fbi.govPosted Feb 20, 2011, 7:08 PM UTC
Who watches the watchers?
In the case of local police, which is what the vast majority of Reddit complains about, the FBI. This post was about letting those people know about a possible remedy that they might have.
If you have a complaint about FBI misconduct, then this post will not help you. I would suggest starting with your local congressional representative.
My brother actually called the FBI about mortgage fraud from a Real Estate Buyer's Agent who was pushing those variable rate mortgages that helped fuel the mortgage Crisis. He literally delivered the guys head on a platter with the proof necessary to prosecute him for a felony.
They told him they didn't care, they wouldn't even prosecute with all the documents handed to them without any work on their part, just a call to a prosecutor. This was back in 2004.
Many of the mortgage brokers my brother knew talked openly of how long before all of the bad mortgages came calling, and whether they themselves would be charged for taking them, getting their commission and bundling it off. After watching the lack of any real prosecutions on Wall Street, except for Madoff who stole from the rich, well... Unless they are having a slow week, I doubt many complaints will be investigated.
We are talking about police misconduct here. That site is specifically about "color of law" offenses. If you look on the right hand side you can see what their top 4 issues are, this is one of them. Notice that fraud is not listed as one of their top issues, at least not on that site. Fraud is typically an issue for the state justice system, while for obvious reasons color of law abuses often cannot be handled inside of a state system.
What your brother experienced isn't really a good indication of how the FBI would treat a completely different issue. Did your brother ever contact a local DA? What happened when he did?
It was a Federal loan, which means a Federal case, which means he had to go to the FBI before their Federal Prosecutors would even touch it.
The FBI swoops in on high profile police cases, but I'm betting for most of the normal people, they aren't going to be doing much. Unless there is a nice headline involved.
Just wondering when the FBI will be investigating the Indy Police, for one example...
edit: I should also point out, that the FBI isn't big enough to deal with the level of police abuse we see occurring, which is why they will only target high profile cases. Just like they were too busy with terror cases to deal with the problems, like the one I pointed out, that eventually lead to the Great Recession.
What is needed is civilian review boards with the power to terminate police officers for cause, and with a special prosecutor who cannot be influenced by the politics of the area, perhaps Federal or from a different part of the State. As it stands even when there are civilian review boards, they aren't allowed to do anything, and are ignored. Nearly every internal police review board is just a joke, as I'm sure you understand.
Encounter at Fairpoint
I dunno. Coast Guard?
If this program is at all useful then ten bucks says the Republican's budget will cut its funding.
During 2009, the FBI investigated 385 color of law cases. Most of these crimes fall into five broad areas:
I saw more color of law cases on reddit during that time.
Actually you probably just saw the same five or six cases reposted 7 million times.
But it probably is true that in many cases of police misconduct, the victims feels they have nobody to turn to or don't know how to go about reporting the crime. Especially if the victim is actually guilty of a crime.
Thank you for this. Awesome to see people posting useful information instead of scare mongering or inciting people without a solution.
Blue Line of Silence?
I'd take "suspended with pay" seriously as well
The FBI is just as crooked and dangerous.
You have been warned.
Cops investigating cops, I'm sure this will work well.
So what are you supposed to do when it's FBI people involved in misconduct?
I went to that site but failed to resurrect those wrongly killed, so it doesn't really help.
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The FBI seems to be infinitely more interested in arresting hackers for DDos attacks than investigating local cops for beating and murdering their own citizens. Routinely, local police use FBI investigations as a cover to keep officers on paid leave until public outrage quiets and then they are reinstated because the FBI investigation (if they even bother) never turns up any "evidence," absent the dozens of videos plastered all over the internet of the incident.
I hope I am wrong, but fairly certain I am not.
Where is the list of adjudications?
Below I cited 4 different cases where they arrested officers. For 3/4 I found further information about the later conviction of the officer. The one remaining case involved over 100 in Puerto Rico, so it is hard to get a followup story.
Just be careful when posting LoLcats, they seem to be searching for their single owner.
Right... because if there is one institution Americans can trust to protect them.. It's the FBI.. cough..
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Here, here, here, here. If you still need more cases of the FBI taking misconduct seriously, just type "fbi arrests police officer" into Google.
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Oh right, the FBI publicly arrests them just to let them off. Since the federal conviction rate is about 95% arrests are pretty heavily correlated with all of the things that you listed.
Arrests != charged kiddo. Which the FBI does not do. They only arrest and gather evidence for federal prosecutors to bring charges if they want to. Prosecutors only bring charges when they have enough evidence to convict which is why the conviction rate is so high. But once again, arrests mean just about nothing.
True, arrest is not the same as conviction, but "fbi agent" is not the same as "prosecutor." Get your hatred straight, is it directed at cops or lawyers?
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The FBI isn't responsible for convicting or sentencing. What's your point?
Sorry: arrest is just the first step on a long path and is not a guarantee that the process will go to the next step ... let alone go all the way to the end.
Nice try, FBI.
OMGOMGOMG THE FBI IS SPYING ON REDDIT! hahahahahha j/p
thanks for trying to give a solution, not aggravate the problem hivemind-like
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