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The Scout, the suspect and the SWAT team Shooting:
Baltimore Sun ^ | 18 March 2002 | Gail Gibson, Michael James and Laura Barnhardt

Posted on 03/18/2002 3:06:32 AM PST by Lloyd227

Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:07 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

On March 1, FBI agents had a clear plan to catch a man wanted in a bank robbery. What unfolded was a remarkable series of mix-ups with a near-fatal outcome.

The order from an FBI commander to a SWAT team waiting outside a Glen Burnie 7-Eleven was simple and direct.

"Follow the red car."

To FBI Special Agent Christopher Braga, it signaled that the man inside the car, the one wearing the white baseball cap, was the bank robbery suspect agents had been tracking. Braga, with other members of the elite FBI team, moved in to make the arrest.


(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: copernicus5; donutwatch; enforcement; fbi; government; swat
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To: Cap'n Crunch
I wonder at what point the agent felt his life was in danger.

My guess is that the agent didn't feel that his life was in danger, but he just enjoys shooting people. Apparently this isn't the first time that this dickhead has shot someone.

61 posted on 03/18/2002 8:41:50 AM PST by from occupied ga
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To: Travis McGee
Am I the only one who feels this way?: the airport "security", cockpit "security", homeland "security" all looks like a lot of smoke and mirrors for sheep to me.
62 posted on 03/18/2002 8:43:56 AM PST by Howie
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To: Cap'n Crunch
The failure to use the proper felony stop procedure is IMHO the essentail ommission of due care that causes this entire action to escalate into criminal negligence that fits the reckless endangerment law. Some years back the FBI lost a few agents in the Miami shootout (platt Matix is the name that comes to mind by I could very well be corrected on this). supposedly after this incident the Felony stop became SOP for FBI agents.

Now on to todays revalation that the informant arrived on the scene of the shooting without paramedics there administering to the wounded civilian. Fromn prior stories we know the paramedics were summoned at 6:12 PM and arrived at 6:15PM. The several minutes for the informant to arrive on scene is time where the agents could have called for paramedics and an ambulance. We know there were four agents on the scene and two people in the car that had been stopped. what would happen to an officer in your department who delayed calling for medical assistance when a suspect had been shot? In most of the local PD's I know of that officer would be hanging by a very tender part of his anatomy. I do know from Mrs. Harpseals former employment with the Department of Corrections that delaying emergency treatment can be grounds for letting a perp walk and for prosecution of the officers involved. In short every agent on scene has "Sc*wed the Pooch repeatedly on this one." They did it so big time that the acts were criminal in nature. Now the automobile safety glass between the agent and the person he shot not only reduces the threat to the agent it increases the danger to the young lady driving showing agent Braga to be even more reckless.

Stay well - Stay safe- stay armed - Yorktown

63 posted on 03/18/2002 8:49:31 AM PST by harpseal
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To: Kermit
Why are bank robberies federal crimes

Interesting question.

(1)The bank may be federally chartered

(2)The bank is required to have federal deposit insurance

(3)The stolen property - Federal reserve notes

More than the federal camel's nose is certainly inside the bank's tent, isn't it ?

64 posted on 03/18/2002 8:50:46 AM PST by Dukie
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To: from occupied ga
Gestapo goons like this "pray for war" maniac Braga spend hours and hours of quiet time thinking up scenarios where they can pull the trigger and get it called a "clean shoot".

This includes keeping a .25ACP in a baggie for those cases where the dead perp was unarmed.

65 posted on 03/18/2002 8:51:15 AM PST by Travis McGee
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To: Howie
It all boils down to "State Security", and the security is meant for The State, not for the peasants.
66 posted on 03/18/2002 8:53:09 AM PST by Travis McGee
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To: Travis McGee
Hey I think the whole town should be very thankful that the FBI has not equipped agent Braga with a tactical nuke

yet.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

67 posted on 03/18/2002 8:55:12 AM PST by harpseal
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To: Travis McGee
Gestapo goons like this "pray for war" maniac Braga spend hours and hours of quiet time thinking up scenarios where they can pull the trigger and get it called a "clean shoot".

Yes, and until some of them get some serious jail time (or something worse) to show that there are consequences to just shooting peasants for fun it's going to continue to get worse.

68 posted on 03/18/2002 8:57:06 AM PST by from occupied ga
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To: Lloyd227
My Uncle Bob was a 30 year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding 40 years ago. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on patrol cars all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”

The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.

I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.

My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.

And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.

THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guard rail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.

These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”

I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.

And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."

Have we really become the “nation of sheep” an author foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?

An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.

Having said that, I also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.

I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.

And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?

Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck -- now Schultz. This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.

Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?

Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.

Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.

The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.

It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.

69 posted on 03/18/2002 8:59:16 AM PST by Dick Bachert
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To: harpseal
Once enough gestapo goons like Braga get promoted up the line, I can absolutely see them taking the decision to drop a daisy cutter on a "right wing militia compound" in Montana as a part of the coming "War On Domestic Terrorism".

Waco didn't bother them much, did it? Why risk any State Security Agents?

