Minnesota lawmakers fear 'cover-up' as FBI takes over ICE shooting investigation

0:00WBUR Podcasts. Boston. This chanting shame after we just saw ICE agents take a few different people to the ground. Excuse me, deploying pepper balls. We watched them mace. Shock and outrage on the streets after ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.

0:36It's Thursday, January 8th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WVU-R. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:45A little later on the show, we'll hear why the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which was founded in the 1700s, is shutting down. It's more complicated than just economic turmoil in the news biz, and it leaves another major American city with fewer options for local journalism. But first, we're following the latest developments in the fatal shooting of an unarmed American citizen by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There's widespread outrage over the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, shot in the head while she was driving away from ICE agents in a residential neighborhood of Minneapolis.

1:25Trump administration officials, including the president, quickly labeled her a domestic terrorist and claimed the officer was acting in self-defense because Good was about to hit him with her car. But multiple videos of the shooting were widely circulated and contradict that narrative. Minneapolis public schools canceled classes district-wide for the rest of the week due to safety concerns. An official from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, about three miles from the scene of the shooting, told NPR News that armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came onto school property Wednesday and violently confronted staff and bystanders.

2:04Protests continue across the city today. For the latest, we called up Matt Sepik around 1 o 'clock Eastern. He's a correspondent for NPR News in Minneapolis, and he spoke with Indira Lakshmanan. So first, tell us more about this latest news. Immediately after the shooting, local and federal officials were thought to be investigating together. Why has the FBI taken sole control? Is that typical in a case involving federal officers? It's that's a better question for a legal expert. But in the case most famously several years ago of Derek Chauvin and the officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there was every everybody was investigating.

2:47The FBI was involved in that. There were state investigations as well. And as you recall, there were state and federal charges. Derek Chauvin was, of course, convicted of murder in a state court. He also pleaded guilty in federal court to violating George Floyd's civil rights. That required a cooperative investigation of both state and federal authorities. And that's what we initially thought was happening, as you said. But we learned just this morning that the feds, the FBI is taking this over entirely. Governor Tim Walz just a few minutes ago addressed that. He questioned whether an investigation could be fair and impartial with only the FBI in charge.

3:27He says, quote, it feels now that Minnesota has been taken out of the investigation. It feels very, very difficult that we'll get a fair outcome. He said that President Trump, Vice President Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have, quote, told you things that are verifiably false. Noem had already prejudged the outcome. All right. Well, it sounds like politicians, at least Democrats in Minnesota, have concerns about how fair this investigation is going to be. What are you hearing locally about whether charges could still be brought against this ICE officer, if merited, now that this is a federal investigation?

4:06Well, that's what we're working to find out. I'm going to be joining a call in a little while this afternoon with legal experts to address this very issue. It gets really to the heart of federalism and the division of power, the separation of powers between state and federal governments. The ICE officer obviously is a federal employee working for a federal agency. He was on Minnesota soil in the city of Minneapolis in Hennepin County. If warranted, as you say, that leaves a lot of questions open legally as to whether he could face state charges if the U.S. Attorney's Office or the U.S. Justice Department declines to charge him.

4:51Okay. Well, today, protesters have clashed with law enforcement outside of a federal building in Minneapolis where you are. Tell us what is happening. What is the mood on the streets now? Well, I wasn't at the ground for that particular protest. A couple of my colleagues were. They reported that agents of law enforcement used chemical irritants tear gas to keep protesters at bay. However, what we've seen so far, particularly the vigil last night that drew thousands of people to the South Minneapolis neighborhood where Ms. Good was shot and killed yesterday morning, that was peaceful. Lots of people out and no problems, no clashes.

5:33And everyone here is hoping it remains that way. There are a lot of concerns, obviously, following what happened five and a half years ago following the murder of George Floyd. Let me briefly pick up on that, because as you say, after George Floyd was killed by police who arrested him for allegedly using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes, listeners will remember that public outrage erupted into major riots and months of protest,$500 million in damage. In the 30 seconds or so we have left, are residents concerned about a repeat of that painful time as residents react to the death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good?

6:15As a resident of Minneapolis speaking personally, I can tell you that's a big concern of mine after George Floyd's murder. That is not something anybody here wants to live through, again, that sort of civil unrest. And I could tell it was something on the minds of everybody who spoke at the mayor's news conference yesterday. And it's certainly on the mind of Governor Tim Walz, who has asked the National Guard to be on standby and hasn't deployed them, but asked them to be on standby in case of any unrest if these protests lose their peaceful character. All right. In just a few seconds, have we learned anything new about the victim, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good?

