they effectively have immunity under dumpy.

The ice Gestapo doesn’t follow laws

They are “allowed” because their actions no longer have consequences. None.

So I’ve had a bit of experience with the law in a state I don’t keep up with anymore, but let me see if I can paint you the picture of the way the laws intersect.

In texas, there is a specific chapter of the penal code that deals with use of force. The first thing to take note of is that line about “justification” under the chapter being a defense to prosecution. You’ll need to go read a portion of chapter 2 to understand that in full, but suffice it to say a prosecutor could still charge you, and a peace officer could still arrest you, even if the terms for ‘defense’ are met.

Returning to the penal code, 9.51 talks about law enforcement (which is defined in the code of criminal procedure, which we’ll get to in a moment, and which federal law enforcement is also defined) and their authority. If you read it carefully, it basically says they can use whatever force they want to. The qualifier, in 9.51(a), about the actor needing reasonable belief that the force is warranted, lets law enforcement get away with just about everything. There is further clarification on deadly force at 9.51©, which again talks about ‘reasonable belief,’ and on “less-lethal” weaponry at 9.55. The two qualifiers on 9.55 are reasonable belief (it’ll come up again and again in laws relating to use of force) and using it per ‘training.’

Now, if you recall from your internet awareness (which I hope you have), you’ll probably have heard about controversies concerning law enforcement training. ‘Killology’ is the famous one, but every department will have some form of training for all of their tools on the belt, and most of it boils down to “use if if you think you need it” which translates to ‘if they resist and you don’t want to wrestle.’ Every department will have a policy regarding their use, and usually there will be some form of restriction (like don’t use the taser as a cattle prod, which is often ignored) and judicious use of the term ‘reasonable belief.’ Yes, that means that basically departments just throw everything on an officer’s judgement in the moment, because the two requirements in the law simply become one.

Let’s switch gears for just a moment to put some context on officer behavior. Arrests are laid out in the code of criminal procedure, chapters 14 and 15. Fourteen is pretty basic, saying that an officer can arrest for things he witnesses (14.01), and is authorized all measures that could be taken if the arrest was for a warrant (14.05). The rest adds to it, but isn’t important in this case. Fifteen gives us more information (15.24), where it says all reasonable means and force are permitted. It also says you can’t use greater force than necessary, but don’t worry about that, cops don’t worry about it either. I’ll have some comments after the main points.

There are two more bits to hash out. We’ve talked (very briefly) about use of force in arrests, and those statutes touched on searches (which is mildly more difficult, mostly because we’d have to go into case law where searches really get hammered out), but we haven’t talked about ‘defense’ of person or property. Law enforcement has their own rules for arrests and certain actions like traffic stops, but they have the same laws for defending against assault/damage (except where courts have let things proceed differently, which you’ll have to understand is a weird thing where laws are shaped in court as much as in the legislature), so that brings us to 9.31 and 9.41 of the penal code. I’m sort of getting weary of quoting, so I’m going to paraphrase these sections quickly. You can stop someone from hurting someone else, and kill them to prevent them killing someone else, if you have a reasonable belief about it. You can stop someone from taking stuff, or damaging stuff, if you have a reasonable belief about it. You can also kill to prevent certain crimes against property, if you have a reasonable belief.

So now we can answer your main question: how are they allowed to, or how are they skirting the laws? It’s because they’re not skirting the laws. Almost every department policy can be summarized as throwing things back to having a ‘reasonable belief.’ Reasonable belief is the great wall of china that every complaint and investigation about law enforcement must crest… and it’s a difficult barrier to overcome. This is because reasonable belief is going to be, one, in the mind of any law enforcement member who is thinking about whether another member’s actions were criminal. If the investigating member can put themselves in the shoes of the other and even for a split second imagine doing the same thing, that investigation is going to die. Reasonable belief, two, is then going to be argued about in the prosecutor’s office, where they generally want a decent working relationship with police agencies, and, three, in court, where we’ve seen plenty of actions die in the grand jury and jury box. Ice isn’t ‘getting away’ with their outrages so much as simply doing what every other law enforcement agency does. The only difference is that they are blatantly violating the one area where the courts (typically, before now) have been willing to ensure law enforcement follows the law: having probable cause to arrest (so, more than ‘just’ being darker skinned), and thus not violating civil rights. Seeing as we’ve just had the supreme court throw out that shit, we’re fucked in that regard.

