Herb Janick is a retired attorney and former prosecutor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He lives in Cape Elizabeth.

Our government’s response to the recent shooting death of Renee Nichole Good in Minneapolis is indecent, an insult to our intelligence and a threat to our liberty. Americans of all political stripes should expect better than the bile and nonsense our government officials have served up to date.

On the morning of Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot Ms. Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, in the face three times, killing her. A widely circulated video of the shooting shows Ms. Good’s car slowly back up, then move forward slowly and turn right while the ICE agent yells “stop” and immediately shoots her. No matter your political views, this was an avoidable tragedy.

It should not be too much to ask our government officials to acknowledge that the tragic death of a human being occurred and to conduct a through investigation to understand what happened and why so that such a tragedy does not recur. But, alas, it is.

From the president on down, our leaders have smeared Ms. Good, blaming her for her own death, and asking us not to believe what we can see with our own eyes. Their behavior brings to mind Joseph Welch’s famous retort to the Red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “At long last, sir, have you no decency?”

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, without any evidence, accused Ms. Good of engaging in an act of “domestic terrorism” and asserted — notwithstanding video evidence to the contrary — that she used her car as a “deadly weapon.” President Trump falsely claimed Ms. Good “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE agent” and later tried to convince New York Times reporters the video supported his assertion that Ms. Good “behaved horribly” and “ran over” the ICE agent.

In sum, according to Mr. Trump, Ms. Good’s terroristic behavior was just like that of members of the mob who hit Capitol police officers with bike racks and flagpoles five years ago and were given full presidential pardons.

The vice president used his Yale law degree to step forward as the ICE agent’s pro bono defense attorney, noting the officer had previously been struck and injured by a vehicle and “acted to save his life.”

But the vice president’s contention fails in two respects. First, in our legal system, with rare exceptions (such as an insanity plea), people’s conduct is evaluated by a standard of objectively reasonable behavior, not an idiosyncratic one. Second, if the ICE’s officer’s prior experience effected his lethal response, it begs the question why his supervisors put him back on the street with a loaded weapon.

This situation cries out for an independent, searching investigation. There is a concept in the law called res ipsa loquitur ,which is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.” The classic law school example is a plane crash. Planes are built to fly, not to crash, so when a plane is nose down in the ground it speaks for itself that something went wrong and needs to be examined to understand what happened and hold people accountable.

Likewise, when a federal employee responsible for apprehending undocumented immigrants shoots an American citizen to death, it speaks for itself that something went very wrong. But, given the reaction by our most senior government officials and the behavior of the FBI and Department of Justice to date, no reasonable person can expect our government will conduct or commission such an investigation.

Instead, our government officials will not allow for even the possibility that a mistake (or worse) was made or permit critical self-evaluation, and this is a threat to the liberty of us all. A government that tells us it is always right and its actions are above reproach acts as a tyrant, which is antithetical to our country’s founding principles.