I recognize you say you believe that but I also recognize that you don’t support those empty words. Pretti in the video isn’t swinging at the agents when they’re spraying stuff straight in his face. He turns his back to them and tries to help the woman up. At no point do you see Ice try to de-escalate the situation. Instead they escalate the situation with violence. It’s become a familiar scenario. And our administration has told them and us these masked killers have immunity.
I'll acknowledge that video of the Alex Pretti shooting is not as clearly on the side of law enforcement as it is in the Renee Good shooting.
But just the same, Alex Pretti is seen in video jumping a Border Patrol agent after the agent pushed aside a female activist who was deliberately preventing him from doing his job.
Pretti, as part of a group of activists, jumped in to further obstruct the BP agent from his work, and the agent tried to wrestle Pretti to the ground to arrest him, as Pretty thrashed around and resisted arrest, WHILE ARMED.
Because Pretti was resisting arrest, several other Border Patrol agents jumped in to restrain and subdue him, and Pretti continued to resist WHILE ARMED.
At some point (unclear in the video) agents saw under his clothes he was carrying a gun, and an agent yelled "gun, GUN!" and one or more agents drew a weapon and fired before they could be fired upon. There is an allegation (unconfirmed) that one of the agents had already confiscated Pretti's weapon before shots were fired. Or alternaely, they could have fired on Pretti while he was still armed. All of these agents had body cameras that document what happened, and will further give testimony to investigators of what they saw, and probably have already given depositions, while events are fresh in their minds.
Don't speculate on what you think I "believe", those are the facts.
And neither one of us is professionally employed doing internal investigations of police shootings.
Border Patrol agents in the Pretti shooting tried to de-escalate the situation by restraining and arresting Pretti.
It was PRETTI who escalated the situation by thrashing around and resisting arrest by multiple agents, WHILE ARMED with a pistol and two extra clips of ammunition. Highly aggressive and angry and provoking agents on this occasion and in at least 2 prior videotaped incidents. As I said previously, amid confusion of muliple agents trying o restrain Pretti, an agent could have made a mistake when firing on Pretti, but whether 100% by the book or not, there was legitimate reason to think Pretti, armed, posed a threat to them, that justified firing on him.
It has been pointed out that if anything, UNDER-policing ten days prior, when Pretti (ON VIDEO) kicked out the tail-light on an ICE vehicle. Agents on that day got out of their SUV, wrestled Pretti to the ground and cuffed him, but ultimately did not charge him, and let Pretti go. If he had been arrested and jailed as he should have been, he would not have been on the street 10 days later to have continued his aggression against ICE / BP, that got him shot.
