Eleven Days Earlier – The Escalation Before the Death

Eleven days before his death, Alex Pretti had already once been lying on the asphalt of Minneapolis. Not dead, but humiliated, surrounded by masked federal agents who dragged him to the ground while whistles shrieked around them and a heated crowd shouted. The videos that have now surfaced show no dangerous man. They show a person who is angry, overwhelmed, provocative – and yet throughout clearly someone who does not use violence, does not draw a weapon, does not attack anyone. Above all, they show how far the escalation by the authorities had already been driven long before Pretti was shot.

On January 13, during a protest against deportations, Pretti kicks the taillight of a police vehicle and it shatters. It is an act of anger, no question. But what follows is wildly disproportionate. An officer jumps out of the vehicle, grabs Pretti by the upper body, drags him back onto the street. More officers rush in, force him to his knees, press him to the ground. Gas mask, helmet, riot shield – a military choreography against a single man. His coat is torn off his body in the struggle. Seconds later, Pretti runs away. No one is injured. No one reaches for a weapon. No one is threatened. And yet, everything that will end fatally eleven days later is already embedded in these images.

As Pretti turns his back to the camera, something can be seen in his waistband that looks like a pistol. He does not reach for it. He does not gesture toward it. It remains unclear whether the officers even see it. What matters is this: nothing happens here either. No shot. No attack. No escalation by Pretti. He leaves. And he remains a human being among human beings. Shortly afterward, Max Shapiro, a lawyer from Minneapolis who filmed the scene, hugs him. Shapiro asks whether everything is okay. Pretti asks back, almost solicitously, whether everyone is all right. Whether everyone is safe. These words stand as a stark contrast to the image later drawn by official sources.

Eleven days later, Alex Pretti is dead. On January 24, he is again filming federal agents, helping a woman, supporting the protests. Again on an open street. Again unarmed in his actions. Again with a phone in his hand. Again, the situation escalates not because of him, but because of the officers. A shove. He goes to the ground. Several officers pile onto him. Then the shout: he has a weapon. Seconds later, shots are fired. Pretti is shot from behind while lying on the ground. The Trump administration reacts like clockwork. Pretti is said to have attacked officers. He is said to have approached them with a weapon. The videos completely refute this. He does not draw a weapon. He strikes no one. He lies on the ground, the phone still in his hand.

The newly released footage from January 13 is now being used by some to criminalize Pretti after the fact. That is precisely the logic these images expose. They show no dangerous perpetrator, but a man who had already been pushed into a situation in which federal agents responded with maximum force without any acute danger existing. They show a climate in which people are systematically driven to the brink – emotionally, physically, psychologically. Pretti was 37 years old. An intensive care nurse. He worked on a ward where people fight for their lives. Those who knew him describe no radical, no violent offender, but someone who could no longer look away. Someone who did not accept that deportations were being enforced through intimidation, masks, tear gas, and growing aggression against observers and the media. That even journalists are increasingly harassed, threatened, obstructed is part of the same pattern. Federal agents no longer react defensively to cameras, but with hostility. Journalistic work, legal observation, civilian documentation are treated as disruptions. In Minneapolis, this is no longer an isolated case. Media representatives are harassed, pushed away, intimidated. We all experienced that again just yesterday.

The family’s lawyer puts it soberly: nothing that happened a week earlier justifies the use of deadly force. That is not an emotional statement, but a legal self-evident truth. What these videos show is no justification. They are a piece of evidence. Of a development in which state violence is deployed ever more quickly, escalates ever earlier, and knows ever less control. Of a practice that dehumanizes people, provokes them, wears them down – and then acts surprised when situations spiral out of control. Alex Pretti was not a symbol. He was a human being. That is exactly what these images make visible. And that is exactly why they are so dangerous for ICE and the political leadership.