QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Report: Drug agents lied, destroyed evidence

A federal report released today on the shooting of a suspected drug smuggler by Border Patrol agents concurs with prosecutors that the men committed obstruction of justice by failing to report the shooting, destroying evidence and lying to investigators.

Conservative members of Congress have criticized the case against the former agents, who were fired after their convictions, saying the men were doing their job when they injured Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila in 2005 near El Paso.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security report on the investigation was drafted in 2006 after Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were convicted and each was sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison. The 77-page report was made public today and offered few if any new details on the case.

Click here for the rest.

Well, these now incarcerated DEA agents may very well have been doing their jobs, but if they obstructed justice it sure seems that they didn't think so. At any rate, it's good that they were busted for it. You know, this whole GOP outcry about the case just reeks of the typical right-wing pro-cop point of view. That is, I agree that we need police myself, but that doesn't mean they should always get the benefit of the doubt, especially when there is evidence of foul play. In other words, this "scandal" is totally bogus, and probably spurred on by the extreme anti-immigrant attitudes that have captured so many Republican minds lately.

One last thought: one of these guys is the inmate who was attacked a few days ago when fellow prisoners discovered that he was a cop; that this was allowed to happen is wrong, too, and just another example of how our prisons are heinous, fucked up places that do nothing more than galvanize pre-existing anti-social attitudes among the incarcerated. As much as I hate cops abusing power, this guy needs better security.

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