Minneapolis police chief warns 'people have had enough' after the fatal shooting by federal agents

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said on Sunday that public anger has reached a tipping point following the fatal shooting of a city resident by federal agents, warning that the current approach to immigration enforcement is unsustainable.

“People have had enough,” O’Hara said, speaking on CBS ‘Face the Nation’ with Margaret Brennan, one day after federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, in downtown Minneapolis.

The killing came amid ongoing protests over a surge in federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota’s largest city.

Third shooting in weeks intensifies outrage in Minneapolis

Pretti’s death marked the third shooting involving federal agents in Minneapolis in less than three weeks. Earlier this month, Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer. In a separate incident, a Venezuelan migrant was shot in the leg by ICE while allegedly attempting to flee. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said agents acted in self-defense while attempting to disarm Pretti. Local officials, however, have questioned that account. O’Hara said it was “deeply concerning the things that are being said” by federal officials.

“This is an individual that was a city resident,” O’Hara said. “It appears that he was present exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city. So I think very obviously, there are serious questions that are being raised,” he said.

Legality no longer the central issue, chief says

O’Hara argued that even a finding that the shooting was legally justified would not ease public anger.

“The greater issue is, even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point,” he said, citing widespread outrage and fear across the city.

He contrasted the recent shootings with the Minneapolis Police Department’s record last year. “The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone,” O’Hara said.

“And now this is the second American citizen that’s been killed,, it’s the third shooting within three weeks.”

O’Hara says, ‘this is not sustainable’ 

He said the scale of the federal operation is overwhelming a department already stretched thin. “This is not sustainable. This police department has only 600 police officers. We are stretched incredibly thin. This is taking an enormous toll on trying to manage all of this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It’s too much,” he said.

Asked whether he was calling for ICE to leave Minneapolis, O’Hara said enforcement itself was not the issue. “The problem isn’t that enforcement is happening,” he said. “It’s clearly the manner in which these things are happening. These tactics are very obviously not safe, and it is generating a lot of outrage and fear in the community.”

Conflicting accounts over Pretti’s shooting

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on Saturday that Pretti had a gun and ammunition and alleged that he assaulted officers. O’Hara said he had not seen evidence supporting claims that the weapon was brandished. “I don’t have any evidence that I’ve seen that suggests that the weapon was brandished,” he said.  

O’Hara also criticized the lack of information shared with local police following the shooting. “We don’t have any official information from federal law enforcement about what has happened,” he said, adding that when Minneapolis officers arrived at the scene, even basic details typically provided in officer-involved shootings were not shared.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to share information with the public that they are not sharing with us,” O’Hara said.

Trump administration officials have accused local authorities of failing to adequately assist ICE operations, a claim O’Hara called “deeply disappointing.”

He said local police are “doing everything that we can to manage this chaos,” but are vastly outnumbered by thousands of federal immigration agents deployed to the city.