Tom Hoefling (@tomhoefling)

Former law enforcement officer, Kramer Hammy: "It is clear that US citizens' ignorance of federal laws and law enforcement duties, procedures, and limits of authority is getting to the point where it is deadly. I spent probably 3 hours watching and re-watching, and finding every single video and angle I could of the situation in Minnesota yesterday and came to one immovable conclusion based off of what I saw and what I know from a professional standpoint. This is long, but please give it a read. "As a former officer, let me make something clear: ICE agents ARE NOT police officers, deputy sheriffs, or troopers. They are not local/state law enforcement. They are not federal criminal law enforcement. They have an INCREDIBLY limited scope of authority, and that scope of authority exists in detaining and arresting with probable cause and/or SIGNED WARRANTS those investigated and suspected of being in the US illegally. "They cannot just pull anyone over for a traffic violation or because their car is in a place they don't want it. They have NO authority to pull people over for ANYTHING other than immigration enforcement- and even then that involves probable cause, such as a known vehicle of someone they have been tracking, or a warrant. On very rare occasions they have the legal authority to pull someone over if they are threatening the lives of others, but that was not happening in this case. They do not have the training nor the authority to pull ANYONE else over. They cannot arrest legal citizens. They cannot detain legal citizens without probable cause to believe they might not be legal. They have ZERO authority to be attempting to force entry into a vehicle- without even identifying themselves, without a warrant, without exigent circumstances such as a life being directly threatened- that is trying to drive down the street without probable cause in relation to IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT. "This ENTIRE situation in Minnesota was outside of the scope of legal authority from the get go. None of it was done within the scope of authority of ICE. Every single behavior those agents made was procedurally incorrect, done without proper authority, and was based off of intimidation and the assumption that people do not understand the law and their rights in regards to interactions with ICE. "On no planet should an officer, agent, or any human being ever step in front of a car in 'drive' that is actively trying to leave and use their body as a shield to prevent a person from LEGALLY LEAVING a situation in which they are not legally being detained. It takes maybe a week of any kind of actual law enforcement training to understand that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you ever place yourself in front of a vehicle in 'drive.' That agent had every single opportunity to simply take two steps to the right and not be standing directly in front of a vehicle attempting to conduct their legal right to drive away. "You can see the wheels are turned, [Renee] backed up and turned them to the right, moved forward a bit to leave, couldn't because an agent was standing in front of her, and continued to try to leave by TURNING HER WHEELS TO THE RIGHT and moving forward. He continually chose to stand there and not allow her to legally leave as she had every single right to do. The officer pulling on her door and banging on her window and swearing at her had ZERO authority to order her out of her vehicle or attempt to make entry into her vehicle. NONE. A single day of actual training of the legal scope of authority and the LAW would've prevented that from happening. "You now have a frightened citizen being blockaded by immigration agents (with another person in her vehicle) who had zero obligation to follow legally invalid orders from that agent, being blocked in and having a fully grown, masked man attempting to make entry into her car. If this were reversed, every single person would immediately feel she had every reasonable expectation to fear for her safety. It doesn't matter if she knew it was ICE because the agents weren't even acting in their scope of authority anyway. "Whether or not she made the right decision by very CLEARLY- based off of how hard her wheels were turned and how low and to the driver corner windshield that shot was fired- trying to drive to the left of that agent is IRRELEVANT in the picture as a whole. None of this would have happened if those agents had done even one single thing correctly. Not just correctly, but within their legal scope of authority. Every single moment of that interaction was escalated by untrained, unprofessional, procedurally inept "agents" who not only had zero control of themselves but everything around them. And not because they are helpless, but because their actions that did not fall under their scope of power CAUSED this. Their tempers, lack of training, and the knowledge that they can get away with violating their own scope of authority caused this. "I will always be the first to defend law enforcement when lethal force very clearly is required. But this was not even remotely the case, and as an actual TRAINED professional in that field with experience and understanding of both the law and procedures, there is no justification for this- and it would benefit EVERYONE to actually read up on the laws, scope of authority, and use a single shred of common sense to see that this situation was started, escalated, and caused by the ICE agents involved. I have zero respect for those in power who are ignorant of the scope of their authority and abuse it at the cost of lives around them."