Police Shootings, and a Lesson in Post-Mortems
When tragedies occur, focusing on blame misses the point. The Five Whys technique reveals root causes that, if addressed, could prevent future incidents.
Published: 2026-01-10 | Last updated: 2026-01-11 by Luca Dellanna
Earlier this week, an officer shot a woman in Minnesota after she tried escaping with her car in a way that put him in danger. Most of the discussion I read on social media was around two topics: whether the car hit the agent or merely scraped him, and whether the agent was correct in responding by shooting her.
Not only do I dislike the framing that there’s exactly one side at fault. But my broader opinion is that, unless you’re close to the woman or the agent, who’s to blame is irrelevant compared to preventing future deaths of the same kind from occurring.
To prevent future tragedies, the post-mortem should rather focus on preventing the conditions that led to the dangerous situation rather than determining who’s to blame this one time.Because, if you think about it, for this event to happen, a few conditions had to take place at the same time. Let’s list them, and let’s apply a simplified version of the “Five Whys” technique.
The Post-Mortem
1. Those agents had to be there
Why were they there?
- They were part of an ICE operation.
Why was there an ICE operation?
- Because Trump was elected.
- An excessive presence of illegal immigrants.
Why was he elected?
- Mutual polarization.
Why were there too many illegal immigrants?
- Lax immigration controls and enforcement.
2. Those agents had to be in a state of tension
Why were they in a state of tension?
- Because of the ongoing protests against them (justified or not, that doesn’t matter).
- Because of the mutual polarization.
3. That woman had to be there
She was in an area where tensions meant that it’s likely that people aren’t thinking properly. If my daughter told me she was going there, I would have advised against it, regardless of who’s right and wrong.
Why was she there?
- Because she felt Trump and ICE were a threat worth protesting against.
Why did the US end up with that President?
- Mutual polarization.
And why did ICE start to act in a, to put it mildly, polarizing way?
- Excessive levels of illegal immigration.