The specialist Justice Department division that usually probes police killings is not investigating the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis mom by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to reports.
Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot three times by the federal agent on January 7, and it’s reportedly “increasingly unlikely” that he will face charges.
Such cases would usually involve the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division but the move to exclude the specialist team has prompted the resignation of four of its top leaders, according to MSNOW.
The Trump administration has fiercely stood by the ICE agent and said the officer was justified, despite the FBI investigation being incomplete.
Federal investigators have stopped state investigators from fully scrutinizing the shooting by blocking their access to evidence, according to Minnesota officials, raising further doubts that the killing will be probed fairly.
“When you put that together with the state authorities being excluded from even access to the evidence — like shell casings, the car — I don’t have any confidence that a use-of-force investigation is actually even happening when it comes to the death of Renee Good,” Keith Ellison, the Democratic attorney general of Minnesota, told The Washington Post.
The Independent has contacted the Justice Department for comment.
While law enforcement officers are rarely charged for using lethal force, the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division is typically involved in such investigations and specializes in probing improper use of force or abuse by federal officers . The division prosecuted the police officers responsible for the killing of George Floyd in 2020, for example.
It is currently overseen by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, whose predecessors called out the decision to exclude the division from the investigation into Good’s killing.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who headed the division during the Obama administration, and was the associate attorney general during the Biden administration, told The Post.
“Investigating officials to determine if they broke the law, defied policy, failed to deescalate, and resorted to deadly force without basis is one of the Civil Rights Division’s most solemn duties,” Kristen Clarke, who led the division during the Biden administration, told MSNOW.
“Prosecutors of the Civil Rights Division have, for decades, been the nation’s leading experts in this work,” Clarke added.
Since Dhillon was appointed to the role by Donald Trump, nearly 400 attorneys have left the workforce.
“We don’t want people in the federal government who feel like it’s their pet project to go persecute police departments based on statistical evidence or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of doing violence,” Dhillon said in April last year.
“The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws — not woke ideology.”