70 posted on 03/18/2002 9:03:10 AM PST by Travis McGee
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To: Dick Bachert,Cap'n Crunch
Just FYI, local county LEOs who have "had it" with the secret gestapo operating in their jurisdiction are some of the heros in my novel.
71 posted on 03/18/2002 9:05:51 AM PST by Travis McGee
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To: fogarty
This is not a Marine, because he has NO honor. This guy is hiding behind the FBI

I guess the "Once a Marine, always a Marine" belief has certain exceptions. Lee Harvy Oswald would be one of them.

72 posted on 03/18/2002 9:07:46 AM PST by arm958
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To: Travis McGee
I tell ya what. I thought living like a monk /hermit/saint would keep one out of the rifle sights of these killing teams......But it seems these days you can just be pounced upon at any given moment by mistake. SOP's in these cases SUK !

Stay Safe !

73 posted on 03/18/2002 9:08:38 AM PST by Squantos
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To: harpseal
The failure to prosecute these agents makes the entire FBI suspect and complicit in the attempted murder of an innocent person and that statement is based only upon what the FBI has allowed to be released. If there was anything in the 911 tape that was exculpatory it would be in the public domain already.

That is perhaps the best statement of what is at stake for this land of ours and why it is absolutely imperative for Muller, Ashcroft and the President to make the point that such actions are abominable and totally unacceptible, even in time of war. If they take no action, by their silence they acquiesce and become renegades themselves.

74 posted on 03/18/2002 9:14:10 AM PST by Dukie
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To: Cultural Jihad;Dane; Douglas KC
Scramble, boys! Bootlickers are getting savaged on this thread.

Stand up for your thuggish pals!

Building a Socialist America will take all your efforts!

You've gotta suppost your federal payroll buddies; they CANNOT be in the wrong.

Macht Schnell, Kameraden!!!

75 posted on 03/18/2002 9:17:18 AM PST by headsonpikes
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To: Travis McGee
Travis, Chris Braga is a fine young, 2-notch SWAT. I am recommending that he be immediately seconded to the BATF. They always seem to need aggessive young officers for storming wrong houses, shooting pets, injuring bystanders, and recruiting scumbag informants. Perhaps he could instruct them in firearm safety.

O just BTW, The informant? Who is he? What is his police record? How is he paid? Is he currently under indictment?

76 posted on 03/18/2002 9:23:12 AM PST by Francohio
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To: sneakypete
Braga, 35, is a former Marine captain who was a rifle platoon commander in the Persian Gulf war.

Interesting. Lon Horuichi (Ruby Ridge AND Waco) was a West Point graduate and former Army Infantry Officer. He was also a conservative, family values guy whose children were home schooled. I'll bet Braga is a pretty conservative guy too.

77 posted on 03/18/2002 9:29:23 AM PST by arm958
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To: Lloyd227
...he earned the rank of Star Scout.

I thought he was an Eagle Scout. That's what has been reported all this time. Eagle is two full ranks above Star (with Life Scout being in between).

78 posted on 03/18/2002 9:37:10 AM PST by Darth Sidious
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To: Travis McGee
This will go on until they are punished, or until Rule 308 is applied.

Yes,and any rational person has no choice but to conclude that this will eventually happen. You and I both know people who wouldn't take this type of thing lightly if it were to happen to them or their family members,and these people are perfectly capable of "going hunting",and taking this fight to the "enemy". People who these Feeb punks can't visualize in their worst nightmares,as they are all the unfit rejects of the military who didn't have what it takes to make in in the real "special" units. You don't do this crap to people like that without having to face the consequences. Sooner or later,there are going to be federal agents starting to dissapear,or "die in tragic drive-by shootings".

The sad part is that is jut half of the tragedy. These agents are just "useful tools/fools" of their bosses,who were used to create a situation where the bosses can jusify calling a national emergency,and confiscating guns and nullifying the Bill of Rights in other ways. After all,the "Office of Reich Security" is already in place,along with the so-called "Patriots Act". All they need is a mission to justify their existance. This will provide it for them.

The politicians and the media will be going on a 24/7 rampage about how "dangerous it is to allow these deadly weapons to remain in the hands of these domestic terrorists who are murdering federal agents for no reason at all." The politicians and bureaucrats are happy because they have "played the nuts" perfectly,and were able to create a situation they could exploit. It remains to be seen how happy they will remain when/if some of these same scarey people decide to go after the bosses instead of the slaves. Some will no doubt leap with joy when they hear of one of their opponets getting killed,while serving as a propaganda tool at the same time.

Don't say this can't happen in America,as it already has. This is how the FBI got their start. Sending out hit teams to murder "public enemies" who were robbing banks.

And so it begins,the "American Revolution,Part-2".

79 posted on 03/18/2002 9:39:20 AM PST by sneakypete
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To: Noumenon
Based upon this latest incident, the only thing left to do is to evade such a stop long enough to gain access to your weaponry and then dispatch as many of these thugs as possible before they get to you.

I can tell you one thing for sure,it would be considered to be "risky behavior" to try to stop ME in a unmarked car while not wearing a uniform and pointing a gun at me. you better either bring body bags or a squad car with lights and uniformed officers. I sure as hell ain't stopping and surrendering to anybody else!

80 posted on 03/18/2002 9:44:18 AM PST by sneakypete
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