BEWARE OF CORNERED RATS: There comes a time when we all need an island. We’re in the throes of such a time now. The particular island I’ve conjured usually involves a glass of rye whiskey on ice — just enough to sear the lining of my lungs — and maybe an hour watching reruns of that ancient TV show Law & Order, famously created by longtime Santa Barbara resident Dick Wolf.
Nobody gets killed onscreen. No cars explode. There are no chase scenes, not even heaving sex scenes. Mostly, people just yammer at each other. Every now and again, Wolf throws in a “Ba-Bong!” — the show’s sonic signature. Mostly, it’s populated by a revolving cast of cops and prosecutors, all struggling with themselves to figure out the right thing. They struggle a lot with each other over the same thing, as well.
Spoiler alert: They don’t always figure it out. They don’t necessarily do it, either. Like real life. Also like real life, the endings come fast and abrupt.
“Ba-Bong!”
Law & Order!
What a quaintly necessary antidote to the personality disorders now commandeering center stage of planet Earth.
I only just stumbled onto it even though the show premiered back in 1990. Last night, I did the math. Renee Nicole Good wouldn’t be born for another year when the show’s first episode aired. She wouldn’t have her three kids until much later. She wouldn’t write her award-winning poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” until five years ago.
Now — at least for the next 15 seconds — the world will know her name. She’s the white lady in Minneapolis who was shot three times in the head by an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross seconds after Good told him, “That’s fine,
dude, I’m not mad at you.” You can hear those three shots on all the videos. Right after, you can also hear someone say, “Fucking bitch.”
We don’t know for certain who said that.
Some nights, one glass isn’t enough.
Tuesday evening, Santa Barbara’s reigning top cop — District Attorney John Savrnoch — stepped out from the sidelines to engage the moment, releasing a statement mourning the needless loss of life. “It is my fear that the militarized and quota-based immigration enforcement actions will heighten fear, anger, and resentment to the point it will lead to more violence,” he wrote. As a lawyer, Savrnoch took issue with Vice President JD Vance’s instant assertion that the shooter enjoyed absolute immunity. He called these statements “a specious claim.” (Read Savrnoch’s full letter at independent.com/turbulent-times.)
Savrnoch also took issue with the many demonstrable falsehoods issued by Donald Trump and members of his inner circle immediately blaming Good for getting herself shot well before any investigation had taken place.
No, for the record, she did not touch Ross with her car, let alone hit him, as Trump insisted, despite video evidence to the contrary. Nor was she a “domestic terrorist,” nor a “paid professional agitator.” Nor was she even “disrespectful” with Ross, as Trump has more recently alleged as an explanation of the killing.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any votes, OK? It’s like incredible.”
— Donald J. Trump when first running for office in 2016
Drawing on his experience as a professional prosecutor for 34 years, Savrnoch wrote, “Shooting scenes are chaotic, and it’s irresponsible for government officials to comment and make judgements before all the facts are known.” Savrnoch called it “disturbing” that Trump did so.
Mostly, Savrnoch was calling on people to not blow up the world the next time they hit the streets to protest. In closing, Savrnoch still had hope that Americans will reject “hate, violence, and vindictiveness.”
Savrnoch isn’t alone. Six very high-ranking senior federal prosecutors in Minneapolis — including the one leading the charge against the massive, multibillion-dollar fraud perpetrated against various safety net programs in Minnesota mostly by people of Somali origin — have just quit their jobs. They quit because they’d been ordered by higher-ranking officials within the Justice Department to focus their investigative energies on finding dirt on Good’s spouse, Becca, who happened to be with Good when she was shot. (She was the one who famously explained, “We came with whistles; they came with guns.”) These career prosecutors quit because the same Justice Department for which they worked refused to share information about the case with the state agency charged with investigating any and all law enforcement shootings.
Law & Order.
“Ba-Bong!”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara weighed in, too. He had no issue with the laws ICE was trying to enforce, only with the way they went about it. It’s inflammatory. Incendiary. A provocation. And that’s the whole point. Right now, Minneapolis has 2,000 federal ICE agents roaming its streets waging intermittent guerilla warfare with city residents, citizens and non-citizens alike. O’Hara has 600 officers. O’Hara’s cops find themselves forced to clean up ICE’s mess. “This was predictable and preventable,” said O’Hara in a recent interview. “I had been saying it for weeks. I literally said it at a press conference the day before.”
It’s not like Trump didn’t warn us. Remember him saying, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any votes, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”
Trump’s right: It is incredible. But this time, he’s also got it wrong. He’s going to lose a lot of votes. But he’s going to lose a lot more than that. No wonder he’s so desperate. I’ve cornered more than a few rats in my time. They can really leap. Trump’s leaping.
I think that’s what John Savrnoch’s trying to say. Watch out for leaping rats.
“Ba-Bong!”
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