BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Within less than 2 kilometers and just 17 days apart, the deaths of two Americans at the hands of U.S. federal law enforcement have once again shed the spotlight on persistent problems of violent policing in the United States.
Occurring near the site where George Floyd was killed nearly six years ago, the latest incidents underscore how excessive law enforcement force -- entangled with racial discrimination, social inequality, widespread gun violence and systemic bias -- continues to weigh on U.S. society, while deepening partisan divisions further complicate efforts at reform.
"STREET KILLINGS"
Residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, braved freezing winds on Jan. 25 to mourn Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who was fatally shot by law enforcement officers a day earlier.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said federal officers fired "defensive shots" after a man (Pretti) with a handgun approached them and "violently resisted" when officers tried to disarm him. However, video footage filmed by witnesses soon contradicted the account, showing Pretti holding a mobile phone, with no evidence indicating that he was armed.
The killing marked the second fatal immigration enforcement incident in Minneapolis this month. On Jan. 7, officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot dead Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three. The shooting occurred about 1.6 kilometers from the site where George Floyd, an African American man, died in May 2020 after a police officer knelt on his neck.
The shootings have ignited public outcry in Minneapolis. Local residents described the incidents as "street killings" and "cold-blooded executions," calling for an immediate end to federal law enforcement violence. The New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen wrote that "in Minneapolis, I glimpsed a civil war."
On Friday, protesters gathered in hundreds of cities across the United States as part of a nationwide strike calling for "no work, no school, no shopping" to oppose federal immigration enforcement operations and the recent ICE-related fatal shootings.
The demonstrations, organized under the banner "National Shutdown," took place across the United States with actions ranging from business closures to student walkouts and street marches. "The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country, to stop ICE's reign of terror, we need to shut it down," organizers wrote on the National Shutdown website.
The ICE, formed in 2003 through the merger of several agencies including the former Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is now the largest law enforcement and customs body under the DHS. According to German newspaper Tagesspiegel, ICE officers have used firearms in 31 incidents since last summer, resulting in 11 casualties, while 32 people died while in custody. About 70,000 individuals are being held in ICE detention facilities.
The ICE represents only the tip of the iceberg of law enforcement violence in America. Research by the University of Illinois Chicago shows that around 250,000 people are injured each year during law enforcement encounters due to misconduct, while more than 600 die at the hands of police officers. Data from the U.S.-based "Mapping Police Violence" project shows that in 2025 alone, U.S. police killed 1,314 people, with only six days throughout the year recording no police-related fatalities.
"Violence reigns on the streets of the USA, state violence," Tagesspiegel reported. A commentary in The Atlantic argued that U.S. law enforcement culture has broken down, with brutality and dehumanization deeply entrenched in many police departments.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
Law enforcement violence is deeply rooted in U.S. history, intertwined with racial discrimination, wealth inequality, and the widespread availability of firearms, forming a self-reinforcing vicious circle.
Back in the 18th century, slave patrols in the South, the first unofficial police in America, were permitted to use violent methods to capture and punish runaway slaves. Such historical origins meant that the U.S. law enforcement system was marked by entrenched racial bias from its birth. In 1838, the first police department in the country was established in Boston to protect the property of the rich white elites.
Racism within the law enforcement system has allowed violent policing to persist until now. Statistics show that since 2013, Black Americans have been about 2.8 times more likely than white Americans to be killed in encounters with police.
The death of George Floyd in 2020 sparked the largest wave of protests and unrest in the country in decades, yet a Pew Research Center survey shows that more than five years later, nearly 90 percent of respondents believe relations between police and Black Americans have not improved or have worsened.
Poor white Americans also face the threat of police violence. Community poverty rates are positively correlated with police killings: The rate of deaths caused by police violence in the poorest communities is more than three times that of the wealthiest communities, according to a report published by the think tank People's Policy Project.
