Thirty Seconds
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Thirty seconds. Phone in hand. Pushed toward the sidewalk. Stepped between a falling protester and the officer who shoved her. Arms reaching out. Pepper spray. Surrounded. Wrestled down. Hit. Gun removed from his waist by an officer backing away.
Then shot anyway.
Alex Pretti was 37. Licensed to carry. The weapon never left his waistband until they pulled it out. The videos show the officer moving away with the gun in his hand. Then the first shot. A pause. Then several more into his back.
The Department of Homeland Security says he "approached" officers with a gun. The footage shows him slumping to the ground, the gun already gone.
"Defensive shots," they call it. Defense requires ongoing threat. The threat was walking away in an officer's grip when the trigger pulled. What do you call it when someone is shot after they've already been disarmed?
Stephen Miller: "a would-be assassin." Commander Bovino: "maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." These words are not descriptions. They are the story being built before the body is cold. Say it first, say it loud, say it with authority — maybe the videos won't matter.
But the videos exist.
Mayor Frey watched and saw six masked agents pummeling one of his constituents, shooting him to death. Governor Walz watched and called it sickening. People who saw what you saw.
This is the second killing in Minneapolis this month. Renee Good was first, January 7. Same city, same pattern, same schism between what the footage shows and what the statements claim.
"Defensive" or his back. "Approached with a gun" or the officer already carrying it away.
The body tells the story the words try to erase. Phone up. Arms reaching out. Pepper spray in the face. Wrestled down. Hit. Disarmed. Shot.
A protester in a skirt over black tights, holding a water bottle, reaching for Pretti as she falls. He steps between her and the officer.
Thirty seconds later he's dead on the pavement. The gun was already out of his body. The officer was already backing away with it.
The shots came anyway.
Minneapolis is being invaded, the mayor says. Operation Metro Surge. Whistles and horns and people yelling, trying to disrupt. Around 9 a.m. Saturday, in the middle of it, Alex Pretti held up his phone.
The president asks where the local police were. As if they should have protected the ones doing the shooting.
The videos exist. They show what happened. The gun removed. The officer backing away. The pause. The shots into his back.
The phone videos will outlast them.
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26 January 2026
Staying Alive
Author: Oyparaploo
Methodology: Wonderful Garbage
Style: Noir Chanson
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