Posted on 03/20/2016 9:49:40 AM PDT by azkathy
The two-month standoff between Oregon militia members and police came to a violent end in January, with the shooting of militia leader Robert “LaVoy” Finicum by Oregon state troopers. But now the Washington Post reports “new details have emerged” about the controversial conduct of FBI Hostage Rescue Team snipers.
The Post article portrays the current state of the investigation as considerably messier than readers casually following the story might have suspected. The FBI team has been accused of firing at Finicum’s truck, failing to report their shots as required, and actually taking steps to cover their tracks by collecting their spent shell casings: Last week, Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson, who is overseeing the investigation, said he had concluded that “FBI HRT operators fired two shots as Mr. Finicum exited the truck, and one shot hit the truck.”
Nelson accused the agents of failing to “disclose their shots to our investigators.” The five FBI agents have denied firing assault rifles during the incident. But in a recently released interview, an Oregon State Police officer told investigators that he spotted two copper-colored rifle casings near the spot where the FBI agents were standing.
The Hostage Rescue Team has used copper- colored casings, former agents said; the Oregon state police use only silver-colored casings. The copper casings were never recovered.
Meanwhile, the Portland Oregonian reported Tuesday that FBI surveillance video taken after the shooting shows the agents searching the area with flashlights and huddling. One of them then bends over twice and appears to be picking up something. On Wednesday, a law enforcement official confirmed the video account.
If allegations of a coverup are determined to be true, the incident would be hugely embarrassing to the FBI and deal a devastating blow to the FBI team’s reputation.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I have been shocked that this hasn't been in Breaking News here on Free Republic. A Constitution teaching, freedom loving, peaceful protester, second Amendment supporting Patriot was killed. Where is the outcry? If this is allowed to be "normal" and accepted behavior by the authorities we are all doomed.
Thanks!
BFL
Secondly, how come the names of cops who kill blacks are released to the public, but when FBI agents murder whites WE DON'T KNOW THEIR IDENTITY?
The Oregon State Troopers need to call a press conference and clear their names. The FBI needs to call a press conference and RELEASE THE NAME OF THE FBI AGENT WHO MURDERED FINICUM. Perhaps if their NAMES ARE RELEASED, THEY'LL BE A BIT MORE HESITANT TO COMMIT MURDERS. Right now, they are ACCOUNTABLE TO NO ONE.
BLM violently protests Trump = GOOD!
The video shows two officers shooting him from behind in the back with pistols, which some do not eject shell casings.
From the Washington Post article, “The public deserved to have the video, with audio and sound, released immediately after the shooting,” Mike Arnold, Bundy’s attorney, said in a statement Tuesday. “Now we know why it wasn’t released: the public would have heard the shots that the government didn’t want it to hear.”
During brief remarks on Tuesday, Greg Bretzing, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Oregon division, said the question of who fired shots during the situation “has not been resolved.”
Bretzing did not specify if he was questioning whether the FBI agents actually fired any shots or saying that he was not sure which specific FBI agent or agents fired shots. Nelson said Tuesday that authorities “don’t know the identity of who fired those rounds,” but he repeatedly said two shots were fired by FBI agents.”
You are right! Who fired the shots? This was a staged ambush and the FBI got the results they planned, prepared for and executed.
BUMP
**FBI Hostage Rescue Team snipers.**
Hostage Rescue?
Little mission creep going on.
It looks like it is normal accepted behavior. Nobody gives a rat about the constitution. The alphabet soup thugs and courts spin it how they will and nearly everyone kowtows. They sent the Hammonds away as domestic terrorists for starting a backfire on their property to put out some fires started by lightening. I am not optimistic.
The Washington Post and other news agencies have the ability and the duty to read and report on these http://cdn.smartz.com/Finicum_Redacted_Web_03142016_PartII.pdf
Read the statements of the police officers and the investigators here, http://sheriff.deschutes.org/Media/OIS-Updates/
Autopsy reads 3 hits in the back but can you explain about the no ejections?
Exactly. HRT without any “H”. How convenient.
Lon Horuchi, please pick up the white phone.
Time to reign in the government agencies and their various paramilitary troops!
Have we heard word one from any of the top 4 presidential candidates on this? Autopsy report: shot 4 times in the back. Likely reaching for a wound, in pain, not a weapon?
