MINNEAPOLIS — In a wide-ranging interview on The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast, Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara called last week’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good “predictable and entirely preventable.”

He railed on aggressive tactics employed by the influx of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarming the Twin Cities this month at the direction of President Donald Trump, questioned the actions of the agent involved in Good’s killing and expressed fears that the behavior of federal law enforcement may undermine any public trust his department has managed to rebuild since 2020.

Breaking down the shooting, O’Hara acknowledged that there are universally accepted rules in law enforcement advising officers how to safely interact with motorists.

“The No. 1 is: You don’t place yourself in the path of the vehicle,” he said during the 35-minute interview. “That’s like traffic stop 101. You don’t do that.”

Bystander videos of the incident made O’Hara question what the ICE officers’ mission was that day, given that Good was apparently not the target for their enforcement action.

Podcast host Michael Barbaro noted that Good refused to get out of the car and appeared to disobey spoken orders from law enforcement. “Was she in the wrong?” Barbaro asked.

O’Hara declined to answer that question, instead pivoting to best practices as a police officer. Training dictates that an officer should approach the driver and introduce themself by name, rank and agency, he said, then explain why the driver was stopped.

“If a person asks you a question that is reasonable, you respond to it reasonably,” O’Hara said, noting that it can help deescalate the encounter. “I didn’t see any of that,” he said of the ICE shooting.

“Further, it just seems like there’s confusion ... it’s not clear to me whether the two (agents) were working together and understood what each other was trying to accomplish.”

Asked whether the situation would have been handled differently by Minneapolis Police Department officers, rather than ICE, he answered resolutely: “No question.”

O’Hara went on to question the training of federal agents and whether the agency had done enough to ensure the safety of their own officer, Jonathan Ross, who was involved in a vehicle dragging incident last summer that left him with significant injuries.

“I do think they’re being forced into situations that they’re not prepared to deal with,” O’Hara said.

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