Why wasn't he shot running away? Oh, these were ill trained police officers who have more than questions to answer for an illegal shoot.
This guy was involved in a killing of another unarmed suspect before this. A loaded firearm was "nearby." Can you say trigger happy cowboy? I knew you could.
The FBI SWAT team is an accident waiting to happen. Do they have a logo? A motto? Something with Skull and crossbones would be fitting. Perhaps a motto of "They're all "clean shoots" sooner or later."
Of course it's a "clean shoot", the FiBbIe works for the government. Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc.,ad nausium, they're all "clean shoots".
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '5-'66
Thanks for posting this.
Sneeze and you're Swiss cheese...according to this apologist article.
Bottomline, an unarmed man was shot in the face and nearly killed by a trigger-happy Gestapo agent. What's so difficult to understand about this?
Yeah. Of course. It seems that anything they do is "justified."
I wonder if anybody bothered to check to see if his paperwork was legimitate. I have a VERY hard time believing a trained Marine infantry officer could or would panic in a situation as lame as this,and end up damn near killing a innocent person. If he WAS a Marine,I'm betting he was a REMF.
Soon after joining the team, Braga was involved with two other law enforcement officers in the fatal shooting of a murder suspect in Laurel, FBI officials have confirmed. The suspect was not holding a weapon, although investigators said a loaded firearm was nearby. The shooting was ruled justified.
Of course it was ruled to be justfied. These are the King's men we are talking about here,and they have a perfect legal right to kill any of the commoners who cross them. After all,there was sure to be a gun somewhere within 10 miles or so. It's really not fair to expect those who sit at the right hand of royalty to take chances when dealing with common trash.
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.
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!!!
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).
Now let me see, who should I believe, two kids enjoying a slurpee and not a care in the world, or, Federal Cowboys with hot trigger fingers trying desperately to save their butts?
For some reason I am inclined to believe the kids as they were never willing parties to this sad affair. Grown men, in a supposed professional job and they have to resort to lying to save their own skins.
There were no mistakes made, there was gross arrogance and disregard for human life. This man should be fired and brought up on manslaughter charges, by the state not the Federal government. It will never happen, the jerk will walk.
This agency needs to be dismantled and its agents barred from further federal employment.
Report: Justice Department investigating former Maryland U.S. attorney
By The Associated Press
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether federal prosecutors in Maryland destroyed evidence and leaked grand jury testimony to keep alive a misconduct probe against a state trooper, according to a report in Friday’s Washington Times.
The trooper’s brother, meanwhile, accused former Attorney General Janet Reno of delaying the probe to give Gov. Parris Glendening time to appoint former U.S. Attorney for Maryland Lynne A. Battaglia as a judge on the Court of Appeals.
John D. White said his brother, Michael R. White of Mechanicsville, was investigated by Battaglia’s office because he and another trooper pushed for the prosecution of domestic abuse charges against a high-ranking police official with ties to Battaglia.
A Justice Department attorney confirmed the probe in an April letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, who had been chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee until recently. “I believe Reno took over nine months to even respond to my complaint ... to allow Governor Glendening to appoint Lynne Battaglia,” John White told The Washington Times.
The allegations follow an affidavit filed last summer by a federal agent accusing Battaglia of threatening to have him transferred for complying with a congressman’s request for data about her office’s prosecution record.
Battaglia said at the time that she called the agent — Larry Stewart, then the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms special agent in charge for Baltimore — to let him know she was “unhappy.”
A federal jury acquitted Michael White of mail fraud on Dec. 17, 1999, clearing him of charges that he had conducted secret inspections for a salvage operation accused of selling cars rebuilt with stolen parts. State police are still pursuing administrative charges against the trooper, who has been on emergency suspension from police duty since March 12, 1997.
A tape of an interview with Michael White that is now blank is a key part of the investigation.
The trooper claims the blank tape allowed Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart A. Berman and state police investigator Lt. James Wright to “insert lies within the (report) necessary to support Wright’s perjury to the grand jury and the (trial) jury.”
An administrative hearing before a Maryland State Police panel is scheduled July 16 for Michael White.
Meanwhile, Charles County Circuit Court Judge Christopher C. Henderson ruled May 7 that Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. David Mitchell must show that he and the department didn’t Michael White’s rights by filing charges without probable cause and by not filing the charges through proper channels and on time.
A hearing on that issue is scheduled June 25 in Charles County Circuit Court. Home | Finance | Health Care | TechLink Off The Record | Real Estate | Law | Statewide Copyright © 2000 The Daily Record. All Rights Reserved.
Since 1913 we have seen unchecked growth in central authority out of Washington, and the 17th admendment is one big feeder root of it. Is there a single senator any more who is responsible to the Constitution, who would hold any Federal agency responsible? Why should they? There is NOTHING in it for them to raise flack over a federal issue. If it is a established agency, it hardly gains them political headway to charge partisanly against that politically neutered bulwark, for no voter long beholds it for a party issue.
The States might check the Federal overgrowth, for the political sake of state politcians. But we no longer have even that check, and those who favored the 17th when ratified made their case that a state's legislative votes were more easily bought than the general electorate. The Oil Senators from oil states, the Coal Senators from Coal States, etc. At least they did represent their true state interests, and not just that of the beltway class.
The cancer-like over growth of Federal power has followed on that experiment -- it is a failed one, and needs repeal like was done with the 1919's sad 18th amendment, thankfully repealed in 1933's 21st amendment.
We think of FDR has the founder of the current federal socialism, that is not true -- the founding was in 1913 and therabout. FDR packed the Court, and finalized the socialist takeover, but it was the "progressive" tempers of the 1910s that set it all up.