Even The Police Can't Tell The Difference Between ICE And Criminals

When a plain-clothed ICE agent aimed his gun at a woman for no reason, a police officer intervened on her behalf, only to be told the gun pointer was a federal agent.

California police mistook an ICE agent who was aiming his gun at a woman driver for a criminal.

Soon after the FBI warned that ICE agents needed to identify themselves because criminals were copying their (unlawful) behavior, a California police officer found himself confronting a plain-clothed ICE agent who was pointing a gun at a woman driver for no apparent reason.

A Fullerton police officer saw a man in plainclothes pointing gun at a female driver in Santa Ana on a busy street and went to assist her, only to find later that the man claimed to be an immigration agent. The ICE agent claimed he was pointing a weapon at her because she was following them. However, she said he was following her and added that she lived there.

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Holding his gun sideways — which Wikipedia notes “makes proper aiming very difficult” but is popular in hip hop and among street criminals, the ICE agent yelled, “You can’t be following us like that!”

“I live here!” the woman responded.

The police officer informed the immigration agent that he could not assist “with someone following or recording him if no crime had occurred, and that local law enforcement was en route.”

This leads any reasonable person to ask if no crime had occurred and there was no immediate danger, why was the agent was pointing his gun at the woman driver in the middle of a busy street?

A video of this incident on Sunday, seemingly taken by the woman driver, was shared on social media by local journalist izzymirez below. You can see a man in plain clothes walking toward the driver holding his gun aimed out at her. He only lowers it as he walks toward the police officer who pulled up next to the woman driver to offer assistance.

@izzymirez

izzy on Instagram: "An ICE agent brandished their weapon toward…

The agent later identified himself and accused the woman of “following him” during an “operation”— a claim which we’ve discussed previously here, because it is part of a larger theme of Trump’s federal agents trying to hide what they’re doing and intimidate people from documenting their actions.

This man is giving unhinged. Every day in this country, stalking victims are fighting to protect themselves from actual danger and they are not encouraged, even after documenting the ongoing behavior, to get out of their car and point a gun at the person stalking them. But then the goal of Trump’s agents seems to be to stop people from documenting who they are and what they are doing, rather than protecting themselves from imminent harm.

The LA Times noted this is “a refrain increasingly heard as agents push back on people recording their movements…. (it) raises concerns as it joins an growing list of cases of masked and plainclothes agents being mistaken for criminals and visa versa.”

The officer had just dropped off an inmate at the Orange County Jail and was returning to Fullerton when he noticed man exit a vehicle at an intersection and draw his weapon on the driver behind him, according to a statement from the Fullerton Police Department.

“The officer immediately stopped to assist, not knowing the identify of the armed male or the circumstances unfolding in front of him,” according to the statement.

The local journalist who shared the video identified the woman as a community watch member. Generally speaking, community watch members are strictly for observation and reporting, which is not illegal in the United States of America.

Ironically, many community watch members receive training regarding what is legal and not legal in their efforts, which means they might be better trained than some of Trump’s federal thugs, some of whom have criminal records and others of whom have failed drug tests. This might even become a theme, as Trump’s first term White House was awash in Xanax and speed, according to reporting by Rolling Stone.

“Under Trump, the White House Medical Unit was “like the Wild West,” and staffers had easy access to powerful stimulants and sedatives, sources tell Rolling Stone.

Aiming a gun at someone in the middle of a busy street because you think they’re following you is unreasonable behavior. It’s both an escalation and intimidation tactic that brings to mind the dangerous streets of a lawless country rather than the streets of a “free” country as the U.S. is supposed to be.

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