level of professionalism and to try and deescalate. If the person asks you a question that's reasonable, you respond to it reasonably. That is the expectation.
And did the ICE agent do any of that?
My recollection is that there was not... I didn't see any of that. And further, it just seems like there's confusion. And I don't know, just from what I recall, but it seems like someone else is saying to get out of the car than the officer who shot. And it's not clear to me whether... The two of them were working together and understood what each other was trying to accomplish.
Do you feel that this would have ended differently had this been handled entirely by the MPD, not ICE? No question. Do you have any empathy for the ICE officer, given the split-second nature of policing, putting aside whether he should have ever been in front of the car?
Yes, absolutely. Law enforcement leaders, executives have an obligation to their people. We have an obligation to ensure that our people have sufficient policies, sufficient training, sufficient experiences for the challenges that we are placing them into. We have an obligation not to send our people out there and to tell them, you know, you have a specific quota today.
You have to get a certain number of people. I mean, it seems like that's the situation these folks are being placed into. And that went out the window a long time ago in professional policing. And considering this agent was seriously injured in a stop, you know, somewhat recently, it certainly raises questions as to what did the agency do to protect their person?
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