6:57Well, we're still working to learn more about her. It appears that she was a legal observer who, you know, one of these folks who goes around and monitors ICE activity, films that keeps track of license plate numbers. We know she was a mother left behind a young child. There is an online fundraising campaign to raise money for her loved ones at this point. But we're still working to learn more biographical details about her. A very sad story, and we will be in touch with you to learn more as you get more reporting. That's Matt Sepik with Minnesota Public Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. You're welcome.

7:38We also spoke with the former police chief of Minneapolis, Medaria Arredondo, about police training and tactics and whether they were ignored in this case. In Minneapolis, and I will tell you that most local law enforcement agencies across the country over the past decade have really tried to minimize or reduce officers firing into moving vehicles. One of the things that research has shown is that just because you shoot at a moving vehicle to disable it, that is ineffective. They have seen that to be ineffective. So if you're putting yourself in harm's way to fire your weapon into a moving vehicle, that practice or that tactic has been seen not as effective.

8:24You can hear that whole conversation at hereandnow.org. Peter O'Dowd has more on this story after a short break.

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9:25All right, let's bring in State Senator Scott Dibble, a member of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. His district is next to the one where the shooting took place. Senator Dibble, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. You know, as we just heard from Matt there, The memory of George Floyd, the unrest that happened afterwards still raw in Minnesota at this point. Are you confident that the protests over this latest death will remain peaceful? Well, as the governor said in his press conference a short time ago, Minnesotans really met the moment last night in a number of ways, showing up to peacefully protest.

10:02There were tens of thousands of people on the site where Renee Nicole Good was murdered. And then in addition, I went from that peaceful protest and vigil to a gathering of almost a thousand people in my district who wanted themselves to learn how to become legal observers and the kind of people who can document and care for those who are under target and under attack in Minnesota. So I'm reasonably confident that the protests will remain vigorous, but will continue to be quite peaceful. And as a leader in this community, I will continue to endeavor. As we just reported, state officials wanted to collaborate with the FBI in this investigation.

10:47But state law enforcement saying today that Minnesota officials are being blocked from that investigation. What's your reaction to that news? Well, I think it's clear, given what Christy Noem has already said, what the president himself has already said, trying to control the narrative, engage in a campaign of lies and propaganda, that they're gearing for a cover-up. If you look at the analysis that was conducted by the New York Times, who viewed the video evidence from a number of different angles, Clearly, Renee Good was trying to move away from the police officers and move out of the area and was shot as she was moving away from this officer.

11:30And they've tried to mischaracterize and malign her name and her memory as a terrorist. That is just unconscionable and unacceptable. She was a good person, a wife, a mother, someone who cared deeply about our community and was shot as an innocent observer for no good reason. And there's an attempted cover up. That is quite clear. Let me just jump in and try to provide some details here about what the administration has said. they're saying, the Trump administration, that she weaponized her vehicle, that officers were defending themselves, that they were following their training. So am I hearing you say that you don't trust the federal government to conduct a fair investigation if the state of Minnesota is not involved?

12:18That's absolutely accurate, what you just said. I don't think there's any way we can trust the FBI to conduct a fair investigation. They've already shown themselves to be highly politicized by the president. We see the Department of Justice pursuing bogus cases at the demand and the insistence in those cases being bounced out of courts on that basis. The entire public safety and criminal justice and justice system at the federal government has been politicized and is being used to an authoritarian's goals and ends. That's exactly what's happening here. On the other hand, we just heard Mayor Fry delivering an angry response yesterday.

13:00He used expletives in his press conference. Yes, people are angry, but do you think local leaders are doing enough to lower the temperature? Well, I think it's important for people to stand up and be heard and be honest and be clear. And, you know, we had an incident of violence occur in Minnesota at the hands of our federal government. We have our students in our public schools who, I think, the right call, given that they went from this scene to a high school and started creating havoc at a high school, our own students don't feel safe because of fear of our own federal government. So the folks who need to take the temperature down are the folks who are responsible for fomenting this chaos and this violence in Minnesota.

13:55And that's ICE and that's the federal government. When you say schools made the right call, I think you're referring to the fact that Minneapolis schools have closed today through the rest of the week because of safety concerns like the ones you just mentioned. Finally, I guess I would just ask. They're afraid of our federal government. I mean, think about that for a moment. Yeah. So what's your message to families whose kids are home from school today? Just, you know, love them, keep them close. You know, talk about the importance of democracy and fairness and equality and representation. You know, and just, you know, stay safe, stay home if at all possible.

14:35Avoid the streets and avoid ICE. Minnesota State Senator Scott Dibble, a member of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

14:51We'll keep following this story at npr.org. But coming up next, another storied American newspaper is shutting down. It's a sadly familiar story as local news has been eviscerated over the past 20 years or so. Coming up after the break, Indira explores what happened to her hometown paper and what it says about the state of journalism and civic society in America today. Stick around.

