A card with images of Renee Good and Alex Pretti lies among flowers and other mementos at a memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo / Octavio Jones, AFP
The tactics United States Border Patrol agents used against Alex Pretti in Minneapolis probably violate modern policing guidelines, several experts said, and they add to a growing body of evidence that federal immigration officers are deviating from professional norms.
The Washington Post spoke to eight experts – all of whom have served in law enforcement or studied officer behaviour – who pointed to a sequence of actions by federal immigration officers that go against training guidelines designed to de-escalate potentially volatile situations.
The policing experts cautioned that the videos do not capture all the events leading up to the moment officers try to arrest Pretti, and that it is difficult to clearly see and hear everything that happens.
But they were unanimous in saying that the situation probably could have been avoided by employing basic policing tactics that prioritise public safety and communication.
University of South Carolina law professor Seth Stoughton, a former police officer in Tallahassee who studies police misconduct and the regulation of force, said federal immigration officers have been “egregiously deviating from professional norms of policing”.
Pretti’s killing, two weeks after immigration officers fatally shot another US citizen, Renee Good, also in Minneapolis, has added to mounting public outrage and demands for accountability over the militarised tactics the Trump Administration has pursued while ramping up immigration enforcement.
Several videos from different perspectives, captured by onlookers, raise questions about contentions from Trump Administration officials that Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon before the shooting and intending to “massacre” officers.
Asked about the criticisms from policing experts, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Border Patrol officers are “highly trained and required to meet the highest standards of professionalism and law enforcement capability”.
The spokesperson said many of the officers have backgrounds in the military or local law enforcement and receive federal law enforcement training, as do Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“The disgusting attempts by the media to say these agents are not trained to enforce the law is shameful and laughable,” the spokesperson said.
The experts interviewed by the Post identified five key moments that raised questions about the agents’ tactics and training.
About 30 seconds before Pretti was shot to death, a Border Patrol agent shoved a woman to the ground.
Multiple experts said they believe the deadly episode could have been averted if the agent had not pushed the woman, who appeared to be protesting against their activity.
If she was annoying them by yelling or whistling, officers should have ignored her; if she had illegally obstructed their operation, they should have arrested her, the experts said.
Video shows that as Pretti stepped between the agent and the woman, he made slight contact with the agent.
The agent immediately blasted pepper spray toward Pretti’s face. Pretti raised his left hand to protect his face while holding a cellphone in his right hand.
When Pretti stepped between the officer and the woman, he might have been trying to stop her from getting hurt, said Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice and a former police supervisor in Memphis.
In some cases, officers are permitted to shove people or use chemical sprays to create space or gain compliance from protesters, though sprays are typically used while making arrests, he said.
If the agent intended to detain Pretti, the officer would have been expected to announce, “You’re under arrest,” followed by other verbal commands such as “turn around” and “put your phone down”, said policing consultant Brian Landers, who served 19 years in the Wisconsin Dells Police Department.
Officers are trained to give a suspect time to comply with the commands, he said, but videos of the scene do not make it clear whether the officer who sprayed Pretti gave such commands.
The videos were recorded from a distance and include loud whistling and multiple people yelling.
Landers said he didn’t see anything to explain why they “had to immediately go hands-on”.
Moments after Pretti was sprayed, several officers attempt to force him to the ground.
Pretti never appears to be prone on the ground or to yield fully. At times, his knees are tucked under his body, agents holding him down, their hands on his back.
Officers are trained to subdue someone who is non-violently resisting arrest with techniques intended to cause pain without injury – such as joint manipulations, stun guns, chemical agents or strikes to large muscle groups such as the thigh, Landers said.
“I saw a lot of what I would call sloppy wrestling,” he said.
The officers should have given Pretti clear commands that he was under arrest and to put his hands behind his back, said Christopher Mannino, a 25-year law enforcement veteran and former chief of the Park Forest Police Department in Illinois.
Those commands need to be loud enough for the person to hear, he said, and ideally loud enough that witnesses also know what is going on, though such commands are not audible in the videos.
Mannino said it’s not clear whether Pretti was resisting arrest under the pile of agents. “His actions may be in response to being struck or kicked or whatever is happening,” he said.
As the officers attempted to subdue Pretti, one can be seen striking him near the head – it’s not clear exactly where the blows land – with what appears to be a chemical spray canister, at least four times.
Experts said hitting his head with a blunt instrument would be allowed only if Pretti had done something to put the officers, or others, in immediate and serious danger, such as reach for his gun.
If Pretti was simply not co-operating, officers could use “compliance techniques” – such as joint manipulations – to get the suspect’s arms behind their back, experts said.
“There’s a car right there. You might push him under the hood of the car, and what you’re trying to do is get the handcuffs on,” said Jim Bueermann, a former California police chief and president of the Future Policing Institute.
“The fact that that many officers cannot control this guy quickly tells me that their training is lacking.”
It is not clear when officers realised Pretti had a gun. But the presence of a weapon alone does not justify a change in the level of force being used, much less deadly force, unless Pretti was actively reaching for it, Landers said.
Jeff Wenninger, who spent 33 years in the Los Angeles Police Department and investigated hundreds of officer-involved shootings, said standard practice would be to have two or three officers subdue a person of Pretti’s size.
Any more can create unnecessary chaos and confuse the person being arrested if officers are giving conflicting orders, he said.
“What I saw was a heck of a lot of agents – I think up to six that were there – acting independently of one another,” Wenninger said.
As officers still tried to pin Pretti down, an officer in a light grey jacket entered the scrum and removed a gun from Pretti’s back near his waistband. A voice can be heard yelling what sounded like, “Gun! Gun!” The officer in grey is captured pivoting and retreating with the weapon.
Once the officer took the weapon, Mannino said, “I would expect him to communicate very loudly and multiple times, ‘I’ve got his gun. I’ve gotten his gun,’ something to that effect.”
Clear communication is important, he said, because the level of deadly threat has dramatically decreased once officers have secured the firearm.
The officer who took the gun from Pretti “was right to step away from the altercation” and secure the weapon, a former Border Patrol official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss videos that are not completely clear, but he added that it was not clear if the others knew Pretti had been disarmed.
The fact that Pretti had a gun doesn’t automatically justify deadly force, which depends on whether officers reasonably perceived a serious threat.
“But a concealed weapon can absolutely make a tense, confusing scene worse,” Johnson said.
“It compresses decision time, increases fear on all sides and can turn a crowd-control struggle into a lethal encounter in seconds.”
Just as the officers secured Pretti’s weapon, another officer could be seen unholstering his own firearm from his right hip and pointing it toward Pretti’s back. In a split second, the first crack of gunfire erupts.
It is not clear whose weapon fired that shot.
The officers on top of Pretti scrambled away as more shots were fired. In all, 10 shots could be heard, several of which were aimed at Pretti as he was prone and motionless on the ground and witnesses cry out in anger and disbelief.
If officers were aware Pretti had a gun but did not realise it had been removed, and Pretti reached towards where the gun had been, it’s possible that the officers reacted to what they thought was an imminent threat, experts said.
But Mannino noted that multiple rounds were fired after Pretti was lying motionless.
“It’s difficult to articulate a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm at that point,” he said.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.