The shooting deaths of white protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officers in Minneapolis have followed a playbook that is painfully familiar to Black Americans
The shooting deaths of white protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officers in Minneapolis followed a playbook that is painfully familiar to Black Americans: Authorities quickly moved to disparage the victims, only to be contradicted as more evidence emerged.
Black families who have lost loved ones to police violence said the killings in Minnesota have brought back painful memories of their own fights for justice as law enforcement agencies spun up narratives to suggest officers had no other choice but to kill their relatives.
And these law enforcement agencies often make no effort to publicly correct misstatements or falsehoods that might have impact on a fair justice process, experts said.
Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University, said it “regrettably” took the deaths of Pretti and Good to again shine a spotlight on this issue.
“Black people have leveled a critique against law enforcement for as long as we’ve had policing in America,” said Welbeck, an assistant professor at Temple’s Africology and African American Studies Department.
He also called it “painfully ironic” that Pretti and Good died in “the same place” where other high-profile cases brought the issue to the fore: George Floyd, who was murdered in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer, and Philando Castile, who was fatally shot in 2016 as he tried to show a suburban Minneapolis police officer his license to carry a concealed firearm.
Clarence Castile, an uncle of Philando Castile, said it was eerie to hear federal authorities make snap conclusions in the Pretti and Good shootings.
“Right away they backed up their officers and said they had justifiable shoots, their lives were in danger, they feared for their lives,” Castile said. “I heard the same thing, (officials) said the same things when that cop shot my nephew.”
“We know, from the beginning, that they haven’t taken the time to investigate», he said. «They’re just putting out something, because they think they have to respond. Sometimes the best response is no response.”
Leonard Sipes, who worked for 35 years in public affairs and communications for federal and state law enforcement agencies and is also a former officer, said the standard practice for shootings or any other major breaking case is to simply state that “it’s under investigation.
