Category: Renee good
Anti-ICE lunacy hits new low: Activist allegedly air-horns cops investigating school threat that had nothing to do with ICE
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other law enforcement officers have been facing interference from the public, especially since the January 7 death of Renee Good after she nearly ran over an ICE officer with her vehicle during an immigration operation.
Not to be outdone with their spread of chaos and confusion, leftists have now apparently expanded their targets to non-ICE operations and putting other police investigations in jeopardy.
‘Deranged liberals are interrupting non-ICE police actions because Democratic leaders have whipped them into a frenzy.’
On Wednesday, the Brewer Police Department in Maine reported an incident in which a woman allegedly interfered with a police investigation into a threat at a school — an investigation that had nothing to do with immigration operations.
The investigation involved a threat involving a person of interest who “had communicated an intent to kill school staff and others.”
Staff photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
According to the police department’s Facebook post, officers staged a meet-up at a residence to “safely contact the person of interest.”
However, “at approximately 8:16 a.m.,” an activist began interfering in the attempt to contact the person of interest, police claimed. She allegedly repeatedly sounded an air horn, refused lawful orders to leave, yelled expletives at the officers, and shouted that she “didn’t want ICE” in her neighborhood.
“Her actions interfered with legitimate law enforcement operations and created a real risk to the investigating officers,” the statement said.
Investigators later found that the person of interest was not responsible for the threats and that multiple schools had “received similar threats that morning, consistent with ‘swatting’ incidents.”
The Maine Wire’s Steve Robinson slammed the incident on X: “Deranged liberals are interrupting non-ICE police actions because Democratic leaders have whipped them into a frenzy. Today it was an unidentified white female using an air horn to disrupt an investigation into threats against a school.”
“When will these agitators get charged?” Robinson added.
In an update to the Brewer Police Department’s Facebook post, the woman suspected of interfering with the operation was identified as Mary Conmee, 63, of Orrington, a town just a few miles southwest of Brewer.
Conmee has been summonsed for the offenses of disorderly conduct and obstructing government administration.
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From ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ to ‘drive, baby, drive’
The shooting death of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has quickly become a rallying point in the broader political battle over immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.
It should also be a lesson for the rest of us to wait for all the facts before making judgments and especially to beware of media narratives that try to simplify complicated events.
When journalists and commentators repeat an unverified transcription as fact, they do more than simplify a complex event. They create a moral narrative that can endanger real people.
Videos of the shooting, which took place on January 7, have been widely circulated, including one taken by Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who fired the fatal shot. You would think that since the shooting, or the circumstances surrounding it, are on video, it would be easy to determine responsibility for Good’s death.
But instead, we have evidence once again that eyewitnesses — in this case all of us who have watched the videos — cannot be depended upon to get the story straight.
I am talking in particular about the near-universally repeated narrative that Good’s wife, Becca, shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!” in the split second before Good was killed. The phrase appears to have traveled with early write-ups of the Alpha News-distributed agent-perspective video, then hardened into “fact” as larger outlets repeated it. That goes for everyone from right-wing Just the News (“Drive, baby! Drive, drive!”) to left-wing CNN (the more common “Drive, baby, drive!”).
From the time I first read this representation, I began publicly questioning the interpretation by posting comments online. I’ve listened to the audio hundreds of times by now, and there is no way I can hear those words. Instead, I watch Becca Good hear an officer shout, “Get out of the f**king car” at her wife, try the passenger door handle and realize it is locked, and then recognize that Renee is preparing to accelerate. At that point, she screams either “Do not drive!” or more likely “Don’t drive!”
Not only do the words fit the audio pattern better, but they also make more sense as a response to the circumstances. Yet throughout the media, everyone repeats the “drive, baby, drive” narrative without any hesitation. I later heard commentator Megyn Kelly argue that Becca Good should be arrested — even suggesting felony liability — based on the assumption that she urged her wife to flee.
Kelly went so far as to say that Becca Good should be in custody now, but that claim depends entirely on a transcription that may not be accurate. What if the wife never even said, “drive, baby, drive” at all? What if it was all just a media invention?
It’s not like that has never happened before. Do you remember “hands up, don’t shoot”?
That was the media narrative to describe the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, policeman in 2014. The progressive left picked up the battle cry and accused Officer Darren Wilson of killing the teenager while he was in the act of surrender.
It wasn’t true, but it took weeks for the truth to come out — that Brown had approached Wilson in his patrol car and tried to wrestle the officer’s gun away from him. Shooting Brown was the only way for Wilson to protect himself and others. Yet because of the media narrative, Wilson was put in danger of arrest and of worse — as angry mobs in Ferguson sought justice based on a fairy tale.
