During his final moments, Alex Pretti was on his knees, near-prone, with more than six armed law enforcement officials on top of him. After becoming disarmed of his lawfully possessed firearm (which he never brandished or reached for), he was then shot in the back, multiple times, sending him face down onto the snowy street to die. Say that out loud to yourself: “unarmed, and shot in the back multiple times.” Those are the facts, though too few are reporting Alex’s killing in this way. Why not?
Go watch the videos. Holding his cellphone with one hand, Alex is pepper sprayed, he turns away, becomes pushed, falls to the ground, and goes to his knees while being surrounded, whereafter it appears he only becomes subject to arrest because he falls to the ground. If the objective was to arrest him, securing Alex’s hands by controlling his arms was job one, which these agents failed miserably to do. He was killed before he was cuffed. Be it slippery conditions brought on by snow, or bad tactical technique, multiple officers could not secure Alex’s hands, (presuming that was their objective), despite striking him multiple times, and one of his hands holding his cell phone. How hard should it have been to cuff him from his knees?
Nobody deployed less-than-lethal-force tools upon Alex before he was shot, in order to gain his hand-control compliance, such as a taser. That said, Alex was shot in the back multiple times after his holstered weapon was removed from his bodily control, thereby eliminating the deadly threat he otherwise might have posed to anybody. Unless of course, authorities can demonstrate Alex reached for one of the responding officer’s misplaced weapons. Can they?
What is happening right now, involving the body cam footage of the responding officers atop Alex, and the audio that footage contains revealing what the agents said to one another and commanded Alex to do, is essentially a hunt for any plausible ex post facto excuse that might allow the government to allege that Alex did something during the course of his struggle with his hands that objectively justifies a deadly police response to his resistance by his killer, who not only shot Alex three times in his back in a staggered cadence, but then shot him more times while backing away, striking his body from the side, as if he remained a threat thereafter somehow. To say nothing of the fact that Alex did not pose a deadly threat up to the moment just before the decision was made to shoot him, for he’d have been shot earlier, if Alex’s hands never effectively reached for any officer’s weapon, then he was assassinated, as plainly and needlessly as Eric Garner was. Was he not?
The question we as journalists and people subject to state power need to be asking, is: What did Alex do, if anything, with his hands, during the extremely brief interval of time between the moment Alex’s holstered weapon is secured by an officer (you can see that officer reach in, pull Alex’s gun from his hip holster, and begin a quick scamper away from the scuffle across the street), and his killer pulls his own service weapon and shoots Alex in the back?
The only answer that might possibly reconcile that ask with the visceral injustice oozing from what we can readily see from bystander cellphone footage perspectives, would have to be something violent, dangerous, and that poses a deadly risk of harm to officers with a nexus to the insecurity of their own weaponry. Without that, the shooting is wholly unjustified, criminal, and deserving of a criminal prosecution that federal immunity will not permit to happen.
In light of the stunningly tone deaf posturing by Trump’s spokespersons, and the avalanche of negative public feedback concerning their ridiculously unfounded demonization of Alex, if any such body cam footage did exist that might inculpate Alex involving his attempt to access an officer’s weapon, creating the specter of some plausible fear that would absolve the shooter, rest assured, we’d have seen it by now, backed by a self-righteous Truth post. If such video exists, where is it?
What we don’t see here, is Alex’s life being elevated, and his death being properly framed, in the rugged manner one would expect, were he Black. We don’t see enough Black outrage – not from the intelligentsia, the academy, the civil rights community, BLM, AntiFa, the political class, or the media – surging with the urgent messaging we are accustomed to: “Unarmed! Shot in the Back!” Why not? Isn’t this precisely what we would expect to see and hear growling from every corner of society, had Alex been Black? Why isn’t the media using all of its descriptor tools to properly frame the gross level of misconduct built into this episode of police brutality? Is the outrage muted because Alex was white?
We should be rebuking police misconduct no matter who it harms, using the full deployment of our journalistic outrage, asking every hard question, isolating the very root of the problem, and holding the government to account wherever its power encroaches upon its vulnerable subjects, regardless of their race.
Alex was on his knees, bent over, unarmed, and shot in the back three times. We should all be saying that out loud, printing it, and bashing the government in the face with it, challenging them to deny it. “Was Alex Pretti shot in the back three times while unarmed, and on his knees, by an agent of the U.S. government?”
Was Alex on his knees? Yes.
Was Alex bent over? Yes.
Was Alex unarmed? Yes.
Was Alex shot three times in the back by an agent of the U.S. government? Yes
We should be seeing this formulation in print, watching it get pushed on television, and hearing it presented to the administration within the White House briefing room, daring the government to deny it, and compelling affirmative admissions thereto.
Were Alex Black, we think we’d have heard it by now.
Note to Reader: At the time of publication, reports are that Alex was shot by two officers; as well, the authors are informed that under current Minnesota law, otherwise legally possessed firearms become unlawful during protests particularly, if and when the gun owner fails to carry valid identification (Alex was found to not be in possession of his valid identification at the time of his death), and if the owner commits an illegal act (Alex has already been accused of failing to comply with officer directives to back up, and leave the street, signaling a likely obstruction of justice accusation). Though it appears Alex’s gun played no objective role in why he was shot, we anticipate the Trump administration’s investigation to potentially seize upon these nuances in the state law, in order to portray him as an unlawful actor. Because we have not seen reporting that connects the implications of Minnesota law to the fact that Alex was not carrying his I.D. at the time, whereby Alex’s possession of his gun in that setting would become deemed objectively unlawful, we alert readers to this yet to emerge detail, which will likely color the outcome of the investigation.