To return to a few things that I mentioned and wanted to talk about more (mostly because they’re not directly relevant to your question of ‘how?’ but are things to know in the general sense, and a big warning besides): justification/defense, and using force against peace officers. If you remember, I was paraphrasing the second chapter of the penal code where it says a prosecutor doesn’t have to deny the defense in their charging statement. However, in practice it is almost always done. There’s a giant book out there for prosecutors that has example charging statements for just about every crime ever, and the majority of them are simple recitations of a crime’s major points, and typically refute any possible defense claims. This means prosecutors, and the officers who use the very helpful example statements, will very, very rarely make an arrest and press charges if the defense can’t be refuted in the charging statement. Note that recent case in texas where someone shot a kid for ding-dong-ditching, and he wasn’t arrested immediately (I might be misremembering this case and another one where any normal person would be screaming "Why didn’t they arrest him?! Texas seems to have a lot of those). This is a ‘privilege’ that is extended much more often to other law enforcement fucks.

Now we come to where most of us need to be very careful. 9.31© of the penal code talks about resisting peace officers. America has had some famous examples of that, such as the military member who shot back when a no-knock warrant was executed on the wrong house. The issue is that each officer gets judged by their reasonable belief. Remember, everything comes back to reasonable belief. If an officer tells you that you are under arrest, and you are completely compliant, if the officer suddenly pulled out their taser and begins using it on you, I (and hopefully a jury) would say you are completely justified in resisting. But what happens if you knock the taser out of the officer’s hand? Do you then get to run away from said officer? What if another officer pulls up and sees you swinging your fists/feet/body at the other officer who has already deployed a taser? Most departments preach about having a lethal weapon covering a situation if a taser is being deployed. That means this second officer is going to be primed to shoot (and their lawyers can write up that 'reasonable belief) faster than I could find the statutes website for this post). Now what if the second officer was two or three officers down in the little police red-rover line they like to pull, and didn’t see whether you did something to make a taser reasonable? What if it wasn’t a taser, but a gun, and you responded with your own? It’s all bullshit, but it’s shit that will get you killed and the police a pat on the back from their asshole colleagues.

I was in the CJ field for 10 years, which opened my eyes to a lot. I know you think “they’re fascists who ignore the law” is reductionist or untrue, but that is literally it. It is that simple. It is also not new, regular law enforcement in the US has been exactly like this for pretty much our entire history.

When you break the law, and you have powerful deeply ingrained cultures and institutions backing you that will look away or refuse to apply the law to you, then the law effectively does not exist. Laws are social contracts that are invented entirely by us, and literally do not exist if not enforced. The universe does not care. There is no karmic balance that steps in to even things out.

I think many are just ignoring this or trying to rationalize it some other way, because it is terrifying to come to terms with when you are told your entire life that these institutions, police and courts and laws and checks and balances, are in place to protect you. Law enforcement in the US has fascism and nationalism baked into its core, and most of them are actively wanting what ICE is doing. Many law enforcement are in their ranks or are assisting in ways that most people don’t even realize. And beyond that, the rest of our judicial and political systems are also being manipulated or just blatantly ignored to pave the way for this.

Ultimately the question being posed to the US at this point is, what happens when the people in power do not care or feel empathy, except for their own goals, and there is no sufficient opposition. There are no easy answers to this. When two opposing forces collide, one or the other has to give in some way. ICE has had basically zero consequences for their actions, despite how blatantly illegal and wrong they are. So far, their side is applying more force and it shows.

Because city prosecutors won’t bring charges unless it’s a guaranteed win.

So even tho it happens on camera, and they could start at the top of the chain and work down applying pressure to find out identities to press charges…

They’re too scared of bringing charges in a case they might lose to even attempt to hold anyone accountable.

Our justice system has been fucked for decades, but Biden refused to fix it (because he literally “wrote” the bills that got us here) and trump wants a broken system to abuse it.

We can’t just keep letting Republicans break shit, then electing “moderates” who refuse to acknowledge there’s even an issue that needs fixed. We need people willing to fight, even if they don’t win 99.999% of battles. We need people who aren’t afraid to lose. Because they understand what happens if we abstain.

Quick edit:

Don’t forget how accurate the system was at identifying college students at protests despite them covering their faces too.

Anyone telling you a small piece of fabric over someone’s face means they’re impossible to be identified by law enforcement is lying because they think you’re dumb enough to fall for obvious bullshit.

The rule of law has collapsed.

It is like the scene in Mars Attack! when the alien is running around with the language translator repeating “WE COME IN PEACE” while disintegrating humans left and right with their space pistols.

