Ice may be the single greatest nonhuman factor in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In fact, after watching both recordings, I’d go as far as to say we would have an ICE agent in the ICU or dead in the case of Good, were it not for her tires spinning for traction, rather than grabbing, while her vehicle was squarely aimed at the officer who would ultimately shoot her.

Conversely, were it not for the Border Patrol agents and Alex Pretti confronting one another on roadside ice, it’s much more likely that Pretti’s firearm would have been secured without misfire, Pretti would have been quickly restrained, and the officer who took the shot would not have felt it necessary to pull out his sidearm. Instead, the slipping and stumbling encounter came to a head as several agents struggled to maintain their balance while forcing Pretti down to the ground. The agents’ colleague, noting their compromised state and himself being upright, unholstered his firearm and shot Pretti upon the seeming misfire from Pretti’s confiscated Sig Sauer P320 — a weapon with an unfortunate reputation for that very thing.

For the Southerners and snowbirds, it may be good to explain just how hazardous ice can be. It reduces grip from 100 to 0 all in an instant. One second, you’re in control of your limbs, the next, your legs are out in front of you, and your arms are pinwheeling behind. Walking speeds go from 2–3 mph to a quarter of that. If you don’t keep your legs directly under your torso, physics will play havoc with every step. For officers — who need to have a firm sense of balance for all aspects of their job, but most of all for the apprehension of suspects and the correct stance for firing a service weapon — this is an extremely challenging condition. An officer on the ground is not only exposed to an immediate assailant, but he also loses any control of his surroundings.

On the whole, I concur with the Editors: What is happening in Minnesota is outrageous. ICE and its federal peers are behaving poorly in some cases, especially when it comes to coordinating with local police. Meanwhile, the anti-ICE activists are using sonic irritants (whistles, shouts, and car horns) — categorically similar to Antifa’s widespread use of lasers to blind officers — to disrupt officers’ comms as well as maliciously impeding their vehicles. Listen to the audio of the Pretti confrontation at real-world levels. . . . It is messy and loud. Winter conditions make the whistles and car horns all the more shrill and volumetrically cumulative. Further, agents are hounded by activists using relatively sophisticated tracking software, putting them on high alert at all times.

I am not convinced that the Pretti shooting was a “bad shoot.” It was a riotous environment wherein an agent sought to protect his team from a man who was confirmed to have had at least one firearm on his person. Pretti went against all the training I received in naval security and civilian courses when he, with full knowledge that he had a firearm on his person, physically engaged with police. He made progressive, poor choices, and I sympathize with his family just as much as I do the officer who took the shot — it is no small thing for an agent of the state to kill a citizen. The legal types will decide whether the agent was in the wrong. But I can’t fault him from my desk.

The fault does land squarely at the feet of those in the chain of command who are exposing their men to wickedly tricky scenarios; it lands at the stoop of Tim Walz’s residence and his insistence that Minnesota is besieged; it lands on the chins of every activist who imagined themselves to be heroes but have contributed to making Minneapolis a hellscape for the swift, judicious application of the law.

The Trump administration moved on Minneapolis amid the wave of outrage surrounding the Somali fraud cases and no doubt expected to avoid Floyd-era levels of unrest due to the winter conditions. Instead, the admin has lost the narrative while its officers seek solid ground from which to prosecute their mission.

“Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove,” P. G. Wodehouse writes in A Wodehouse Bestiary. The White House has certainly found that to be the case in Minneapolis. Whether it has the fortitude to weather the blow remains to be seen.