Justice Connection today issued a statement following the second fatal shooting of a protester by federal agents in Minneapolis this month. The following can be attributed to Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection:
“The Justice Department has abdicated its role in seeking accountability for these fatal shootings by refusing to investigate allegations of unlawful, excessive force by federal agents in Minneapolis. The Justice Department has its mission in its title – but in cases like these, justice is nowhere to be found.
“A community can only trust law enforcement when they know agents will be held accountable for acting outside their authority. That trust is built on unbiased investigations into suspected illegal conduct. But instead of pursuing those investigations, the Justice Department has publicized spurious conclusions contradicted by evidence; perverted the term “domestic terrorist” by applying it to victims and protesters; boxed out state and local law enforcement; and launched investigations into conduct by victims and surviving family members instead of the agents who fired the guns.
“Under any previous administration, the Justice Department would’ve launched civil rights investigations into the use of force in the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Failures like these led to the departures of senior employees in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the Civil Rights Division, and the FBI – adding to the loss of the institutional expertise necessary to guide the department in critical moments like these.”
For more on the administration’s politicized misuse of “domestic terrorist,” see this recent piece on Justice Connection’s Substack by Thomas E. Brzozowski, who spent nearly a decade as the main point of contact within DOJ for domestic terrorism matters.
