And now, ICE has killed a nurse - 48 hills

"I never thought that the United States descent into a police state would involve the extrajudicial killing of a Veteran's Administration nurse. It's particularly terrifying to this nurse that US immigration police have shot to death Alex Pretti, RN. A Veteran's Administration ICU nurse, Pretti is said to have been volunteering in sub-zero Minneapolis cold because he cared about his neighbors and co-workers as much as he did his critically ill patients."

"Do people believe that killing a VA nurse is justified? It doesn't matter. People will get the message, regardless. If a nurse that doesn't follow government orders can be killed, then all residents better look away while their neighbors are sent to concentration camps and deported. Pretti may not have been a Jew, but his killing makes it clear that nurses have now joined non-white migrants and trans people as the "enemy within.""

"Nurses are no stranger to violence directed against them. Gun violence is a very poorly controlled epidemic that accounts for a steady proportion of emergency room visits and hospital stays. Nurses care for injured shooters as well as the people shot. Nurses suffer from violence in the workplace at a depressingly high rate. Whether the police are in the emergency room or the nurse is working in jail, healthcare and law enforcement inevitably meet."

"We all go to work on the taxpayer's dime and are supposed to protect the community's health and safety. Now that the US attorney general and the president are endorsing brutality against civil rights activists, nurses will have an even more fraught relationship with their public sector colleagues. Alex Pretti's hospital colleagues now have a rational fear, not paranoia, of violence from police in addition to their patients."

The extrajudicial killing of Alex Pretti, RN, a Veteran's Administration ICU nurse volunteering in sub-zero Minneapolis, occurred after immigration police sprayed him with chemicals, tackled him, and shot him after he was subdued. The killing communicates that refusal to follow government orders can be met with lethal force, creating a climate of fear among residents and healthcare workers. Nurses now face threat from both patient violence and law enforcement, compounding already high workplace violence and gun injury burdens. Endorsement of brutality by federal leaders intensifies fraught relationships between nurses and public-sector colleagues and produces rational fear among hospital staff.

Read at 48 hills