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Most people think law enforcement is just “do what you have to do™.” It’s not. It’s rules. It’s constraints. It’s paperwork and restraint and a whole lot of don’t do the thing you feel like doing.

Because the moment you let instinct replace protocol, you stop being law enforcement and start being something else.

That’s what’s got me locked in on ICE right now. Newly released internal numbers show a staggering jump in ICE use-of-force incidents in the early stretch of Trump’s term—an increase so sharp it doesn’t read like a trend. It reads like a culture shift. And it’s happening alongside a surge in daily arrests and operations that’s pushing agents into more confrontations, more fast decisions, and more opportunities for bad judgment to become permanent damage.

Here’s the part the press usually skips: force isn’t judged by what you can do. It’s judged by what you’re allowed to do. Minimum necessary. Proportional. Justified. Escalate gradually. Respect the Fourth Amendment. That’s not “woke,” that’s policing. That’s the line between authority and abuse.

When force balloons this quickly, it raises the only questions that matter:

Are they being trained properly?

Are supervisors enforcing standards?

Or are the guardrails being treated like suggestions because “enforcement” is the only metric anyone cares about?

And we’re not talking about theoretical harms. People are getting shot. Americans are dying. Even folks on the right are starting to say out loud what they usually won’t: these federal teams aren’t meeting the standards we demand from local cops.

Then it gets worse—because the most revealing stuff isn’t the statistics. It’s the behavior.

I included two clips that show what “protocol collapse” looks like in real life: agents weaponizing human kindness to lure someone out, and agents detaining a U.S. citizen teenager while admitting they don’t even know who they’ve grabbed. That’s not “targeted enforcement.” That’s sloppiness with guns and authority.

Law enforcement only works when the public believes it’s legitimate—not because it’s feared, not because it’s unchecked. Legitimate. And legitimacy comes from discipline, not force.

If you want me to keep pulling the numbers, tracking the incidents, and putting the receipts on screen without a corporate leash, become a paid subscriber. If you’re already in, share this with one person who still gives a damn. The only thing that stops a protocol collapse is sunlight and consequences.

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