Law Enforcement

Navy SEAL Reacts: The ICE Shooting Was Likely Legal and Still a Massive Failure

BY Brandon Webb

Judgment is the line between “allowed” and “right,” and in that moment, with time on the clock, he crossed it anyway.

Here we see the ICE agent (to the immediate left of the man in the black head and face covering) begin to draw his weapon. Image Credit: YouTube and New York Post

I have watched the video more times than I wanted to.

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Not out of outrage or armchair quarterback dopamine, but because something in it gnawed at the same part of my brain that used to light up during combat fight school.

The part that knows when a decision is legally defensible but still dead wrong.

Let me say this upfront so the comment section does not foam at the mouth. I support law enforcement. I have trained with them, drank too much with them, and relied on them.

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Most cops are solid humans doing a brutal job in a country that eats its protectors alive. That said, loyalty without honesty is how organizations rot from the inside.

After watching the ICE shooting of the woman, yes, I can see how it could be technically justified under use of force standards. That is the lawyer or worse, the politician’s answer.

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The kind of answer you give when your career and pension are sitting on the table like a loaded gun.

But judgment is not a checkbox. Judgment is the space between stimulus and action, and that space was clearly there.

At combat fight school, we spent long hours in the hooded stress box. Blacked out, claustrophobic, disoriented, heart rate pinned. The whole point was to see who could slow down and make good sound decisions when everything screamed to speed up. In fact this was the inspiration for the title of my firt book, The Red Cirlce.

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You learned quickly, in that circle you had to hold, that panic masquerades as decisiveness. You also learned that the wrong decision made fast is still the wrong decision.

You can’t hide or excuse your way out of it when they rolled the tape after your hooded box performance because that video don’t lie like a Congressman does.

Watching that shooting, the officer had time. Time to move. Time to create distance. Time to reassess. Time to choose a different tool. He was not cornered like an animal. He was not trapped in a kill box. He was not in a dark hallway with a maniac charging him at full tilt. He just fired. That is not bravery. That is poor judgment. Here is the part no one wants to talk about. Even if a court clears him, even if internal affairs shrugs and stamps it clean, that video is forever. It will play at three in the morning when the house is quiet and the bravado is gone. His kids will watch it (if he has them). It will whisper questions that no union rep can silence. Did I really need to do that. Could I have stepped back. Would she still be alive if I had taken one more second. I have buried enough ghosts from Afghanistan to know how this ends. The conscience does not care about legal justification. It cares about truth. Conduct matters. Bearing matters. Professionalism matters. When you put on a uniform, you are not just armed, you are entrusted. Anything less than disciplined restraint is unbecoming. That word still means something to those of us who lived under it. Every unit, military or law enforcement, needs ruthless self-reflection. Not the polished press release version. The honest, uncomfortable, no BS debrief where egos get checked and mistakes get named. Without that, we are not protectors. We are monsters disguised in uniform, one bad decision away from proving every cynic right. One more uncomfortable truth. The behavior of the woman I watched who filmed it did not help. Screaming, taunting, and injecting chaos into an already volatile moment only pours gasoline on a fire. Stress is contagious. So is panic. When civilian observers turn a tense situation into a spectacle, they increase the risk for everyone involved, including themselves. Recording is a right. Agitating is a choice. And that choice can escalate outcomes in ways that no one can rewind once the trigger is pulled. Supporting law enforcement does not mean excusing bad judgment. It means demanding better from people who carry lethal authority on our behalf. The standard has to be higher, not lower, because the consequences are permanent. I can live with hard calls made under real threat. I cannot stomach avoidable deaths wrapped in technicalities. Neither should you.  
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