From Hancock County to Minneapolis
The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis has shaken the nation, not only because of the brutality captured on video, but because of the speed with which law enforcement and federal officials moved to justify it. Before her family could even process the loss, the narrative machine was already turning labeling her a threat, a terrorist, a danger to officers.
It was a familiar choreography: violence, then justification, then institutional circling of the wagons.
I have seen this pattern before. Not on a snowy street in Minneapolis, but in a courthouse in Hancock County, Georgia, nearly thirty years ago.
What happened to Good is part of a larger American story, one that stretches across decades, jurisdictions, and political eras. It is the story of what happens when law enforcement power is challenged, even slightly, and the reflexive instinct is not accountability but self-protection. It is the story of how truth becomes negotiable when those who wield authority feel their control slipping. And it is the story of how ordinary people — a mother driving home from school drop‑off, or a lawyer walking out of a courthouse — can suddenly find themselves cast as threats simply because they disrupted the narrative that power expected to unfold.
To understand Minneapolis, we must realize Hancock County. To understand Hancock County, we must understand America.
The Minneapolis Pattern: Violence, Narrative, Justification is as old as the rising sun.
The facts of the Minneapolis case are still unfolding, but what is known is stark:
- A 37-year-old mother of three was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a chaotic enforcement operation.
- Video shows her car inching forward, not accelerating toward officers.
- Federal officials immediately claimed she “weaponized” her vehicle.
- Local officials, including the mayor, called that account “bullshit.”
- The federal government then blocked state investigators from accessing evidence.
The facts of Minneapolis is not just a tragedy. It is a struggle over truth, who gets to define it, who gets to distort it, and who gets to bury it.
And I know that struggle intimately.
In 1997, in Hancock County, Georgia, I Became the Threat.
In the late 1990s, I represented a man in Hancock County who believed the sheriff’s office was harassing him simply because they could. Initially, I assured him that he was reading too much into the deputy’s motives and actions. I did not believe that a Black law enforcement officer could treat a brother like my client described. I refused to represent him more than three times, thinking it would be a waste of money to hire a lawyer for a minor infraction. But the client would not keep up. Finally, I quoted him a fee so hefty that I thought it would discourage him from seeking my representation. Within a week, he called and wanted an appointment to retain me.
When I walked into that courtroom, I discovered a system so tightly woven together by blood and kinship that justice had no room to breathe. The sheriff, his brother, and their cousin made up the law enforcement apparatus. The magistrate judge was their sister and cousin. My client’s worst fears of justice were justified.
I moved to have the case bound over to state court—the only way to ensure my client had a chance at an impartial hearing. That legal maneuver, routine in any fair system, was treated as an act of rebellion. I had signaled, in open court, that justice could not be trusted in that room.
When the hearing ended, I walked out with my client. The officers were visibly disturbed, not because of anything I had done resembling a Perry Mason moment, but because I had challenged their control.
Then came the yelling from the courtroom: “Stop, stop, stop.”
It had nothing to do with us, so we kept walking. But then I heard footsteps, fast, heavy, and purposeful. And a still, small voice inside me said: “They are coming after you.”
I stopped on a dime and turned around. They were startled to see me standing firm. Then they rushed me, all at once, and slammed me against the courthouse wall.
I filed assault charges. They filed counter‑charges, claiming I had swung my briefcase at them: a lie, but a familiar one. They stated they came after me because when I walked passed them I said, “Fuck the police.” I did not say this or anything to them, but if I had, I have a first amendment right to say “Fuck the police.”
At the probable cause hearing, the sheriff spun a story that made their violence seem justified. The judge dismissed both warrants, and the system closed ranks.
Just like Minneapolis.
There is a common thread. When one challenges power, truth becomes the enemy.
What happened to me in Hancock County and what happened to Renee Nicole Good are not the same in scale or consequence. I walked away. She did not.
But the underlying pattern is identical:
- A challenge to authority — whether a legal motion or a slow-moving car.
- A sudden escalation of force — disproportionate, unnecessary, and rooted in fear or anger.
- A rapid narrative shift — turning the victim into the aggressor.
- Institutional protection — closing ranks, controlling the story, blocking outside scrutiny.
The narrative is not about individual officers. It is about a culture that treats accountability as an attack and truth as a threat.
And this culture does not arise overnight. It is built through decades of unchallenged power, reinforced by political rhetoric, and sustained by a public conditioned to accept official narratives even when they contradict what their own eyes can see.
Why do these stories matter together?
When I saw the Minneapolis footage, I felt a familiar tightening in my chest, not because I had lived the same event, but because I had lived the same logic.
The logic that says: We are the law. We decide what happened. We determine who is dangerous. We decide who gets believed.
In Hancock County, that logic was enforced by family ties and small-town power. In Minneapolis, it is implemented by federal authority and national politics.
But the mechanism is the same.
And until we confront that mechanism, the reflexive instinct to justify violence rather than examine it, we will continue to bury the truth along with the people harmed by it.
There is a broader American pattern.
These two incidents, separated by decades, geography, and circumstance, are part of a larger American pattern:
- Local sheriffs who treat dissent as disrespect.
- Federal agents who treat hesitation as hostility.
- Judges who treat proximity as impartiality.
- Institutions that treat accountability as betrayal.
This is why the killing of Renee Nicole Good resonates far beyond Minneapolis. It is not an
isolated tragedy. It is a symptom of a deeper illness. One that has been festering in American law enforcement culture for generations.
And it is why my own experience, though far less severe, still matters. It is a reminder that the line between intimidation and violence is thin, and that the truth can be bent, reshaped, or buried when those in power feel threatened.
I survived my encounter because I stopped, turned, and faced the men rushing toward me. Renee Nicole Good did not have that chance.
Her story deserves more than a political fight. It deserves the truth — unvarnished, unmanipulated, and unprotected by institutional shields.
And perhaps, by telling these stories side by side — hers and mine — we can illuminate the deeper pattern that has haunted American justice for far too long.
Because the question before us is not just what happened in Minneapolis, it is what kind of nation we are willing to be when power is challenged, when truth is contested, and when the lives of ordinary people collide with the machinery of the state.
Until we answer that question honestly, the pattern will continue. And the cost will continue to be paid by those who never asked to be part of the story.