Now, 12 years later, another shorthand narrative was out of control. Unable to find any outlet that had questioned the transcription as I had, I turned to an AI-based audio analysis tool, ChatGPT, to examine the clip more rigorously than the human ear alone allows.
Using slowed playback and spectrogram analysis, it reported its results. Bottom line (short answer):
- The audio does not support “drive baby drive.”
- It is far more consistent with “don’t drive” (or “do not drive”) spoken urgently.
- I would rate confidence moderate to high, given the recording quality.
Asked why “drive, baby, drive” does not fit the sound signature on the audio, ChatGPT responded:
I isolated the quoted moment from the clearest clip available to me and examined it as a time-frequency spectrogram (a standard way to visualize speech). The widely repeated phrase “drive baby drive” doesn’t match what’s in the recording. The utterance is too short for three words, and the audio lacks the distinct consonant bursts you would expect for “baby” (two clear “b” onsets). The sound pattern is more consistent with a prohibitive command such as “don’t drive” or “do not drive,” delivered urgently.
RELATED: Renee Good had 4 gunshot wounds, including in the head, new report shows
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
I’m not asking anyone to treat AI as an oracle — only to notice what happens when the slowed audio and the spectrogram don’t match the confident captioning. Perhaps ChatGPT and I are both wrong. But I don’t think so. After repeated playback, I could not hear anything resembling the word “baby.” And if the argument is that the audio portion of the video recording is too ambiguous for a definitive conclusion, then that point should have been made to the hundreds of media outlets that ran with the “drive, baby, drive” narrative — not with me for questioning it.
Deciding whether Officer Ross was justified in shooting Renee Good does not hinge on what Becca Good said in a moment of panic. But public judgment — and calls for criminal punishment — clearly have. When journalists and commentators repeat an unverified transcription as fact, they do more than simplify a complex event. They create a moral narrative that can endanger real people.
If the audio is ambiguous, that ambiguity should have been reported as such from the beginning. If it is not, then the words attributed to Becca Good deserve correction. Even if I’m wrong about the exact words, the larger point stands: If the audio is ambiguous, it should never have been presented as a definitive quote — and certainly not used to justify calls for prosecution.
In cases like this, restraint is not just appropriate. It is the responsibility that journalists owe their readers. And readers should demand the same restraint from those who claim to inform them.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Renee Good had 4 gunshot wounds, including in the head, new report shows
New information has surfaced regarding the January 7 death of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after obstructing a deportation operation and ultimately endangering the officers’ lives.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Good suffered four gunshot wounds, contradicting earlier reports of the January 7 incident that said she had three gunshot wounds.
Good was brought out of the vehicle to a snowbank and then the sidewalk to get ‘separation from an escalating scene involving law enforcement and bystanders.’
Citing the Minneapolis Fire Department’s incident report acquired through a state Data Practices Act request, the Tribune reported that paramedics found Good unresponsive, not breathing, and with an “inconsistent” and “irregular” pulse.
Good was brought out of the vehicle to a snowbank and then the sidewalk to get “separation from an escalating scene involving law enforcement and bystanders,” the Tribune wrote.
RELATED: ‘That’s what the Bible tells us’: Renee Good’s former in-law surprises CNN host with his message
Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images
According to the Star Tribune, the incident report said that Good had two gunshot wounds to her right chest, one on her left forearm, and one “with protruding tissue on the left side of [her] head.”
Blood was flowing out of her left ear, according to the outlet’s summary of the report.
Lifesaving efforts were given at the scene of the shooting, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and at the hospital, Hennepin County Medical Center. These efforts were stopped around 10:30 a.m.
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EXCLUSIVE: John Cornyn Unveils Legislation To Slap Penalties On Anti-ICE Agitators Following Renee Good Protests
Senate Republicans unveiled legislation Thursday to combat a surge of attacks against federal immigration officers. The lawmakers, led by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, are proposing to hike penalties for individuals who assault or resist law enforcement. The legislation would also enact minimum sentences for those who use vehicles to attack law enforcement, according to […]
3 reasons Renee Good’s death won’t spark a civil war
On January 8, following the death of Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer after she struck him with her vehicle, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) strongly hinted that civil war was in the cards.
“When things looked really bleak, it was Minnesota’s 1st that held that line for the nation on that July 3, 1863, and I think now we may be in that moment, that the nation’s looking to us to hold the line on democracy, to hold the line on decency, to hold the line on accountability, and more than that, to rise up as neighbors and simply say, ‘We can look out for one another,’” he said during a press conference addressing Good’s death.