The proliferation of firearms in the United States has also created a cycle of violence linked to violent policing. The United States has the highest level of civilian gun ownership in the world, with an estimated 400 to 500 million firearms, exceeding the country's population of more than 340 million.
In a nation with far more firearms than people, police operate under the assumption that any encounter could be with someone carrying a gun, which colors their training, policies, and frame of mind on the job, said sociologist Michael Sierra-Arevalo at the University of Texas at Austin.
"QUALIFIED IMMUNITY"
In recent years, complaints about violent law enforcement have become increasingly common in the United States, yet very few officers face punishment. After Pretti was killed, the federal government's immediate response was to defend the law enforcement personnel. As American criminologist Samuel Walker observed, the U.S. law enforcement system has failed to establish a lasting accountability mechanism for the abuse of force.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court established the modern legal framework of "qualified immunity" for public officials, stipulating that actions causing harm by police or other public officials are exempt from liability as long as they do not violate "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." This provision contains numerous ambiguities, granting judges considerable discretion when ruling on individual cases, and in practice, officers are rarely found in violation.
U.S. media analysts have noted that in many recent lawsuits aimed at holding police accountable for misconduct, "qualified immunity" has effectively served as a shield protecting officers. Many police officers with a history of misconduct have leveraged it to remain in the force for long periods, often becoming increasingly brazen in their behavior. For example, before the killing of George Floyd in 2020, Derek Chauvin, then a Minneapolis police officer, had received at least 17 complaints, 16 of which were closed without any punishment, according to media reports.
More recently, the Trump administration asserted that the ICE officer who shot Renee Good should "enjoy absolute immunity." According to commentary from the Brookings Institution, "absolute immunity" would allow lawsuits to be dismissed without the investigative discovery phase, fundamentally altering existing norms governing law enforcement conduct and producing far-reaching negative consequences for accountability in the U.S. system.
The structure of U.S. law enforcement further weakens accountability. A report by the Council on Foreign Relations notes that police agencies operate at four levels -- federal, state, county, and local -- each functioning independently with significant autonomy. This fragmentation renders federal-level oversight largely ineffective and makes it difficult even to collect and track information on misconduct.
PARTISAN POLARIZATION
Despite repeated outrage erupting across the United States, the problem of violent law enforcement remains unresolved, rooted in a nation deeply entangled in partisan battles.
After the two fatal shootings, the parties clashed over how to define the incidents and who should have investigative authority: the Trump administration and the Republican camp labeled Pretti and Good as "domestic terrorists" or "professional agitators," while the Democrats condemned the officers' use of excessive force, with each side blaming the other for the tragedy.
Some U.S. media commentators noted that amid the highly politicized immigration debate, Republicans feel the need to justify their "tough-on-crime" approach, while Democrats have turned "police violence" into a weapon to attack the Trump administration. With the midterm elections approaching, both parties are eager to assert the legitimacy of their positions, advance their agendas, and court swing voters, while public safety once again becomes a casualty of political calculation.
The partisan divide has not only intensified societal tension but also laid the groundwork for violent law enforcement. As CNN commented, Pretti's killing is "a crescendo rather than a singular event." A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace describes the social rifts fueled by partisan conflict as "affective polarization," noting that under disparaging narratives targeting specific groups, such polarization makes anger more likely to erupt into violence.
As the Trump administration presses ahead with hardline immigration policies, it has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of minority identities, while Democratic politicians, seeking minority support, have labeled law enforcement agencies as instruments of racial oppression. This "two-way demonization" has intensified emotional polarization in U.S. society and further aggravated tensions between law enforcers and the public.
Meanwhile, deepening partisan rivalry has stalled long-overdue reforms of the law enforcement system. In the aftermath of the Floyd case, proposed legislation to hold police accountable was held up in prolonged political wrangling in Congress and ultimately failed to pass.
As reform efforts remain hostage to party infighting, violent policing persists in a recurring cycle -- what Time magazine described as evidence of a nation increasingly torn apart by partisan hatred, fueling public anxiety and uncertainty about the country's future. ■
