Question for LEOs on the board....
Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:51 pm
I have a question specifically for the LEOs who are members here. Also, if there are any attorneys with prosecutorial experience who would like to chime in, I would appreciate it. Others may feel free to comment as they are moved to do so, but I am specifically interested in the law enforcement perspective.....
A week ago or so, it was reported on a conservatively oriented news website that the BATF agents in charge of Fast & Furious were being promoted instead of perp-walked over to the federal courthouse for arraignment. FINALLY, a liberal media outlet, the L.A. Times, has seen fit to print the story: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... rack=icymi.
So, here is the question.... A) Is there some kind of legal gris-gris which gives law enforcement agencies the right to "lawfully" break the laws in the pursuit of some kind of case; B) are there any consequences mandated by law under which law enforement agents are punished for willfully allowing the subjects of their investigation to walk free with whatever benefit they gained in the transaction under observation?
There are two examples that come immediately to mind:
The first is that of a female officer dressing like a prostitute to solicit johns on a vice squad operation. The difference between that and what happened with Fast & Furious (F&F, for future reference), is that the female officers neither actually have sex with the marks, nor does money actually change hands. In other words, the female officer has not yet literally "broken the law" in the pursuit of making an arrest. She is pretending to break the law, but not actually breaking it.
In another example which comes to mind right off the top, undercover narcotics officers posing as dealers actually sell drugs to other lower level dealers, but then they make a bust pretty quickly, recovering the marked evidence in the dealers' hands before it can get out to the street market. So even though they have technically broken a law against the selling of narcotics—perhaps under some umbrella authority to do so as long as the results are good—nobody except the dealer is harmed by the transaction. Nobody gets killed. Nobody ODs. No momma has to bury their child.
But with F&F, BATF told gun sellers to go ahead and make sales which they were pretty sure were illegal, to people who they were pretty sure were not allowed to buy the guns and of whom they were pretty sure they were going to illegally transport those guns out of the country; and then they deliberately failed to intercept those guns before they crossed the border, actually hoping that they would turn up illegally in Mexico in the hands of the cartels. In addition to officer Brian Terry who was murdered by bad guys in the possession of at least one of these illegally sold/illegally purchased guns, how many innocent Mexican citizens were killed by cartel members with these guns? How many Mexican police officers and local political figures were killed by cartel members with these guns—all so some criminally ambitious BATF directors could climb up their career ladders on the backs of those dead?
How is it that these criminals in management at BATF are being promoted instead of being charged with accessory to murder?
Are they legally protected, meaning because the law permits them to break the law; or are they illegally protected because there are no legal consequences for breaking the law if you're under the president's and AG's protection?
I ask, because what the BATF did was analogous to a female officer disguised as a prostitute actually having intercourse with a john, pocketing the money, and then letting the john walk free.......or a narcotics officer selling a kilo of heroin to a dealer and then trying to track it to the bloodstream of a kid dead in an alley of an overdose, just so they can prove a connection between the heroin they sold, and the harm it does on the street, the dead kid be darned.
I just want to pimp-slap them into the next century. But instead of going to prison, these bloated little dictators are being promoted to positions of increased responsibility, closer to the seats of power. Lord, we badly need a new president.
Anyway, I know that my frustration with the whole thing is transparent, but I would still be very interested to hear what the legal principles at play might be, under which an LEO is allowed to engage in criminal behavior without having to produce results, and under which innocent people get killed, as justification for the program's existence.
I'm really struggling with this one.....
A week ago or so, it was reported on a conservatively oriented news website that the BATF agents in charge of Fast & Furious were being promoted instead of perp-walked over to the federal courthouse for arraignment. FINALLY, a liberal media outlet, the L.A. Times, has seen fit to print the story: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... rack=icymi.
So, here is the question.... A) Is there some kind of legal gris-gris which gives law enforcement agencies the right to "lawfully" break the laws in the pursuit of some kind of case; B) are there any consequences mandated by law under which law enforement agents are punished for willfully allowing the subjects of their investigation to walk free with whatever benefit they gained in the transaction under observation?
There are two examples that come immediately to mind:
The first is that of a female officer dressing like a prostitute to solicit johns on a vice squad operation. The difference between that and what happened with Fast & Furious (F&F, for future reference), is that the female officers neither actually have sex with the marks, nor does money actually change hands. In other words, the female officer has not yet literally "broken the law" in the pursuit of making an arrest. She is pretending to break the law, but not actually breaking it.
In another example which comes to mind right off the top, undercover narcotics officers posing as dealers actually sell drugs to other lower level dealers, but then they make a bust pretty quickly, recovering the marked evidence in the dealers' hands before it can get out to the street market. So even though they have technically broken a law against the selling of narcotics—perhaps under some umbrella authority to do so as long as the results are good—nobody except the dealer is harmed by the transaction. Nobody gets killed. Nobody ODs. No momma has to bury their child.
But with F&F, BATF told gun sellers to go ahead and make sales which they were pretty sure were illegal, to people who they were pretty sure were not allowed to buy the guns and of whom they were pretty sure they were going to illegally transport those guns out of the country; and then they deliberately failed to intercept those guns before they crossed the border, actually hoping that they would turn up illegally in Mexico in the hands of the cartels. In addition to officer Brian Terry who was murdered by bad guys in the possession of at least one of these illegally sold/illegally purchased guns, how many innocent Mexican citizens were killed by cartel members with these guns? How many Mexican police officers and local political figures were killed by cartel members with these guns—all so some criminally ambitious BATF directors could climb up their career ladders on the backs of those dead?
How is it that these criminals in management at BATF are being promoted instead of being charged with accessory to murder?
Are they legally protected, meaning because the law permits them to break the law; or are they illegally protected because there are no legal consequences for breaking the law if you're under the president's and AG's protection?
I ask, because what the BATF did was analogous to a female officer disguised as a prostitute actually having intercourse with a john, pocketing the money, and then letting the john walk free.......or a narcotics officer selling a kilo of heroin to a dealer and then trying to track it to the bloodstream of a kid dead in an alley of an overdose, just so they can prove a connection between the heroin they sold, and the harm it does on the street, the dead kid be darned.
I just want to pimp-slap them into the next century. But instead of going to prison, these bloated little dictators are being promoted to positions of increased responsibility, closer to the seats of power. Lord, we badly need a new president.
Anyway, I know that my frustration with the whole thing is transparent, but I would still be very interested to hear what the legal principles at play might be, under which an LEO is allowed to engage in criminal behavior without having to produce results, and under which innocent people get killed, as justification for the program's existence.
I'm really struggling with this one.....
