The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis has already become a national flashpoint, not only because of the violence itself, but because of what it reveals about the fragility of truth when power feels threatened.
My own experience in Hancock County, Georgia, nearly thirty years ago, taught me that this fragility is not new. It is woven into the American legal fabric, appearing whenever authority senses a challenge and the system feels compelled to choose between accountability and self-protection.
But if the first essay was about what happened, and the second about how the law bends, and the third about why escalation occurs, then this companion piece must ask a different question:
What must we do now?
Because the story cannot end on a note of outrage, it cannot end with analysis. It cannot end with grief.
This moment demands something more complex: reform, accountability, and civic courage, not as slogans, but as commitments.
Reform is needed to change the structure that enables abuse. Reform is not a matter of tweaking policy. It is a matter of restructuring the conditions that allow violence, distortion, and impunity to flourish. Independent investigations must be just that, independent and non-negotiable.
When federal agents kill a citizen, the investigation cannot be controlled by the same agency that pulled the trigger. Minneapolis exposed the danger of allowing federal authorities to seize evidence, restrict access, and shape the narrative before facts can breathe.
Reform requires:
- independent state-level investigative
- automatic recusal of involved agencies
- transparent release of evidence
- conflicts of interest
- judicial selection processes
- small‑county vulnerabilities
The use‑of‑force standard must be rewritten for the 21st century. The legal standard of “reasonable fear” has become a loophole wide enough to drive a tank through. Reform must redefine:
- What constitutes a threat
- When deadly force is justified
- How officer perception is evaluated
Accountability is the most challenging work in a system built to resist it. Accountability is not punishment. It is the recognition that power must answer to the people it serves.
For instance, there must, of necessity, be narrative accountability. We must understand that before legal accountability comes narrative accountability; therefore, the willingness to confront falsehoods, distortions, and official stories that collapse under scrutiny.
In Minneapolis, the rush to label Renee Nicole Good a “terrorist” was not just rhetoric. It was an attempt to foreclose accountability before it began.
Accountability requirements include, but are not limited to:
- challenging official narratives
- elevating eyewitness accounts
- refusing to let the state define the victim
Also, narrative accountability must be followed closely by institutional accountability. Institutions, like all entities, protect themselves. They always have, and perhaps, always will.
Accountability requirements include, but are not limited to:
- civilian oversight with real power
- consequences for obstruction
- transparency in disciplinary processes
Lastly, there must be a sense of cultural accountability. Law enforcement culture must be confronted, not with hostility, but with honesty. The warrior mindset, the group loyalty, the reflexive escalation: these are not individual failings. They are cultural norms.
Accountability requirements include, but are not limited to:
- training that prioritizes restraint
- leadership that models humility
- a shift from dominance to service
There is one overriding salient fact. Civic courage is the ingredient without which reform fails. Reform and accountability are structural. Civic courage is personal.
Reform is the willingness of ordinary people to:
- speak when silence is safer
- question when obedience is expected
- stand firm when power rushes toward them
The people of Minneapolis are learning it now as they demand answers amid federal resistance. Civic courage is not dramatic. It is steady. It is persistent. It is the refusal to let fear dictate the boundaries of justice.
There must be courage to follow the example of James Baldwin and bear witness, to be willing to tell no better than one has seen. The videos of Good’s killing exist because several people dared to record it. The truth survived because law-abiding citizens refused to look away.
There must be courage to challenge military action on U.S. soil. Reform begins when citizens challenge the systems that claim to serve them. It starts when lawyers file motions that anger sheriffs, when families demand transparency, when communities refuse to accept official stories that contradict what they saw with their own eyes.
Notwithstanding the above, the United States citizens must have the courage to imagine something better. Civic courage is not only resistance. It is imagination. The belief that a different kind of justice is possible. A justice not built on fear, not built on dominance, and not built on institutional self-protection. A justice built on truth.
There is much work ahead. The killing of Renee Nicole Good is not just a tragedy. It is a test. A test of whether we will allow the old patterns to repeat, the escalation, the narrative distortion, the institutional shielding, or whether we will insist on something better.
Reform is the blueprint. Accountability is the mechanism. Civic courage is the fuel. And if we commit to all three, then perhaps the next time power feels threatened, the reflex will not be violence, but restraint. Not distortion, but truth. Not impunity, but justice.
This moment, this precious liberty, demands nothing less.
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You know folks, I will be eternally thankful that I met and became friends with Harold Michael Harvey through his books. He is one of the most knowledgeable, intelligent, and caring individuals I have ever known... He has much to teach each of us who come into his sphere of legal coverage--this time, it's murder... I refuse to call it anything but the real meaning of what has been happening during the last months in the United States... Discrimination, threats, DEI mandates, and more has already costs millions of lies. I, of course, include the very first act of selfishness when the USAID part of the government was eliminated and money transferred to destructive actions initiated by this president... The cruelty has been outstandingly obvious and aimed directly to those he hates most. We all know who they are, don't we?
I started with this first murder so that I could move forward from it to the set of almost 180 teachers and female students who were murdered in Iran. Let's be clear. I do not see those children any differently than those children who are being separated from their parents or used to capture their parents, or thrown into "death" camps for no legal reason. We have also lost citizens by this war that was called for No Reason... No Reason that is accepted by anybody other than those MAGA that still supports a man who...has...no...heart...
The first video shown above illustrates exactly what happens when he is caught--he lies... He claims that he knows nothing about the death of those children through the use of out-of-data maps for Iran! Yet, it is very clear to all of us that on another whim he decided to set another war in motion! A war that evolved since Trump, himself, pulled out of the Iran Accord that had been in existence during his first term...
People like DJT think that we do not remember all of his sins... We do... So don't even think that anybody else made the decision to add to the ongoing war between Israel and Iran/Hamas et.al. When he changed the Defense Department to War, we all feared what was to happen... And it didn't take him long to move into destruction in parts of the world as well as in the United States...
I wonder, really wonder, did the Supreme Court Justices and others who supported Trump in his madness, know what was to happen? But then there is this...
And, of course, ending with another Last Word
May God Be With All His Children Everywhere!
GABBY
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