MINNEAPOLIS -- Believe your eyes.

That’s what prosecutor Jerry Blackwell said in his opening statement on March 29, 2021, to the jurors who would decide whether Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

“You can believe your eyes, that it’s homicide, it’s murder,” said Blackwell, now a U.S. District Court judge.

Even before the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, the evidence of illegal, excessive force was all there in a photo by Minnesota Star Tribune photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii.

In the image, a male protester is face down on the pavement. The man is physically pinned by multiple agents, outnumbered and overpowered as one agent sprays a toxic chemical irritant directly at close range directly into their face.

Does that level of force make sense? Believe your eyes.

Last week, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino told us at a news conference that “everything we do every day is legal, ethical and moral.” Those were the words of a strongman. The actions of his agents tell another story that Minnesotans have heard before.

Minnesotans got an education in the difference between legal and illegal force in 2020 when Minneapolis police officers held down Floyd until he went lifeless.

The three officers had help from a fourth officer who held back an angry crowd of bystanders, distraught over what they were seeing: law enforcement indifferent to the pleas of a dying man crying out for his life.

The officers continued to hold Floyd firmly down for nearly 10 minutes, long after he had stopped moving and speaking.

Chauvin was in charge, his knee on Floyd’s neck. He was convicted of murder because he failed to do what was required him as a sworn officer: assess and adjust the use of force.

Beside him, rookie officer Thomas Lane twice asked Chauvin whether they should roll Floyd onto his side into the recovery position so he could breathe. Chauvin said no.

Using force is not a one-and-done decision. It’s an ongoing assessment that takes into account the totality of the circumstances, the threat level and the information available to law enforcement in the moment.

What’s appropriate and legal force at the beginning of an encounter may become excessive within seconds.

It’s a stretch to say that Floyd, who was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at Cup Foods, was ever a danger to law enforcement. He certainly was no longer a danger after his hands were cuffed behind his back and he was facedown under the control of three cops.

The scenario depicted in Tsong-Taatarii’s photo is shockingly similar to the Floyd video in that a man is being overwhelmed by law enforcement. The man was under control and yet one agent is shooting pressurized toxins right onto his face, possibly directly into his eyes.

Under a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the standard for determining excessive force is “objective reasonableness.” Does shooting chemicals at close range into the eyes of a prone and restrained protester sound objectively reasonable to anyone?

Not to me it doesn’t. Nor does it sound objectively reasonable for ICE agent Jonathan Ross to fire multiple rounds at Renee Good as she drove her SUV in south Minneapolis.

Since Ross shot Good, the refrain I’ve heard from multiple legal experts is a variation of this: I don’t know if the first shot was legal, but I am almost certain shots two and three were not. The threshold question is whether the first shot incapacitated Good.

We don’t yet know where that bullet struck her, and the Department of Justice to date isn’t interested in finding out. The DOJ quickly determined the killing was legal and isn’t currently conducting an investigation.

Does that sound objectively reasonable?

The eyes could not be denied in the shooting of nurse Alex Pretti, face down, multiple agents swarming him and multiple shots fired into his back.

But we no longer have to merely believe our eyes or wait years for a jury to decide.

Two important leaders have confirmed what we all witnessed. First, former U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger told us it was all a lie. “While we do not face a crisis of violent crime from illegal immigrants, we are in a crisis, one created by the very surge that was supposed to make us safe,“ Luger wrote.

He denounced the free fall and politicization of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which he used to lead, under President Donald Trump’s appointee Dan Rosen, a Minnesotan now doing the president’s political bidding at all costs.

Then came Chris Madel’s decision to drop from the governor’s race, a very telling, morally principled move. Madel was the hand-picked choice of law enforcement with the support of conservative website Alpha News. In a video message, Madel said he could not support the national GOP’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

What is happening in our streets is tyranny: the federal government acting outside the law and conducting extrajudicial killings. Believe your eyes. Listen to Luger and Madel, two deeply experienced and upstanding lawyers.

Meanwhile, other prominent elected Minnesota Republicans have barely acknowledged the violence, let alone condemned it, either out of blind loyalty to Trump or a misguided calculation about their own political futures.

While there appears to a lessening of ICE provocation, there can be no doubt anymore that this occupation has been distinctively anti-American, if not illegal. The president warned of a “reckoning” and “retribution” on Minnesota. He kept his word.

It feels like our federal government has waged a war on the state. But no need to take my word for it. Trust Luger and Madel.

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