That’s the trouble with establishing those kinds of rules of engagement. It cuts both ways.
Two different BLMs, and those of us who have been at ends with the Bureau of Land Management for decades wondered when the Rioting group would get crossed up with the Federal Agency. Now, if you say you are against BLM tactics, you’re a raycist! (even though it’s over rangeland).
The two groups may have more similarities than one would at first think....
None of the candidates have dared to speak about this. Including Trump whose own Co Chair for Veterans for Trump, Jerry Delemus has been arrested along with the other Patriots.
You would think he would have something to say about that.
The Oregonian article states, “The Hostage Rescue Team is among the FBI’s most elite outfits. The members have no other job but to work full time as a SWAT-style group, operating from the FBI base in Quantico, Virginia. The team is the FBI’s global resource for anti-terrorism operations, but it also is selectively deployed across the country to deal with hostage situations or other unique crises.
One investigator working on the task force pulled together by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office reported that he had been told soon after the shooting that two state troopers and two FBI agents had fired. He said the FBI agents approached him later to say they hadn’t fired their weapons.
In separate interviews later that night, those two FBI agents and the other three on duty at the shooting scene said they hadn’t discharged their weapons and repeated these statements in a second round of interviews Feb. 5 and 6, investigators reported.
The second time, the agents insisted that an attorney be present and that they be given an opportunity to “reference their prior statements” if they were going to be asked questions they had already answered in the first interview.
“Of particular concern to all of us is that the HRT (Hostage Rescue Team) operators did not disclose their shots to our investigators or their superiors,” said Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson. “Nor did they discuss specific actions they took after the shooting, which are the subject of an ongoing investigation.”
Authorities haven’t described those “specific actions.”
Nelson said evidence about the agents’ conduct was presented to U.S. Attorney Bill Williams in Bend on Feb. 18. The next day, the evidence was shown to Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office.
“Upon learning this, and given the FBI presence on scene, I immediately contacted our Inspection Division which notified the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General which is currently investigating this matter.” Bretzing said.
On Saturday, Feb. 20, agents from the Justice Department’s inspector general and the FBI’s Inspections Division traveled to Bend to review the evidence.
Nelson and Dan Norris, the Malheur County district attorney overseeing the shooting investigation, a week later traveled to brief top FBI officials in Washington.
Bretzing said Tuesday, however, that identifying who fired the two shots was unresolved.
https://www.fbi.gov/portland/press-releases/2016/fbi-statement-on-officer-involved-shooting
Upon learning this, and given the FBI presence on scene, I immediately contacted our Inspection Division which notified the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General which is currently investigating this matter.
Tim Colahan, Harney County district attorney who asked Norris to handle the shooting investigation, said that “we deserve to know that our law enforcement officers at the local, state and federal level act appropriately.”
With the indications of FBI misconduct, the Malheur takeover now carries echoes of Ruby Ridge, which resulted in scathing investigations of the FBI and the eventual conviction of an FBI official. The 1992 siege in Idaho started when police sought to arrest anti-government extremist Randy Weaver. His son and his wife were both shot to death during that operation, as was a U.S. marshal.
The resulting investigations into misconduct and mistakes forced the FBI to overhaul its policy for using deadly force and for how it investigates agent-involved shootings. It also prompted changes in the way the FBI deploys the Hostage Rescue Team.
The Justice Department investigated as did the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information. Both found numerous problems with the FBI’s conduct during and after Ruby Ridge. The Senate committee cited a poorly executed search by the FBI for evidence, among other things.
“At least one important piece of evidence – a bullet – was removed and then replaced by FBI agents coordinating the search,” the committee found.
“Throughout the course of its many reports, the FBI accorded its own agents undue deference,” the report said. “Their stories were accepted at face value and were only rarely subject of probing inquiry.”
The committee urged public airings of government misconduct for accountability.
“If our government is to maintain – indeed, even deserve – the trust of the American people, it cannot fear or avoid the truth,” the committee said in its final report.”
Link here http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/03/oregon_standoff_fbi_lie_uncove.html
“The video shows two officers shooting him from behind in the back with pistols, which some do not eject shell casings.”
They don’t use revolvers anymore.
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