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 ...
and how are you so certain? Is Mr. Braga personally known to you? Did he sit at your kitchen table and pour his heart out about how horribly tragic this "accident" was and how sorry he is for the destruction and misery his incompetence has caused?
For some reason I doubt it.
Mr. Braga is not personally known to me either, so I cannot say with 100% certainty that the man did NOT express sincere sorrow and apologize for what happened. I only know that this story disappeared from the news so fast that there obviously were no charges filed and certainly no trial. Given the evidence, there should at least have been a charge of negligence.
Given the history of the FBI and the ATF, I feel completely justified in my opinion that Mr. Braga is an asshole and a cold blooded, jack booted thug until evidence is offered to prove otherwise. Even worse, the organization that protects officers of this caliber from prosecution is no better than the gangs on the streets which your friends try to apprehend. These are nothing but gang wars and the FBI / ATF are simply two more gangs of criminals with the power of the Federal Government behind them.
When they clean up their own mess and begin really respecting the rights of American citizens, then I'll reconsider. Until then, I'd rather associate with the more honest variety of criminal.
This is not meant to imply that there are no BATF agents who are good and honorable merely to state that it has yet to be shown they are more than a relatively insigificant minority of the BATF personnel.
However, Mr. Braga's tireless efforts in the hunt for the beltway sniper do not absolve the man of his acts that other day when an innocent young man was shot in the face during a badly bungled attempt at a felony stop.
I'm sure that every available LEO within a hundred miles "worked tirelessly for 14-16 hours a day" during that time period when the area was so terrorized by these random snipings.
In the end, I see nothing in the affidavit which indicates Mr. Braga should be awarded superhero status or that he shouldn't be held to task for his incompetence in that previous incident.
One more time, until you guys start cleaning up your own ranks, do not expect much respect from this side of the tracks.
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0103/26moose.html
Note the stretches with reality being taken to "make an exception" for Mr. Moose.
This is just plain sickening.
Look in the early 1990's for the date of the Towson, Md incident regarding BATF. It is not my duty to inform you of the facts of the matter as these are freely available with a little research on your part. If you really wish to find out what went on I suggest you check out the Congressional record and the whole big discussion about Wayne LaPierre refering to the ATF as Jack Booted thugs. These facts were current in the news media at the time. All I can conclude from the tone of your posts is you are too ignorant to check facts yourself before challenging others.
You are correct, I overstated back in reply 48. I should not have said ALL FBI SWAT and HRT, and BATFE SRT members are former members of military specops units.
I should have said MOST of them are. And I stand by that.
Factoid: 2/3s of the original FBI HRT selectees were SEALs. Out of some 100+ who tried out, about 20 of the 30 (my memory is old but close on numbers) whe passed and were selected were all 20 of the former SEALs who tried out.
But I am sure there are some trigger happy "pray for war" and "shoot the kid in the face" gung ho nutjobs who come straight to their JBT calling from civilian life.
It's just that more of them take the military route on their way in.
Like "shoot the kids in the face" Braga.
That sure sounds like a prima facia case of reckless endazngerment to me. further since agent Braga is obviously not either out of the area or not in a position where he no longer interacts with the public and from your implications not absolutely consumed by guilt for the injuries caused to this young man I would suggest that you might do well to reconsider your own view of the job.
Do you enforce all of Maryland's gun laws? Do you have any problem with doing so? Would you be willing to raid the house of an otherwise law abiding citizen to confiscate an "illegal handgun?"
When a law enforcement officer takes his or her oath they still swear to preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States od America do they not? How do you resolve the clear intent of the Second Ammendment preserving the Right to keep and bear arms with some of the laws of the state of Maryland that you are enforcing. Do you think about this?Do you participate in some of the gun owner harassment tactics the Maryland State Police have engaged in in the past? Do you think that ther state of Maryland has a right to have all citizens who are not in law enforcement disarmed? Does the State of Maryland have the right to make it a crime to own an AR-15? Would you arrest someone who possed an AR-15 merely for possessing it. Stipulated facts are as follows no other warrants, no criminal record but when asked did not turn it over for ballistic tests?
I am far more appalled that you do not know about the history of the Baltimore county raid since you are a law enforcement officer in the state of Maryland. As such you have a responsibility to know about past foul ups by law enforcement so you learn from the mistakes. Further, you should recognize that just because a shooting was ruled within policy and the officer not prosecuted it does not mean that it was a good operation.
Now you may think both I and Travis McGee are anti-police and absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. I think the best description would be very much pro-LEO but against those officers who think their job is crack down on trhe citizens. Being on the job requires a very great deal of a person and some people are not up to it.
You state you do not engage in selective enforcement. Yet I will posit that the failure to prosecute Agent Braga or by the FBI to seriously discipline him is a form of very selective non-enforcement based upon the admitted facts of the case and statements made by some very reliable witnesses including the paramedics responding and the time difference in contacting the paramedics.
