We are ex-DOJ officials. Here’s why Renee Good’s shooting was inexcusable.

Last January, as representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, we signed an agreement with the city of Minneapolis to reform its police department. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the agreement addressed the systemic failures that made his death possible. 

Now another law enforcement officer has killed someone in broad daylight in Minneapolis. This time, the culprit was an officer of the United States.

We were career attorneys of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, and we resigned our positions in 2025. We specialized in investigating law enforcement agencies for possible civil rights violations, and evaluating police shootings was part of our job. To get it right, we consulted regularly with law enforcement experts — many of them current and former police chiefs. Many cases we reviewed involved lawful uses of force, close calls or simply poor tactical judgment, which is not illegal, even when it has tragic consequences. 

This is not one of those cases.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer used deadly force against Renee Good, an unarmed mother who posed no danger, had not threatened officers and was already retreating. Even after Good had clearly passed him, the officer kept shooting. As we see it, that is textbook excessive force.

The agreement with Minneapolis — scrapped by this administration over the city’s objection — was designed to prevent needless deaths like this one. It required officers to calibrate their use of force to the threat and the alleged crime; in other words, you don’t use a gun to address a parking violation. Good was accused of blocking a traffic lane. 

The agreement also required de-escalation whenever possible. This ICE officer placed himself directly in front of Good’s vehicle and fired within seconds.

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Good’s death is a tragedy. And it was a predictable one. In the months leading up to her killing, we saw countless videos of ICE officers using force that reflected poor training, a refusal to de-escalate and a growing corps of masked agents acting with brutal impunity. This is the inevitable result: a woman shot and killed for blocking a road.

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Good policing — like good government — requires accountability. It was once the Civil Rights Division’s job to secure it in cases like this. To do so, the division relies on a foundational civil rights law from the Reconstruction era, when state-sponsored violence against newly freed slaves threatened their rights as citizens. For decades, the division has used that authority to prosecute the most egregious violations of Americans’ rights, including the murder of George Floyd.      

Now, the DOJ’s current leadership has told it to stand down. Instead of conducting a thorough and impartial investigation into the shooting of Renee Good, the head of the Civil Rights Division has chosen not to investigate the shooting at all. Worse, the administration has stonewalled state investigators, seeking to ensure that they, too, cannot tell the public what happened to Good and why. Refusing to investigate her shooting sends an unmistakable message: Federal officers may act in disregard of human life, secure in the knowledge that appalling acts will be tolerated.

When the government fails, ordinary citizens have ensured accountability by shining a light on those in power. The nation learned about Floyd’s murder because a teenage girl filmed it, so there was no denying what happened. Here, too, the video shows what happened to Renee Good. But as the government floods the public with false narratives, it tells us not to believe our eyes.

Americans must not look away. If rights are to mean anything, we must insist that the institutions and people who still respect them — state and local governments, courts, journalists and ordinary citizens — act as though the truth matters. That begins with refusing to deny what we can plainly see.