STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have a professional assessment of tactics used by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis. It comes from Peter Moskos. He's at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the author of a book on New York City crime fighting and also a former Baltimore police officer. This ex-cop turned an experienced eye on videos of last weekend's killing of Alex Pretti. Together, we watched video posted at npr.org...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Get back, get back.
INSKEEP: ...Second by second. At the start, Alex Pretti and another protester are on one side of the street. Federal agents are on the other. Moskos isn't sure why the agents suddenly approached. But even if the agents had some reason to arrest the protesters, there is the matter of how they tried to do it.
PETER MOSKOS: I find their tactics, I mean, shocking and sort of shockingly bad. They are in a tough situation because wherever they go, crowds gather and try to obstruct them. But then there doesn't seem any leadership. They don't seem to have positions and jobs. When you outnumber someone you're trying to arrest, I mean, if you got four or five officers there, it shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, it's somewhat painful to watch as a former police officer.
INSKEEP: Well, let's go through some of the actions that we see on the multiple videos from multiple angles.
(SHOUTING)
INSKEEP: Two seconds into this particular video, we have an agent who shoves a woman to the ground. It's not clear to me why. Is that a police tactic of any kind?
MOSKOS: I mean, everything can be a police tactic if the situation demands. But I don't see it being a legitimate police tactic here because she's not moving towards the - she's, in fact, is moving away from the officers. Was she told to move back? Maybe. But she does seem to be moving back. She goes from sort of the street side of the car to the curb side of the car.
INSKEEP: So the agents have approached these two. They've shoved a woman to the ground. Let's go a couple more seconds and see what happens.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLES BLOWING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, [expletive].
INSKEEP: I'm still only, like, four seconds in. And we see that an agent is - having shoved the woman to the ground, he's spraying pepper spray into the air and physically confronting Alex Pretti, who's turning away.
MOSKOS: It seems to me like it's crowd control pepper spray. Also, keep in mind, when you use pepper spray, especially if it's in this mist form and not a stream, like, it kind of gets everybody. So now everyone's cranky.
INSKEEP: OK. Let's go forward here a few more seconds.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Shouting).
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLES BLOWING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Get back.
MOSKOS: Then he sprays Pretti again. There's no tactical advantage from doing that.
INSKEEP: Are you imagining at this moment agents who are frustrated and acting out of frustration rather than out of training?
MOSKOS: You know, it's hard for me to put my head in an agent who hasn't had proper training. I mean, you've got Border Patrol cops who didn't sign up for this job. They're away from home. They don't know the community. They don't like the community. I don't think they want to be here. Yeah, at some point, it just wears on you, regardless of whether what you're doing is right or wrong or good or bad. But I don't see any professional tactics or training come into play here. So, yeah, it's a combination of the two.
INSKEEP: OK, so it's a scrum of men approaching these two protesters across the street, spraying pepper spray, trying to put them on the ground. And now we're going to go forward.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Get the...
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLES BLOWING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: These are [expletive] people.
INSKEEP: We're at 11 seconds in. They're trying to wrestle people down to the ground, I think.
MOSKOS: Yeah. And I'm counting one, two, three, four, five, six officers there. The ones on the right probably don't want to get in there because they don't want to get in the pepper spray that's around. Here you have six officers and two people. I mean, why they can't just put them on the ground and cuff them and take them away, if that is their intention, is unfathomable to me. I mean, me and my old squad mates in Baltimore City, this would be a nonissue. It would be done. We wouldn't have used pepper spray.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Get back.
INSKEEP: Now it seems to be three or four guys trying to get their hands on Alex Pretti, who is on the ground.
(SHOUTING)
MOSKOS: So between 27 and 28, the guy center frame pulls out his gun. Presumably, that is when the cop starts to disarm Pretti. But you see the cop pull out a gun, which implies that there is now a gun present on the scene.
INSKEEP: Do you think it's plausible in this crowd that agents heard the word gun, because someone did find a gun on him, and they reacted in the most extreme way to that word?
MOSKOS: Yeah. But that's, again, where they're policing out of ignorance and fear here. Even if it is a reflex or a reflex-like action, I mean, you still need a target. You just can't - what do - you need a threat. That's how police officers are trained, is to stop the threat. And there's no threat here ever.
INSKEEP: It appears to me the last several shots are fired after he is definitely prone on the ground and probably has already been hit by other bullets. Is that how you see it?
MOSKOS: Yeah. You're shooting at a dead guy who doesn't have a gun anymore. So what are you shooting at? What - how is this guy a threat?
INSKEEP: Let me ask about another aspect of professionalism. Immediately after this shooting, the Department of Homeland Security declared that Pretti was a domestic terrorist, that they knew what happened. The secretary of Homeland Security said he had brandished a weapon. And a variety of other statements were made that are just clearly untrue. What would professional conduct have been in that case when making public statements about a shooting?
MOSKOS: It's a good question. Let's not also forget somebody have said that he was intending to inflict maximum damage.
INSKEEP: Maximum damage, yeah.
MOSKOS: I mean, that's a lie. And they know it's a lie because if he wanted to inflict maximum damage, he could've done so. He clearly was not out there to kill anybody. I mean, that's - yeah. The government is lying to us and telling us not to believe our lying eyes, in a very Orwellian sense. That also can contribute to a culture of impunity among these federal officers if they know that no matter what they do, even if it's wrong, that - of course, in a way, this doesn't even help them, to start lying.
I mean, if I were a police chief, you'd say, you know, this is under investigation. In this case, you might want to say we're turning it over to another agency 'cause you're like, oh, this looks bad. And it probably is bad. So you kind of both want to wash your hands of it and make it seem like it's a more fair investigation.
INSKEEP: Any further thoughts, having gone through this video one more time?
MOSKOS: You know, one thing I thought when Renee Good was shot was, like, it'll happen again. We have mass seemingly unaccountable, armed federal law enforcement who are making horrible tactical choices and killing people.
INSKEEP: Peter Moskos. Thanks very much for taking the time.
MOSKOS: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: Peter Moskos is a former Baltimore cop and at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He also is the author of "Back From The Brink," a book about the drop in crime in New York in the '90s.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PHARCYDE SONG, "RUNNIN'") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
