EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Robert Almonte was an El Paso Police officer for 25 years from 1978-2003. He says that Johnathan Ross did what he was taught to do, and that law enforcement can use deadly force in those types of situations. <\/p>\n
“When you think you’re in danger of being killed you’re absolutely going to use a deadly force. Whether it’s somebody with a knife, a gun or a car, you’re going to use deadly force,” Almonte explained. <\/p>\n
Almonte also said that he was in a similar situation to Ross when he was with EPPD. Almonte said that a suspect drove a car towards him, Almonte fired a round in his direction, but missed and was struck by the car. <\/p>\n
“When I first saw that video, I had a flashback,” said Almonte. “I had my gun pointed at him when he decided to floor the vehicle and head straight toward me.”<\/p>\n
He said the investigation of the shooting in Minneapolis will use the same videos that are surfacing online, as well as witness interviews with bystanders and with other ICE agents. <\/p>\n
“That’s what I did when I fired my round many years ago there in El Paso. It’s one of those things that you have to be there. I know exactly how that agent felt.”<\/p>\n
Almonte also believed that both sides have to calm down and let the investigation play out before making accusations. <\/p>\n
Congresswoman Veronica Escobar said that the Trump Administration is “lying” and “they are allowing –\u00a0possibly encouraging\u00a0– their untrained, under-qualified agents to act recklessly and cruelly in American communities.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile on the other side of the argument, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Renee Nicole Good’s actions “domestic terrorism.” <\/p>\n
“Especially our political leadership, they’re not showing good leadership, that’s failed leadership or at a minimum, poor leadership.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Robert Almonte was an El Paso Police officer for 25 years from 1978-2003.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-117850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-headlines","10":"tag-el-paso-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}