They will say whatever they have to while physically doing whatever they want.

Until we stop THEM ALL

From watching the video the ROE appears to allow for engagement for crossing the blue line onto federal property or interfering with traffic leaving the compound.

It’s illegal, but they’re also the ones in power to enforcing those laws. What answer is there aside from they’re corrupt, they’re fascist, and they do what they want.

Welcome to fascism, where the rules are made up and the crimes don’t matter (unless your enemies do them, then they really really matter).

Because they’re corrupt fascists. That’s it. That’s the totality of it. No one’s going to prosecute them and if they do, it’s gonna get overturned

Honestly I’m a bit tired of responses like “cause they’re corrupt” or “because they’re fascists”.

I feel this so much. Not only is it not productive, it short circuits thoughtful discussion that could actually be productive. So much so it makes me suspicious 🤔

The increasing militarization of police, and their use of “less than lethal” weapons including rubber bullets and CS gas is one of the things that was heavily discussed by the mainstream after the death of George Floyd. So was the tactics used by police, like ketteling peaceful protesters. But it was a problem before Rodney king was murdered too.

There has been a long buildup of Americans losing their rights to protest and freely express themselves even before the 9/11 attacks and Bush declaring a “war on terror” or Regan declaring a “war on Drugs”. Both of which were really just ways to militarize police forces against the communities they were supposed to serve.

Remember the whole, “Are you or have you ever been a Communist?” time of American history. You weren’t allowed to freely express yourself as an American then either.

Really, it could be argued that our “inalienable rights” were just some gentlemen’s agreement that were never really ours, and many actively got punished and even murdered for exercising those rights.

Really, to answer your question, I don’t think anyone alive today ever experienced a time where it was ok to majorly disagree with the American government. And after decades of letting police do really whatever they wanted and giving them military equipment, no one really thinks this is illegal because this is the precedent.

Don’t forgot you are in a country were police bombed a rowhouse (both with surface level explosives and dropping a bomb from a helicopter on it), starting a fire that they allowed to burn that killed 5 children (all children of the ~7 people they were targeting) and burned 61 homes, damaging over 100 more homes (making 100’s of people homeless) within the lifetime of almost all non-local elected officials and then re-elected the mayor responsible: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-largely-forgotten-history-of-philadelphias-police-bombing-of-black-organization-move https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol7/iss1/3/

Yet, after the bombing, Mayor Goode and the Philadelphia Police Department received support from around the country. The Los Angeles Police Chief at the time, Daryl Gates, defended the use of an explosive device, declaring it “a sound tactic.” Gates also stated that Mayor Goode had “provided some of the finest leadership [he had] ever seen from any politician” and that he hoped Mayor Goode “ran for national office.” Michael Nutter, then an assistant to a city councilman, said “[MOVE] is a group of people whose philosophy is based on conflict and confrontation.” Roy Innis, who was the chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), called Mayor Goode’s handling of the crisis “heroic.” Tom Cremans, the former director of Accuracy Systems Inc., which sells munitions to police departments, said “the police exercised remarkable restraint in not using the device earlier.”

While there was lots of negative media, there was also a lot of positives:

The New York Times referred to MOVE as a radical group, focused more on the complaints from the neighbors against MOVE, and framed the incident as a city reacting against behavior that was well out of the norm for a working-class African American neighborhood. In the Times article, Dee Peoples, the owner of a store two blocks away from the MOVE house, said that “all you hear is aggression. You sleep with it, you wake up with it, you live with it.” The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the group’s strange philosophy and how while it was, in theory, a “philosophy of anti-materialism, pacifism and concern for the environment,” in practice “its history was replete with violence, obscenity and filth.” The Chronicle article stated that former MOVE member Donald Glassey had testified John Africa “had planned an armed confrontation with police and had MOVE members make bombs and buy firearms.” The Lexington Herald-Leader, like the Times, described MOVE as a radical organization and defined the cause of the siege as MOVE refusing “to leave the house under an eviction order from police.” The Herald article also discussed neighbors’ complaints of “assaults, robberies, and a stench at the house.”

People justify state violence, even when it harms 100s of uninvolved people, based on how negatively they can portray those the violence was targeted at and call the their actions “law and order” and point to the aftermath of their own actions as a warzone to justify additional violence.

The democracy is there to waste your time. If your step out of line you will be treated like you’ve been seeing them treat black and latino communities this whole time. Why did you allow them to do that even if it was legal? A question that no doubt affronts you.