Police state regimes, in South Africa in the apartheid era, Uganda in the Idi Amin days, Chile under Augusto Pinochet and other dictatorships, usually resort to political assassination to maintain control. Often the public explanation for the death of their victims is patently, and deliberately, false. In South Africa, a protester in detention would be said to have died after slipping on a bar of soap while taking a shower. Or sometimes the jailed opponent was said to have accidentally fallen from a window.

In Minneapolis this winter, an assassinated woman protester sitting in her car was said to have caused her own death by starting to drive away from the scene of a protest against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep. Just as at other anti-ICE protests around the country, Renee Good had blown a whistle to alert potential detainees that a sweep was underway. As she and her partner were leaving, Good was recorded as telling an ICE agent through her car window “I’m not mad at you, Dude!” Less than five seconds later, she was shot and killed.

Was the ICE agent guilty of murder January 7? Was it an unfortunate accident when the agent mistakenly assumed she was trying to kill him by running him over? The government immediately claimed the victim was a “domestic terrorist”, a charge directly out of the playbook in apartheid South Africa and Argentina’s “Dirty War”. The Trump administration’s attempt to intimidate by use of lethal force was unsuccessful. Protest continued in Minneapolis and spread to other cities and states.

Then on Saturday morning, January 24, a 27-year old Minneapolis intensive care nurse, Alex Pretti, was defending a protesting woman who was being pepper sprayed and beaten by U.S. Border Patrol agents. He was thrown to the pavement and restrained by as many as 6 agents before beinh shot multiple times, which him. Again, White House officials claimed Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who gave federal agents no choice but to kill him. It was a point-blank shooting justified by the fact that Pretti had a licensed, concealed carry pistol with him.

These two episodes in Minneapolis are typical of police state tactics, and were identified as such when they occurred. Since the killings were condoned at the highest level of the U.S. government, the remedy is to eliminate that government through nonviolent action.