JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Back in 1992, federal agents surrounded the home of a U.S. citizen in Idaho. What happened next not only shocked the nation but it drove a change in federal policy when it came to the use of deadly force. And now, some three decades later, there are once again questions about agents' use of deadly force after an immigration enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis. For more on what happened in 1992 and why it's so relevant today, we're joined by NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef. Hi there.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: Odette, remind us what happened in northern Idaho all those years ago.
YOUSEF: Right. Well, the incident is often referred to as Ruby Ridge, and it involved a man named Randall Weaver and his family. Federal agents were after Weaver for not showing up to court in a case where he was charged with selling two sawed-off shotguns to an undercover ATF agent. And things culminated over two days in August that year. Armed federal agents were stationed around Weaver's cabin in the woods, and they'd been given orders for that mission to shoot any armed adult male. And in the end, three people died - a deputy U.S. marshal, Weaver's 14-year-old son and Weaver's wife. And of course, none of them were the intended target of the operation. And so this affair became a seminal moment for the far right. It was representative of fears around federal government overreach, lawlessness and abuse of power.
SUMMERS: And how did this incident end up shifting federal policy?
YOUSEF: Well, initially, it didn't. The immediate assessment of the FBI was that it was a job well done, but that didn't quiet public concern. And so, ultimately, there was a tremendous reevaluation not only of the specifics of the standoff but also the institutional factors that made it possible. And three years later, the Department of Justice issued its first ever written uniform and department-wide policy on the use of deadly force. Here's then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick sharing the new policy during a Senate subcommittee hearing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMIE GORELICK: Under the new policy, law enforcement and corrections officers may use deadly force only when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person. Deadly force may not be used if an alternative reasonably appears to be sufficient to accomplish the law enforcement purpose.
YOUSEF: And that qualification at the end there, Juana, that there has to be no reasonable alternative to deadly force, is notable.
SUMMERS: What's significant about that?
YOUSEF: Well, I spoke to John Cox about this. He's a retired FBI agent who started at the agency just a few months after the new policy took effect.
JOHN COX: So it actually restricted when you could use deadly force in accordance with the policy because you were elevating and honoring human life, and that's what you were trying to preserve. So there were instances where maybe constitutionally, you could use deadly force, but the policy said no.
YOUSEF: Now, in the context of the Minneapolis incident, there's been no meaningful scrutiny so far of whether the officer had a reasonable alternative to deadly force. And that may be because immigration enforcement falls under a completely different department, the Department of Homeland Security, which does not require a no-safe-alternative provision.
SUMMERS: And how might things be different if the Department of Homeland Security's policy did require this idea of no safe alternative that we're talking about?
YOUSEF: Well, Cox said that that standard might prompt questions about why the officer stood in front of Macklin Good's car and whether stepping out of the way would have changed the risk to the agent and others. But, you know, to me, Juana, reporting on extremism, it's interesting that the DOJ established its standard as a result of a standoff in 1992 with the Weaver family, which held far-right, antigovernment, white separatist beliefs.
SUMMERS: How so?
YOUSEF: You know, Weaver believed that he was set up by federal agents because he had refused to become an informant for them. He said they were trying to recruit him to help them infiltrate Aryan Nations, which was an Idaho-based neo-Nazi organization. Weaver had attended a handful of their conferences. And at congressional subcommittee hearings three years later, you know, some legislators had pointed questions for him about whether he had items like with swastikas in his home, for example, but that did not seem to affect an apparent bipartisan consensus that something had gone very seriously wrong in that operation.
In the Minneapolis incident, it's quite different. You know, this administration at the outset characterized Macklin Good's activities at the scene as domestic terrorism even before the facts were fully known. And so there's clearly no bipartisan consensus that there should be some examination of the underlying policies that factored into what happened there.
SUMMERS: NPR's Odette Yousef, thanks so much.
YOUSEF: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMOTIONAL ORANGES SONG, "TALK ABOUT US (FEAT. ISAIAH FALLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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