His statement came just one day after Walz announced that he’d placed the Minnesota National Guard on a “warning order” amid tensions over federal immigration enforcement, protests, and Good’s shooting.
Many conservative media figures and Republicans have denounced Walz’s rhetoric as dangerous and inflammatory, arguing that he is intentionally stoking insurrection in hopes that a civil war will ignite.
But BlazeTV host John Doyle says that’s “not going to be the case.” On this episode of “The John Doyle Show,” Doyle explains why Good’s death isn’t going to be the catalyst that sparks civil war.
Reason #1: Good is white.
“You’re not exactly going to get people to come out onto the streets to more or less protest the death of a white woman — whether that is because, you know, they do not align with her racially or because they are, like, white liberals who do not view that to be as much of a tragedy,” Doyle says.
Reason #2: Normal people will continue doing normal people things.
“Not only are we going to enforce the law, normal people are just going to kind of allow us to do it, and it’s going to be really cool,” Doyle says.
“I like going on social media and seeing, like, my normie friends going about their lives, posting their Instagram stories, and I like seeing that because I know for a fact that all, like, the theater kids, all the leftists are seeing the normal conduct of people, and they’re seething about it. They’re angry because normal people just aren’t freaking waking up. And that makes me quite happy.”
Reason #3: It’s all theater.
“You had CNN running segments on this supposed uprising with experts warning of widespread civil unrest. Politicians, of course, were getting in on this, like Tim Walz alluding again to using the Minnesota National Guard to #resist deportations. He’s since cucked on this because that’s all it is, right? It’s intoxicating rhetoric,” laughs Doyle.
“It is trying to give the appearance of doing something when they’re going to have to completely surrender to the Trump administration and to the federal government. … They are trying to give gibs to their activist base.”
“[Democrats] wanted it to sound like the prelude to something actually big, this like real event and this real energy that could be absorbed by some kind of political machine so that they could finally freaking stand up and resist and we could have our civil war. … Except that is simply not going to happen because all these people do is complain and cry and bark,” Doyle says.
“They rarely bite. When they bite, it’s because they have control of the federal government,” he continues. And right now, they don’t.
To hear more of Doyle’s analysis, watch the video above.
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Trump-appointed prosecutor who uncovered Somali fraud in Minnesota resigns
President Donald Trump appointed 47-year-old career federal prosecutor Joseph Thompson in June to serve as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota.
Thompson, who expressed an interest at the outset in combating “the shocking and unacceptable levels of fraud in our state government programs,” prosecuted numerous cases of social services fraud even after he was relegated to the status of assistant attorney following the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Daniel Rosen as the Gopher State’s top federal prosecutor.
Evidently Thompson wasn’t long for the role of second fiddle.
‘His prosecutorial record gives him the opportunity to take a political leap if he wants.’
Sources familiar with Thompson’s decision told the New York Times that Thompson was one of several federal prosecutors who quit on Tuesday.
People supposedly familiar with Thompson’s decision told the Times that he objected both to the alleged push by senior Justice Department officials for a criminal probe into anti-ICE activist Renee Good’s actions as well as to the DOJ’s refusal to loop state officials into its investigation into whether Good’s fatal shooting was lawful.
RELATED: Blocking ICE with ‘micro-intifada’: Good’s group taught de-arrest, cop-car chaos before her death
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Thompson allegedly wanted the shooting investigated as a civil rights matter and was poised to investigate it in concert with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. His decision to work with the state agency was, however, reportedly overruled by DOJ officials.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
While Thompson’s office has told multiple outlets that he would not be commenting on his resignation Tuesday, he told the Minnesota Star Tribune, “It has been an honor and a privilege to represent the United States and this office.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who is now facing the threat of impeachment, said in response to the news that “Joe is a principled public servant who spent more than a decade achieving justice for Minnesotans. This is a huge loss for our state.”
“It’s also the latest sign Trump is pushing nonpartisan career professionals out of the justice department, replacing them with his sycophants,” added Walz.
This is certainly a different tune than Walz sang last week when the failed vice presidential candidate not only accused Thompson of defamation but suggested he “would have been let go by another administration.”
While Walz rushed to presume Thompson resigned on principle, there have long been rumors he has political ambitions outside the DOJ.
After being moved to the role of assistant attorney, Thompson told the Tribune in November, “I knew it was a temporary position, and at some point they would confirm my replacement, and when that happens, I’m gonna wake up the next day and figure out what to do with the rest of my life whether it’s in the office, outside the office, we’ll see.”
“Whether he chooses to pursue public office is entirely up to him,” David Schultz, professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University, said at the time. “However, his prosecutorial record gives him the opportunity to take a political leap if he wants.”
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