A firefight in which Border Patrol agents were firing bean bags at drug traffickers using weapons from Operation Fast and Furious
Thanks to newly-released court documents, we now have an account from Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's fellow agents of the firefight in the Arizona desert that took Terry's life. The mainstream news media will surely ignore it, but this story should never be allowed to die.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/05/new-court-documents-reveal-final-moments-border-agent-brian-terrys-life/
"Among other details, they reveal two of four federal agents at the scene that day actually fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a violent drug gang carrying assault rifles. Weapons from the botched anti-gun trafficking program were found at Terry's murder scene."
Bean bags.
"Those agents, members of BORTAC, an elite unit within the Border Patrol, had deployed in the desert to locate a drug gang, known as a rip crew, that had terrorized the Nogales, Ariz., area for months."
Dear Reader. In law enforcement talk, the word, "rip" is one of the most frightening terms in our jargon. It means a "rip-off". In DEA undercover work, a rip-off was when the undercover agent becomes the victim of a robbery, in which the seller of the drugs would rob and kill the purported buyer rather than make a drug for money exchange. There have been several undercover DEA agents who have been killed in these rip-offs over the years. So when I hear that the target of Agent Terry's group was a "rip crew", the immediate question in my mind is....
What the Hell is this talk about using bean bags??
What kind of sick mentality is it in Washington that sends agents like Brian Terry off to fight violent drug gangs on the border with bean bags??
And to this day, the Justice Department under that crook Eric Holder is withholding thousands of documents requested by the Congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious. Those documents have now been put under the protection of President Obama with his claim of executive privilege. Richard Nixon would be proud because unlike him, Obama is getting away with it.
Has anybody ever asked Janet Napolitano (now the president of the University of California and heading the US delegation to the Winter Olympics) why she allowed her Border Patrol agents to fight drug traffickers on the border with bean bags? No. I asked her when she spoke at UCLA a couple of years back why she wasn't pounding on Eric Holder's desk demanding to know why one or even two of her agents were dead because of Fast and Furious. Answer? She preferred to allow the "investigation" to play out. Well, it seems it has "played out", just as Holder, Obama and Napolitano wanted. Nobody has ever been held accountable for one of the most boneheaded ventures in the history of law enforcement, one that has resulted in the deaths of one, possibly two US agents and hundreds of Mexicans.
Bean bags.
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5 comments:
The decision to use bean bags sounds like a tactical one, not a policy decision from Washington. Ask the officer in charge of the operation and his immediate superior why they were using bean bags.
Tactical? Tactical? Since when is using bean bags again st automatic weapons a tactical decision? I would say it was a political decision. And political decisions are made in Washington not in Arizona.
What's political about it? We all agree its stupid, but choice of weapons on a specific operation is tactical.
Siarlys,
I spent 27 years in law enforcement, military police, Customs and DEA. I never heard of using bean bags. I never heard of bad guys using bean bags. I haven't seen a bean bag since I was in the 3rd grade.
You haven't been reading recent court cases about the use of force by police. The "bean bag" is actually a cloth bag filled with metal pellets that is fired from a gun designed for that purpose, when law enforcement officers desire to knock a person to the ground without actually putting a bullet into their internal organs. It is, by all accounts, painful, can fracture bones, and is a part of the modern law enforcement arsenal.
I would not choose to rely on one when up against guys armed with automatic weapons (firing bullets) who had a record of shooting at enforcement teams in the past. I would use bullets. But that doesn't mean someone in Washington had an original thought about throwing children's toys at armed drug gangs.
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