{"id":177708,"date":"2019-07-05T19:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/05\/speaking-of-law-enforcement-misconduct\/"},"modified":"2019-07-05T19:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T00:08:00","slug":"speaking-of-law-enforcement-misconduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/05\/speaking-of-law-enforcement-misconduct\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Law Enforcement Misconduct"},"content":{"rendered":"
You’ve probably read about a secret racist Facebook group that almost half of the members of CBP belonged to.<\/div>\n

They did things like posting bigoted memes and jokes about shooting immigrants.<\/p>\n

It was a blockbuster when ProPublica<\/i> revealed this a week ago, and management was shocked, and promised a thorough investigation.<\/p>\n

Well, in news that surprise no one,  Customs and Border Protection knew about this for years, and never did anything about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When you consider the scope of the Facebook group, particularly when juxtaposed to the gratuitous brutality of the organization, this is not a surprise:<\/p>\n

Customs and Border Protection officials have been aware for up to three years that a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents was posting offensive messages \u2014 far longer than previously reported. <\/p>\n

Border Patrol leadership knew about photos posted to the group as far back as 2016, when agents reported them, according to a current Homeland Security official. The images \u2014 several of which were provided to POLITICO \u2014 show agents engaging in conduct that includes simulating sex acts and taking selfies while defecating. A former DHS official said he was aware of the Facebook group during the past year. <\/p>\n

Neither official knew of any serious punishment ever leveled at members of the Facebook group. <\/p>\n

ProPublica reported<\/a> Monday that comments in the \u201cI\u2019m 10-15\u201d Facebook group posted as recently as last week mocked the death of a 16-year-old detained Guatemalan migrant, made bigoted remarks about throwing a burrito at two Latina congresswomen, and posted obscene and misogynistic illustrations of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The group\u2019s name refers to the code used to signal \u201caliens in custody.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

But screen shots provided to POLITICO and interviews with the two DHS officials indicate that the agency wasn’t blindsided by ProPublica\u2019s report. Staffers in CBP\u2019s public affairs office monitored the Facebook group over the past year \u201cas a source of intelligence\u201d to see \u201cwhat people are talking about,\u201d according to the former DHS official. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were not talking about \u201810-15\u2019 as a liability or an asset or as an item of concern,\u201d the former official said.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The DHS inspector general\u2019s office \u2014 the department\u2019s internal watchdog \u2014 has launched an investigation into the recent Facebook posts, officials said Tuesday. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>Nearly half of DHS was in this group.<\/p>\n

Anyone who was in this group should have their clearances pulled until it can be shown that there has been no wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve probably read about a secret racist Facebook group that almost half of the members of CBP belonged to. They did things like posting bigoted memes and jokes about shooting immigrants. It was a blockbuster when ProPublica revealed this a week ago, and management was shocked, and promised a thorough investigation. Well, in news that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[469,368,364,438,526,374],"class_list":["post-177708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bureaucracy","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-immigration","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}