15:26The oldest continuously running newspaper in the United States is closing. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was founded in 1786. Its owners announced they'll shut the paper down in May because of financial losses. The news comes a week after the same owners shut down Pittsburgh's City Paper, the Free Alternative Weekly. They're the latest in a string of some 3 ,500 newspapers across the U.S. that have shuttered over the last 25 years. Andrew Conte is Managing Director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Andy, welcome. Yeah, thanks for having me, Indira. It's nice to reconnect.

16:03It's great to reconnect. And both of us are native Pittsburghers who grew up reading the Post Gazette. As a kid, it showed up on my doorstep, and it was my first window into the local and national news of the day. I worked for this paper for a few months after college. You worked for a rival paper. So tell us, what kind of a loss is this going to be for the community, and how are locals reacting to the news? We're still responding to it. We've heard from a long time, the owners of the Post-Gazette told everyone that they were planning to close the newspaper if they couldn't get a favorable ruling from the federal government about a labor dispute they were having.

16:40And they've been announcing that they've been losing millions of dollars. They said it was$350 million they've lost in keeping the paper going over the past 20 years. So in that sense, it was expected. But what was unexpected was that it's happening. And now the moment is here. and people feel devastated about it, honestly. It's just something that even though, you know, things have changed, there's been massive disruption to local news, the Post-Gazette was still one of those papers of record that people look to. Yeah. Well, everyone in Pittsburgh knows the paper. It won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the Tree of Life shooting several years ago.

17:18It has well-known local columnists. As you suggested, it's shut down as a little bit more complicated than the typical story. of the newspaper industry being in economic turmoil because of the rise of digital media. Briefly, just tell us what happened with this long labor strike and court case that went against the owners. There's been an ongoing labor dispute between the owners of the paper and the News Guild, which represents the newsroom workers, for almost a decade. Issues related to pay, but more significantly to health care insurance and the cost of who pays for that. The Guild decided to go on strike just over three years ago, and they were on strike for three years.

17:59So the employees have been out for three years, and now they just came back to work Thanksgiving week. And here we are six weeks later, the owners of the paper saying, well, now you're back to work, but we're going to close down the newspaper. specifically because the Supreme Court declined to take their appeal in which the owners lost the case and were told that they had to pay. They had to operate under the old contract. So you wrote a book a few years ago, Andy, called Death of the Daily News about what happened in a small community in southwestern Pennsylvania after its local newspaper shut down.

18:33Based on that experience, what do you think the impact is going to be on Pittsburgh without the Post-Gazette, without the city paper. Right. It's just we have fewer people telling the stories, fewer journalists telling the stories of our communities. And so that's, you know, if you ask the person on the street, do they have enough information, they would say, oh, yeah, I'm inundated with information. There's all kinds of things coming at me all the time. And we think a lot of us can relate to that. But the reality is that very little of that information is coming from trained professionals who are going out to make sure that the information is accurate and relevant and objective.

19:07And so instead, you get this mishmash of different sources of information. A lot of it is gossip from your neighbors. Some of it is what you see on social media in the community that I covered, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, that I focused on in the book. One of the concerns there was that, one, people didn't know basic things, like a friend who had died, but there's no obituary, so you don't see that that person's dead and you find out weeks later. The other thing was that people just lose connection with each other. They don't know about the events that are taking place in the community. And those are the things that are really lost whenever a traditional news outlet closes.

19:44It's not just the accountability reporting, which is important, but it's the things that support social capital, that connect people and make communities places where we want to live. And that's one of the things we've been talking about at the Center for Media Innovation is that this challenge of the disruption to local news has been framed as a problem of the media. But it's really a problem of community health. Healthy communities need access to reliable information, and when they don't have that, it undermines the connections among people with their neighbors and everyone around them. Andy, in the few moments we have left, you're part of a group that's taking action to try to help the public still have access to local news.

20:23Briefly, tell us what you're doing. So we formed something here called the Pittsburgh Media Partnership. It's now a coalition of 30-plus news outlets across 10 counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. It includes the Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh City Paper, which both closed or are closing. But the idea is that these are news outlets that 10 to 20 years ago were trying to put each other out of business. And they recognize now that they're better off if they work together. And so we do collaborative reporting workshops training. Thank you, Andrew Quinty from Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

20:55Thank you so much, Andy.

21:05That's our show for today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Lynn Manningon, Jill Ryan, and Ashley Locke. Our editors were Todd Munt, Mikaela Rodriguez, Michael Scotto, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green, Matt Reed, and Andre Peralta. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And here at now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.