ICE: A Badge Doesn’t Make This Less Horrifying

A five-year-old child was in the back seat when an ICE officer shot and wounded a man during an attempted arrest in New York. Five years old. An age when your biggest worry should be whether some kid has stolen your favourite crayon, rather than whether the armed adults outside your car are going to kill your father. 

Apparently, the child escaped physical injury. That is a relief, but it's a bloody low bar set for a successful encounter with government officers.

According to New York’s police commissioner, plainclothes federal officers approached Oscar Belgal’s car, one with a gun drawn. When the car moved forward, an officer fired seven rounds, striking Belgal below his left ear. Federal officials say he rammed ICE vehicles and endangered their officers. That allegation needs investigation. It does not settle whether firing was justified, and it certainly does not make scrutiny optional.

I am sick of the suggestion that putting someone’s criminal history in a press release answers every question about what officers did to them. It doesn’t. A conviction is not permission for unlimited force. An allegation is not a verdict. And immigration status does not strip a human being of the right to have government violence examined!

The government says its officers did not know the child was inside. Well, that deserves serious scrutiny too. What could they see? What precautions did they take? How was this operation planned? “We didn’t know” should begin an investigation into what went wrong, rather than serve as the final word on why nobody should be held responsible. 

Hell, they don't know if a child is there - don't shoot unless they do!

There is something revolting about political leaders rushing to defend an agency while the public is still trying to establish what happened. Apparently, we are supposed to accept the official explanation, swallow the language of enforcement and stop making a fuss. Meanwhile, a small child has been caught inside an encounter that ended with his father wounded by gunfire.

And spare me the chest-thumping about being tough. Carrying a weapon gives you the power to cause irreversible harm. The public is entitled to demand restraint, sound judgement and an honest accounting of every decision to use it. Those demands become more urgent when officers operate around families.

Release the footage. Preserve the evidence. Have investigators outside the agency examine the shooting and the decisions that led to it. If the evidence establishes misconduct or unlawful force, there must be consequences. A badge should increase your accountability because of the authority it gives you.

My disgust is directed at an institution whose leadership expects public trust while responding to a horrifying shooting with excuses and political blame. Trust has to be earned through conduct and scrutiny. It cannot be demanded at gunpoint.

A five-year-old was in that car. 

Whatever the investigation establishes about the adults involved, that child deserves to remain at the centre of this conversation. He shouldn't become a footnote under another government statement congratulating itself on being tough.