We can’t see the faces of the masked agents in the videos as they pepper spray Alex Pretti’s face, beat his head in with a metal canister and fire at least 10 shots into his body in a Minneapolis street.
We probably still wouldn’t know the names of the two U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who killed Pretti – or the fact that they’re from South Texas – if ProPublica hadn’t dredged up the information in federal court papers over the weekend.
Often, the federal agents we’ve seen in videos shoving protesters, stalking courthouses and schools, and administering banned chokeholds on people they’re trying to arrest have no faces, no names, no visible badge numbers, no marked cars, no starched uniforms with their names embroidered over the breast pocket, perhaps not even a body cam to record the encounter…