Border officials clear border agents in four deadly-force cases
The U.S. Border Patrol has a long history of excessive use of force and accompanying controversy. Most recently, Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times reports that border officials for the first time have publicly released the conclusions of internal investigations of agents who opened fire while on duty, ruling that officers had acted properly in four shootings.
The reviews were conducted by an internal panel that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service set up to address a troubling pattern of agents’ use of deadly force, according to a summary of the reviews published online Thursday. Fourteen other shootings are still being investigated.
The Border Patrol has more than doubled in size in the past decade, growing to more than 21,000 agents. With that expansion, the level of experience of agents in the field has declined, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.
For more than two years, Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske has been under pressure to reform the agency, which has been plagued by problematic lethal shootings and a lack of accountability. Last week, Kerlikowske named a senior FBI official, Mark Morgan, to head the Border Patrol, the first outsider to lead the force in its 92-year history.
KJ