I make coffee for a living. I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a federal prosecutor, and I don’t have a law degree hanging on my wall. But I can read a calendar, and I can count to zero.

Zero. That’s how many criminal charges have been filed against Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good on a residential street in Minneapolis back in January.

Six months. Zero charges. And he’s still cashing a federal paycheck.

What actually happened

Renée Good was 37 years old. A mother of three. A U.S. citizen. On the morning of January 7, she was in her car on Portland Avenue, observing an ICE operation in her neighborhood — something Minneapolis residents had been doing for weeks as federal agents flooded their streets. Agents approached her vehicle. As she began moving forward, away from traffic, Jonathan Ross — standing several feet from the front of her car — fired three shots through her windshield and driver’s side window.

She was struck in the chest, the arm, and the head. She died at Hennepin County Medical Center. The county medical examiner later ruled her death exactly what it looked like on video: a homicide.

The Trump administration’s response was immediate, and it didn’t involve waiting for evidence. Within hours, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Ross fired in self-defense because Good had “weaponized” her vehicle. The President called it a “vicious” attempt to run an agent over. Video — including footage from Ross’s own body camera — told a different story, one that independent analysts say shows Good turning away from him, not at him, in the second before he opened fire.

So why is he still working?

This is the part that should make you furious, because it’s not complicated. It’s a choice.

Ross was placed on three days — three days — of administrative leave. Then he was quietly reassigned out of Minnesota. Reporting earlier this spring placed him doing both administrative and investigative work for ICE in a different state, with New York Governor Kathy Hochul publicly demanding to know if he’d been moved into her state’s operations.

Meanwhile, the actual investigation has been stuck in molasses on purpose. The Department of Justice declined to even open a federal civil rights investigation into Good’s death. Minnesota state and county officials say federal authorities have actively blocked them from investigating — to the point that the state is now suing the federal government just to get access to evidence. A Hennepin County prosecutor’s office spokesperson confirmed flatly: no charges, investigation ongoing.

“Ongoing” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It’s been six months.

This is the system working exactly as designed

I want to be clear about something: this isn’t a broken system. A broken system fails by accident. This is a system functioning precisely the way it was built to — protecting the agent, stalling the process, and betting that the news cycle moves on before accountability ever has to.

It almost worked. In April, a false claim spread across social media that Ross had been “cleared of all charges.” Fact-checkers had to step in and point out the obvious: you can’t be cleared of charges that were never filed. There’s nothing to clear. The lie wasn’t even sophisticated — it just exploited the fact that most people had stopped paying attention.

That’s the actual danger here. Not just that Renée Good was killed with no consequences yet. It’s that the system is counting on you to forget.

Don’t forget

Tens of thousands of people marched through Minnesota in subzero temperatures in January demanding Ross’s arrest. Members of Congress, including Hakeem Jeffries and Ro Khanna, have called for criminal prosecution. A billboard truck rolled through Minneapolis streets reading “arrest and charge Jonathan Ross.” None of it has moved the needle yet — but pressure is the only thing that ever has, in any case like this.

Renée Good’s wife, Becca, described her as a woman who “sparkled,” who was “made of sunshine.” She went outside that morning to support her neighbors. She had a whistle. The federal government had guns. Six months later, one side is still answering for nothing.

I’m Sean Bartley with Cup of Culture and The Progressive — and if you want to help fight back, follow and share.

This is exactly the kind of story that disappears if nobody keeps pushing it.

Corporate outlets move on after the first news cycle. I don’t, because I can’t afford to — and honestly, neither can you. Stories like Renée Good’s only stay alive because regular people decide to keep them alive.

I do this on my days off from making coffee, with no corporate backing and no editor telling me what I’m allowed to say. That only works if enough of you decide it’s worth a few bucks a month to keep it going.

👉 Subscribe at SeanBartley.substack.com/subscribe — paid subscribers are the only reason I can keep tracking cases like this one until they actually get justice.