Nobody Has To Die: Minneapolis Isn’t a Political Issue. It’s a Tactical Failure…on Both Sides

When you prioritize volume over precision, you get sloppy. You put agents in tactically disadvantageous situations, forcing split-second decisions in chaos they can’t control. Sloppy gets people killed. DHS says Alex Pretti approached agents with a 9mm and “violently resisted.” Maybe. But having a weapon on your person doesn’t automatically make you a lethal threat. I’ve removed weapons from people without drawing mine. I’ve talked down situations that could’ve gone sideways in a heartbeat. Not because I’m braver, but because I was trained to read behavior, control distance, and make decisions based on more than just the presence of a gun. Minnesota is an open-carry state. The man had a permit. “He had a gun” isn’t enough justification. The situation should never have even gotten to this point. If an agent makes an unjustified shoot, they need to be fired and prosecuted. Period. A badge doesn’t make you bulletproof from consequences. You don’t get to act like a cowboy from 1875 and hide behind “I was in fear for my safety.” Fear isn’t a blank check. Training exists for a reason. If you can’t exercise judgment under pressure, you don’t belong in the field. The officers doing it right need to be the first ones calling this out. Silence is complicity. Every cowboy with a badge makes the job harder for everyone else. Now the other side. Civilians who place themselves in the middle of a law enforcement action are not heroes. They’re not activists. They’re reckless and ignorant. One group posted instructions telling protesters to “push or pull the cop off the arrestee” and “break their hold by hitting the cop’s hand.” That’s not protest, that’s pure jackassery. You want to film? Fine. That’s your right. But the moment you shove an officer, block an arrest, or put your body between agents and a subject, you’ve crossed a line. You’re not a witness anymore. You’re a participant in a dangerous situation you don’t understand… and now you’re a criminal. You do not deserve to die for this, but you might anyway. No heroics in that. Interfering with an active arrest is getting people killed just as surely as the bad shoots. Here’s what nobody wants to talk about: when you conduct enforcement in the middle of a crowd, you’ve already lost. You’re surrounded, reactive, making split-second decisions in an environment you don’t control. Every escalation spirals into a national story. That’s not policing. That’s poor performance. Here’s my alternative: Slow down. Gather intel. Surveil. Learn patterns. Then pick your moment. Don’t just kick the door in, puff your chest, and hope for a movie deal. Take them at a traffic stop three blocks from the house at 6 a.m., backup staged, whole thing over in forty-five seconds. It’s not sexy. Doesn’t make the news. But it works. And nobody dies. It’s what grown-ups in this profession do. It treats everyone with dignity… even the person you’re arresting. Two dead in three weeks. Riots in the streets. The state and federal governments are at each other’s throats. Investigators are blocked from crime scenes. If the mission is to enforce immigration law, it should simply require making clean arrests and processing deportations, not generating headlines and body counts. Every shooting and viral video makes the next operation harder. There’s a difference between enforcing the law and creating chaos. One accomplishes the goal. The other just looks tough until someone ends up dead. This should be a conversation about tactics, training, and professionalism. Instead, it’s another cable news shouting match where one side defends every shoot and the other side defends every protester who jumps in front of a squad car. Politics is dictating tactics. And tactics are what keep people alive… or get them killed. Competence is quiet. Patient. It’s choosing your moment instead of letting the moment choose you. Restraint isn’t weakness; it’s what separates professionals from amateurs. Fire the cowboys. Prosecute the bad shoots. And to the protesters: step back. Film if you want. But stop pretending that throwing yourself into an arrest is anything other than reckless stupidity dressed up as righteousness. Whatever this is, it’s not working. And more people are going to die until both sides figure that out. — Tegan Broadwater spent 13 years with the Fort Worth Police Department, including two years assigned to the FBI working deep undercover inside a violent Crip organization. That operation, detailed in his book Life in the Fishbowl, resulted in 51 convictions. He has since founded Tactical Systems Network, an armed security & protection firm primarily staffed by veterans, is a creative writer and musician, and hosts The Tegan Broadwater Podcast. All book profits benefit children of incarcerated parents. Learn more at TeganBroadwater.com