In less than a month, federal agents have killed two American citizens in Minneapolis. The tableau is dark and the federal pressure is unrelenting. Minneapolis is not a particular hub of migrant activity, but it’s a Democratic-run city that has been a special obsession of the far right. MAGA Republicans have exploited a fraud scandal to demonize the Somali population there, and the fact that Minneapolis was ground zero for the George Floyd uprisings of 2020 has lent it, despite its relatively small size, an outsize place in the right-wing imagination.

Now Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old VA hospital registered nurse, is dead, taken to the ground after he apparently tried to approach federal agents while holding a phone. Video showed several agents tussling with Pretti and bringing him to his knees. He resisted as the agents grabbed his legs, pushed down on his back, and hit him repeatedly. Once he was pinned, agents yelled that he had a gun, and then one agent pulled a gun that appeared to match the profile of a firearm DHS said belonged to Pretti. Another agent, with his own firearm, shot at Pretti’s back at close range. He kept firing at Pretti, followed by another agent who fired additional shots into Pretti as he lay motionless. Within five seconds, at least ten shots were fired.

Police officers kill civilians, but what’s striking about both the fatal shootings of Pretti and Renee Good were how avoidable they were — a reasonably trained urban cop would have........

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