But... but... this seems to say that the US has a secret police organization that carries out summary executions and then covers them up. But that can't be!
On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 6:09 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > from SLATE: > >>The FBI's Nearly Unbelievable Record of "Justified" Shootings > > By Josh Voorhees > > Posted Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 10:19 AM > > We're still waiting for the FBI to finish its internal investigation > into exactly what happened in an Orlando apartment last month, when an > FBI agent shot and killed Ibragim Todashev, a Chechan [i.e., > Chechnyan] man who knew Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. > Since the shooting, unnamed officials have painted a number of > different pictures of the scene in the room in the moments before the > agent opened fire. Among them, that Todashev was unarmed, that he was > brandishing a knife, and that he was carrying a pipe or maybe a > broomstick. > > For all the current uncertainty surrounding exactly what led the agent > to shoot and kill Todashev, the bureau's next step appears almost a > foregone conclusion: Based on recent history, the FBI's final report > is all but certain to conclude that the shooting was justified. The > New York Times with the agency's eye-raising track record: > > >[F]rom 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 > "subjects" and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those > episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal > F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of > Information Act lawsuit. The last two years have followed the same > pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no > findings of improper intentional shootings. ... > > >Out of 289 deliberate shootings covered by the documents, many of > which left no one wounded, five were deemed to be "bad shoots," in > agents' parlance — encounters that did not comply with the bureau's > policy, which allows deadly force if agents fear that their lives or > those of fellow agents are in danger. A typical punishment involved > adding letters of censure to agents' files. But in none of the five > cases did a bullet hit anyone.< > > Depending on how you read those numbers—more than 150 shootings that > wounded or killed a subject in the past 20 years, all justified; 284 > deliberate shootings in all, 279 justified—that's either an > extraordinary track record, or an unbelievable one. Regardless, it > raises some obvious red flags about the fairness and validity of those > internal reviews. Perhaps as troubling, as the Times explains, is that > in most of those cases the FBI internal investigation was the only > inquiry into the shooting, as it currently is in the Orlando incident. > > Go check out the full NYT piece here > [ > http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/in-150-shootings-the-fbi-deemed-agents-faultless.html > ], > which also breaks down the conflicting accounts of a 2002 shooting the > agency declared justified that independent investigators weren't so > sure about. (During the episode in question an agent shot an innocent > Maryland man in the head after mistaking him for a bank robber.) << > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your > own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
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