Remember me
Let’s be honest, we’re not talking the deranged worldwide reaction to George Floyd here, even though the ICE special agent killing of 37-year-old poet Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota was equally horrific.
More so, actually, given that she wasn’t a violent, drug-addled, convenience store robber with a string of previous.
Is Donald Trump justified in sending Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into US cities to round up and clear out illegal aliens, in orange jumpsuits, handcuffs and ankle chains? Of course. That’s what he was elected to do.
Promise made, promise kept.
Are they entitled to use deadly force to combat heavily armed Latin American narco-terrorists occupying housing projects and flooding Middle America with drugs, people-smuggling, prostitution, robbery, extortion and other assorted crimes?
Absolutely.
Should they be allowed to push back against far-Left Democrat ‘sanctuary city’ mayors, governors and demonstrators deliberately and illegally obstructing agents attempting to remove foreign nationals who have no right to be in the US?
As we say on my North London manor: not many, Uncle.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was killed by an ICE special agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this week
Truth be told, we could do with our own spineless, ‘international law’ yuman-rites-obsessed Labour Government being equally ruthless in dealing with the cross-Channel rubber dinghy chancers and millions of visa ‘overstayers’.
But, and here’s the caveat, should a masked ICE agent be allowed to shoot a woman in the face three times for slipping her SUV into gear while taking part in a motorised picket line, however misguided her motives?
Absolutely not.
Even those of my American friends resolutely on the Trump Train think this was a bridge too far.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Good’s actions on Wednesday as ‘an act of domestic terrorism’ and defended the officer’s actions.
No, it wasn’t. Her killing was a crazy, knee-jerk overreaction, which needs to be tested in court, before a jury.
Look, I rather like Noem – a Playboy centrefold hardliner with a fondness for posing with automatic weapons, who may well be in the mix to take over from Trump in three years’ time.
I know a few American gentlemen of a certain age who found the images of a tight T-shirted Kristi, in a ‘Hello Boys’ Wonderbra, in front of caged, deported detainees in an El Salvador jail more than mildly arousing.
But trying to pretend that the shooting of Renee Nicole Good was justified is an insult to the intelligence of even the most Right-wing MAGA Americans, who have watched the video a dozen times and have already reached their own conclusions.
The idea she was trying to run over the ICE agent – ‘weaponising’ her SUV – is risible. She was obviously trying to leg it, at about two miles an hour.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. In the scheme of things, none of this is any of our business. What intrigues me is the British reaction.
Are we going to see masked paramilitaries marching down Whitehall, beating up coppers, chanting that White Lives Matter?
My best guess is: probably not. Yes, there have been demos in Minnesota and other US cities. But somehow I can’t imagine Brixton turning out en masse, or Surkeir and Angry Ginge Rayner, in her mini-skirt and combat boots, ‘taking the knee’ in solidarity with Renee Nicole Good, however much they sympathise with her.
The response at the scene of the shooting. Renee's death has sparked outrage, with many blaming the Trump administration
'I remain resolutely British when it comes to weapons,' writes Richard Littlejohn. Pictured: Metropolitan Police officers keep an eye on protests in Westminster
We’ve moved on, hopefully, from the height of the 2020 Summer of Stupidity which followed the death of George Floyd and sparked a ludicrous orgy of statute-toppling, street-renaming performative wokery on our side of the Pond.
Much as I’m ferociously Atlanticist, and even respect their addiction to the right to keep and bear arms, I remain resolutely British when it comes to weapons.
Yes, I absolutely support specialist armed response teams and the anti-terror squad being authorised to use deadly force. But I find the notion of a routinely armed police service abhorrent – and so, to be fair, do most proper coppers.
When I saw the footage of Renee Nicole Good being gunned down in Minnesota, I couldn’t help thinking back to the case of school run mum Sherrilyn Speid, 35, of Grays, in Essex, who pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving when she appeared at Southend Magistrates’ Court in 2022.
She was at the wheel of a Range Rover when she came across a sit-in near the M25 by those bonkers Extinction Rebellion headbangers, before they moved on to demonstrating about Gaza.
In a video clip, the car could be seen edging forward into the backs of protesters sitting on the road, no faster than Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota. She was filmed getting out of her car before swearing and shouting at them.
‘My son needs to get to school today so move out the way,’
Quite right, too. Go girl!
Yet instead of nicking the XR loonies, the brain-dead PC cops felt Sherrilyn’s collar, even though she was in the right.
Were the police armed, as a basis for negotiation, you can just imagine a trigger-happy Plod putting a bullet or three in her head claiming she had ‘weaponised’ her SUV.
Luckily, she’s from Essex, in case you couldn’t tell, not Minnesota. Otherwise, she’d be brown bread, just like George Floyd and the unfortunate Renee Nicole Good.
Sometimes, it really does make you proud to be British. Hands up, don’t shoot!