I’ve watched the video of the shooting in Minneapolis multiple times now.
I am not watching it to provoke myself, or to arrive at a conclusion faster.
I am watching it because I genuinely do not understand what I am being asked to accept as normal.

That feeling – of being asked to accept incoherence as routine – has become increasingly common.

So I will say this plainly, and without accusation.

I do not understand why there is a surge of ICE officers in the first place.

This is not a statement of opposition or support. It is a question of method. If intelligence exists to identify specific individuals, I do not understand why enforcement takes the form of saturation rather than precision. Sending a large number of armed, masked agents into an area appears to signal presence more than intent, and I do not understand what problem that scale is meant to solve.

The situation that led up to the shooting does not make sense to me either.

I do not understand why she was there, positioned as her vehicle was.

I do not understand what outcome she believed was possible, or what conditions led her to make that choice. There may be explanations – mechanical trouble, protest, confusion – but I am not aware of them, and speculation does not improve clarity.

What is known is that she was described by those who knew her as a devoted parent and a responsible person. Holding both facts at once is uncomfortable, but necessary.

I also do not understand why an officer moved from the rear of the vehicle to the front while other officers were instructing her to move.

I do not understand how contradictory commands and positioning were allowed to coexist, even briefly. When one person is told to move forward and another places themselves in that path, the system has already failed.

I do not understand why only one officer drew a weapon.

I do not understand why three shots were fired.

I understand fear. I understand stress. I understand that prior trauma can narrow perception and accelerate threat response. Acknowledging those realities does not assign blame or absolution – it simply recognizes human limits. But recognizing those limits does not make the sequence coherent. It makes it fragile.

After the shots were fired, I understand even less.

I do not understand why a physician who arrived on scene was denied access under the justification of preserving a crime scene, when the preservation of life should take precedence – particularly when the scene was already controlled and disturbed.

I do not understand why emergency medical services could not move directly in and out.

I do not understand why her body was carried away without even the minimal dignity of a gurney, as though efficiency outweighed respect for the dead.

These were no longer split-second decisions. These were choices made after time returned.

And beyond this incident, I find myself confused by the broader pattern.

I do not understand why enforcement increasingly relies on visibility and force rather than clarity and coordination.

I do not understand why public discussion insists that someone must be clearly right, when what is visible instead is a chain of failures.

The surge appears ill advised.
She was in a bad position, whether by her own actions or due to circumstances not yet clear.
The officer made a bad decision.
Procedures failed.
Immediate rhetoric hardened positions before facts had settled.
The aftermath failed.
The system that produced the situation failed.

Holding all of those truths at once does not dilute responsibility. It reflects reality.

I do not understand why we are so eager to collapse events like this into moral binaries when the evidence points instead to structural incoherence.

I do not understand what this is all about anymore.

And I am increasingly convinced that saying “I don’t understand why” is not an evasion. It is the most honest response available when a system repeatedly produces outcomes that no one seems able to defend without omitting parts of the truth.