Yes, you should watch the video of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis

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What happened Wednesday morning in Minneapolis? If you believe Department of Homeland Security public affairs official Tricia McLaughlin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials find themselves in mortal danger when “violent protesters” disrupt their “targeted operations.” As she put it, “One of these violent rioters fired a weapon at her vehicle, in an attempt to kill our law enforcement officers — an act of domestic terrorism.” The officer responded by shooting the driver in the head, or as McLaughlin said, “He used his training and saved his life and the lives of his fellow officers.”

The driver, a 37-year-old American woman, died.

We don’t have to take Tricia McLaughlin’s word for it, though. We don’t have to rely on eyewitnesses or ordinary journalism to understand what happened this morning in Minneapolis. There is a video of this that anyone can watch, which clearly shows what happened.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press briefing: “What I can tell you is that the story that it was just self-defense is a garbage story. That’s not true. There’s no truth to it. And it needs to be stated very clearly, because we’ve seen the video of it.”

Frey described the shooting as “an agent recklessly using force, killing someone.” But you don’t have to believe Frey either: because there’s a video you can watch for yourself.

should do Do you see it? It was another infamous video that came out of Minneapolis that prompted a recent wide-ranging discussion about whether we all need to see incredibly graphic accounts of the brutality government institutions (in this case, the police; in this case, ICE) commit against ordinary people. To see these things, to be the eyes of responsibility, to witness the last reluctant moments of any other human being on earth is terrifying, and it is especially disturbing when you are a member of a persecuted group. But millions watched the footage of George Floyd’s murder. Perhaps a major reason is the accountability of the police officer who killed him.

I work in news, so I don’t have a choice about whether or not to watch. I’m here to tell you: In this, you can see it. In fact, you should watch it.

For one thing, it’s disturbing but not as graphic as the Floyd video (at least, not in the bloody, intimate sense). The sounds, more than the sights, are the things that will haunt you here. It shows the officers approaching the car, it shows the car driving away, and then it shows them watching on the side of the road when the crash happens. You have to watch a couple of times to understand when the shot happened and who hit it. There’s a lot of horrible screaming in the background, which is the stuff of nightmares, but you can get the idea by watching it in silence (if that’s something that helps you stomach).

But it’s also extremely clear, especially in terms of how wrong the DHS statement is. Sure, yes, this video captures it in less than a minute. Perhaps later there will be facts that come out that add more credence to the understanding that this person was a threat – maybe. The whole idea of ​​what happens next is a headache; Given the initial posture of the federal government — and President Donald Trump’s position of generally using the Justice Department as his own plaything — expecting the federal government to conduct an impartial investigation of the incident is already ludicrous. People should pressure the local bodies to conduct such an investigation. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara assured reporters that the FBI is working with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on the investigation, “and the purpose of their involvement will be to investigate whether any state laws within the state of Minnesota have been violated.” A determination by state and local authorities that a crime was committed here would result in many obstructions to justice—even though O’Hara has already repeatedly referred to the scene of the shooting as a “crime scene”—but we need at least that effort at justice.

To a very large extent, I think what the video shows at 47 seconds makes it very clear. This was not a “shoot to kill” moment.

Despite this clarity, stories quickly trickled out. For example, the New York Times’ live blog on the situation seems to reveal the truth only by triangulating the narratives of the various involved officials at play: DHS on the one hand and the city mayor’s statement on the other. But you don’t need to triangulate between these supposedly official accounts. You can only watch the video.

And there’s another reason to watch the video. We currently live in a true upside down universe, a universe where you can’t trust your government to accurately portray what’s going on in the world. Of course, yes, that has been happening for a long time, since there have been governments, never mind the US. But we live in a particularly harmful moment where the government we live in is willing to lie to our faces about what we can see with our own eyes. To wit, Trump apparently watched the video today, too, and as is his wont, he live-blogged his explanation on a giant wall of text. After asserting that the slain woman was “obviously a professional protester,” he asserted that she “violently, intentionally and viciously ran over an ICE officer” and that “it’s hard to believe she’s alive.”

But the car did not touch anyone. In the video, the officer who fired the shot can be seen walking calmly toward the woman he had just shot and killed.

So: Your federal government is already spinning its spin on what happened this morning, with a narrative that will try to justify the woman who died as a dangerous protester and cast the ICE agents who confronted her as heroes. As a different government official, Frey put it, “After watching your video, I want to tell everyone directly: that’s bullshit.” Which government officials should be trusted? Well, in this case, you don’t have to decide. You can only believe your eyes.