Good luck. It is, I think, a really tough story for a lot of different reasons. CHOP ending with the vigilante killing of a Black minor is something that begs for some real reflection and reckoning that I don't believe has ever happened.

Just about to post this. The failure to identify the killers when the scene was crawling with witnesses... just flabbergasting.

This looks a lot less rosy when you look at total units. Getting smoked by Austin and Denver and nearly matched by Minneapolis isn't good enough when we're so much bigger.

Thank you so very much for the reporting you put into this piece. It's unlike anything else I've read in the publications I subscribe to and is so important.

The kids today don't know it, but one of the best things about being a soccer fan in America used to be that you could enjoy the sport free from the bullshit machine.

If I'm reading correctly, FPS has been around since 1790 and was only part of ICE from 2003 to 2009.

yes

I guess now that I think about it, that doesn't surprise me—but my impression is that most of it is facilities work and managing contracts w/ private security. I'm sure they've got they're "elite" units of wannabe special forces, and it would make sense if they were in Minneapolis right now.

part of why we are driving ICE absolutely mad is that we are using tactics that do not really permit them to legally arrest us. they cannot operate the way they want to operate when we have eyes on them.

they want to be a secret police and we simply will not let them be secret

My (extremely vague) understanding is that these guys are separate from ICE and CBP—I think this kind of thing is pretty outside of normal operations.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...

Slow news week, I guess.

Accidental violence. And violence is what THEY want, it is not what WE want.

In the civil rights era people went out unarmed and HOPING to be brutalized without cause and on camera, because they knew that advanced the cause. We've got to do the same.

violent force they could do that.

I am somewhat sympathetic to the "show of force" argument. However, I think that in the real world getting a bunch of untrained, armed people to confront another group of untrained, armed people is most likely going to end in

First, they wouldn't be out there telling the press that the victim was armed if they didn't think they needed an excuse. They know this looks MUCH worse if he didn't have a gun, and they also know that they're in a battle for public opinion. If they wanted to suppress the protests with

I'm not sure. What I am fairly sure of is that even more people will die if both sides arm themselves. It will also give the side that is currently murdering unarmed people the excuse that they're hoping for.