Two sheriffs respond to a tragedy, one of them decently | Opinion
After an ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good to death in Minneapolis on Wednesday, two south Puget Sound sheriffs weighed in on social media. Their comments went in very different directions, to say the least.
First, Sheriff Keith Swank of Pierce County posted a short message on X, chiding anyone who would flee police encounters. The other, Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders, posted a longer comment on Facebook. He criticized Swank for his tone, and reflected on the need to train law enforcement not to stand in front of the cars of people they’re trying to arrest.
They traded words, and insults flew. I don’t think that part of this story is very admirable. But Sanders’ original comment, to me, had the right of it. Treating the situation as a tragedy, and emphasizing what law enforcement officers must do to avoid further tragedies, even when faced with heightened stress, is the decent thing to do.
“Police cannot and should not induce our own jeopardy and create an unnecessary deadly force scenario,” he wrote.
It also has the biggest chance of making a difference. By contrast, focusing on what the deceased civilian did wrong is not only ghoulish, it has vanishingly small value to the public.
On the list of possible human responses to being rushed by armed, masked agents, fleeing is going to feature as a strong possibility. It’s fine to imagine you would have done something differently, and maybe you would have. But I promise you don’t really know how you’d respond to a situation that stressful until you go through it.
Law enforcement officers who stand in front of vehicles are forcing a tense situation toward a lethal outcome. If you see a vehicle as a deadly weapon, then this move is the equivalent of stepping in front of a suspect’s drawn gun. That’s not just my analysis. Standard police training tells officers not to do this.
Both sheriffs confirmed that to me. I talked to them separately on Friday. Surprisingly, I found they agreed with each other on multiple points. Swank said it’s a poor strategy and goes against current law enforcement training for an officer to stand in front of a vehicle. His opinion is that it looks like the ICE agent made an error.
“Do I think that it was tactically sound, what the agent did? I don’t know,” Swank said, adding, “I would say no, at first blush. You should not stand in front of a vehicle.”
For his part, Sanders agreed that suspects fleeing, resisting and arguing with officers make a situation more dangerous. He is a law enforcement officer, after all.
When neither party is backing down from an escalating standoff, “it leads to bad outcomes,” he said.
I think the real difference in opinion here is over which of these issues a local law enforcement leader should emphasize while talking to the public. Swank leaned hard into how the public should react to law enforcement officers.
I asked him about this. Why focus on conduct like Good’s in his response? He said he believes politicians are inciting the public to violence toward law enforcement officers.
“I want them to not do that, so that they don’t get hurt or killed,” Swank said.
But Sanders said this behavior from the public is par for the course.
“People are always going to run, they’re always going to fight, and they’re always going to refuse the commands. We can’t expect that they’re going to do better,” Sanders said. “We can only control our half of it.”
Like it or not, the onus is on law enforcement officers not to create dangerous situations where someone is likely to suffer death or injury.
Swank would have us remember that officers are human, and make mistakes.
“Under high stress situations, sometimes people revert back to other things,” he said, “and they actually put themselves in danger.”
And there is the crux of the issue: why do civilians have to be perfect while officers get to be human? Especially when officers receive training on how to respond to the public. A lot of it. Because that is law enforcement’s job.
And here’s a thought. When an officer in a high profile incident makes that mistake on camera, it’s a great time to drive that training home.
You could say, “Here’s a clear example of what not to do.”
This story was originally published January 10, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
