Well, you could argue that the FBI is just really well trained:
Critics say the fact that for at least two decades no agent has been disciplined for any instance of deliberately shooting someone raises questions about the credibility of the bureau’s internal investigations.
In that time, Federal agents have shot and killed seventy people, wounded eighty more, and there are 289 total files on “deliberate shootings.” Five of those deliberate shootings were deemed “bad shoots,” but none of the bad shoots resulted in anyone actually being shot. Over the course of two decades, that’s not a tremendous amount of shooting. But it sure is a long time to go without even one agent shooting someone when they shouldn’t have.
This could be largely because the FBI is very good at what they do, at least when it comes to apprehending suspects. But no organization is perfect. There must be something wrong with how they investigate deliberate shootings, don’t you think?
There was a shooting in Maryland in 2002 which caused the FBI to pay out $1.3 million in a settlement, yet internally they deemed the shooting justified.
Obviously, this is coming up now because a FBI agent shot and killed Ibragim Todashev, an associate of the Boston Marathon bombers, while interrogating him in Orlando, Florida. And, so far, they can’t seem to get their story straight about why.
In the Orlando case, for example, there have been conflicting accounts about basic facts like whether the Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, attacked an agent with a knife, was unarmed or was brandishing a metal pole. But Orlando homicide detectives are not independently investigating what happened.
“We had nothing to do with it,” said Sgt. Jim Young, an Orlando police spokesman. “It’s a federal matter, and we’re deferring everything to the F.B.I.”
Somehow, regardless of the facts, I suspect that the FBI will determine this a “good shoot.” Why mess with perfection?
It should never be forgotten that the FBI was built ,and for many, many years run, by a dangerous psychopath. It would be most unwise to assume that his way of doing things has disappeared completely from the FBI’s organizational culture.
Rule #1 in America: Police officers (and that includes the FBI) operate with impunity because “they are protecting us” even when they aren’t. Eighty years of movie, radio and TV propaganda by law enforcement has created that effect.
From Keystone Kops to J. Edgar Hoover’s G-Men–the effect of the rise of the public relations industry.
Them and the FISA court. Really what’s happening is just that the most perfect systems in American are finally emerging into the public consciousness.
They close ranks like the military.
Remember that football(?) player who quit and joined the Army and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan(? Iraq?) and then major inconsistencies came out and inexplicably his diary was burned? Did you ever hear anything else? My best guesses: a) He uncovered atrocities and was going to talk or b) He was shot at the platoon level for being gay. The same wildly different stories about what happened, High level cover-up, later admitted, and IMHO burning of a smoking gun diary. You never would have heard anything except he was a celebrity.
“Good shoot” is like “friendly fire”.
Don’t forget that he supposedly wanted to talk to Chomsky when he got back.
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Yes, Pat Tillman. I’m sorry I didn’t remember his name.
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Comey has his work cut out for him; something tells me this is just his kind of quagmire to sort out.
I seem to recall that just a few weeks ago in FL the FBI shot a guy they were extracting a confession from, in his own home, no counsel, no witnesses other than FBI. Nothing about the story made sense, but I’m sure it was “all in the line of duty”.
Oh, sorry, that was the whole point of the story. Well, look, I picked up on that without even having to read it.
Sounds like they were making a deal he couldn’t refuse.
Up the road a bit from me a few years ago FBI agents shot and killed one of their own agents while they were trying to stop a bank robbery. They had been tailing some bad guys who they suspected were going rob a bank that morning (how they knew this was never made clear). They somehow mistook one their agents for one the people they were tailing and in broad daylight in a parking lot shot him.
Of course because a cop died while they we committing a crime legally it is n different than if the bad guys shot him themselves. IIRC they got life w/o parole.
And it was deemed a good shoot.