As far as enforcement of Maryland's gun laws are concerned, if they are on the books I do enforce them as I have taken an oath to do so. I do not make the laws in Maryland but again, I work with what is given to me.
This is an interesting statement which could have been taken verbatim albiet in German from some of the war crimes trials in WWII. I do not support the arming of those convicted of felonies or those who are were deprived of their rights due to due process of law at the time of their conviction. I have a very real problem with laws passed after the fact of conviction which remove a person's civil rights. An example would be a person who pled guilty to some misdemeanor ten, twenty, or thrity years ago which carried no such suspension of civil rights at the time and now is retroactively deprived of civil rights.
I do apologise about questioning the oath you took as when I took it in the military and when I took it other times it always included the phrasing about the Constitution. Since you are merely sworn to uphold the legislative acts of the state of Maryland not the full law of the land I guess that a law making being a certain race, ethnicity, or creed a crime would be actively enforced by you based upon your statement. To give you a reference and get you thinking I note that Maryland in the past had segrated water fountains. Would you have arrested a black person for drinking from a whites only water fountain? I will give you the benefit of the doubt and presume no.
Would you arrest someone for stating an opinion critical of the Governor or legislature of the state of Maryland if such a law were on the books? If Maryland passed a law making a whole class of firearms illegal to possess would you enforce that law? How about if one of the people you were raiding were a former LEO who had done nothing except fail to turn in such a weapon that he had owned legally prior to enacting such a law.
The DC sniper case brought a whole lot of issues to the fore and there have been a number of problems with the FBI over the past years. among those issues are the FBI letting a person serve much jail time for a murder they knew he did not commit. I would suggest that you check the donut watch list for further information on police issues.
Regarding the BATF, the number of abuses which they have been engaged in over the years is too high to list in a simple response. Their behavior has been over the years extremely unprofessional and some of the FBI agents I know routinely refer to them as "F troop."
I really do not have the time today to get you a specific reference to the ATF raid in Towson. I can suggest that in a work of fiction it is one of the documentable facts in the book Unintended Consequences available at your local library. By getting the date and names there one can then virify the actual date and place of the incident by going to contemporaneous reports from newspaper archives. I am relying on memory and can not today get more specific in references.
These are not always easy questions and I do not claim to have all the answers but you response to me on this thread.
One point you should be aware of Travis McGee was on this forum long before his book was even the germ of an idea in his mind. Now as to the Black helicopter crowd bit. I live in CT in the test flight pattern of the Sikorsky factory. There certainly are "black helicopters" it is the way a person would normally see the infra red camoflage coating amny gornment helicopters are given. Nothing sinister there per se.
As to the simple fact that there are some politicians who would totally subvert the US Constitution, anyone who paid attention to what happens in Congress and the legislature of many East Coast states can clearly see that is a fact.
I am admittedly going to some extremes in my response because I am also a student of history and a nation does not go to an extremis overnight. Nazi Germany went from being the Weimar Republic with a series of incremental laws between 1932 and Crystal Night in 1938. Adolf Hitler came to power by Constitution means and changed the laws to stay in power. Many German police officers joined the Gestapo and enforced some of the most brutal laws because they were only following orders and they did not make the laws.
My concern is clearly that the US Constituition be enforced particularly against corrupt politicians. I do not mean to paint with a broad brush I mean to keep my comments focused on the issues.
You claim to be a LEO in MD. It is incumbent on you to know the history of major problems LEO's in MD have encountered over the past ten or twenty years.
This very selective non-enforcement is what is giving law enforcement agencies a bad reputation. It's bad enough that a few egotistical, arrogant and overzealous wannabes make their way into the ranks of law enforcement, it's worse when the trend toward militarizing domestic law enforcement seems to have moved into high gear, but it begins to reach intolerable when the organizations sworn to serve and protect seem to believe that it's only their fellow brothers that they are beholden to.
I fully understand that this is tough work and that there are a lot of very dangerous people out there to apprehend.
I fully understand that we desperatly need well trained officers who are not afraid to put their life on the line to keep the wheels of society from being over-run by the well armed sociopaths on the street. The need for well trained and well armed law enforcement does not, however, negate the need for those officers to also be ethical to the highest order, respectful of the law (ALL laws, not just those they choose to respect), and to remember who it really is they are sworn to protect and to serve.
The very fact that Agent Braga is still armed and on the beat is prima facie evidence that the F.B.I. considers this incident just another,.... well how did you phrase it? oh yeah, "...an unfortunate tragic event". Agent Braga should be facing criminal charges. His badge and his weapon should be locked away until a jury has cleared him of those criminal charges.
The civil case that you seem to think will bring justice will merely end in the payment of a large sum of money from our tax dollars to this victim of Mr. Braga's incompetence. A civil case will not bring justice or do anything to prevent this from happening again.
Cheers,
Lloyd
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