WASHINGTON — After being interrogated for four and a half hours, a 27-year-old Chechen man who had just admitted to committing a grisly triple homicide in 2011 with the help of one of the Boston Marathon bombers was starting to show signs of anxiety.
As the Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, began to write his confession to the murders, an F.B.I. agent and a Massachusetts State Police detective in his apartment with him glanced away for a second, and Mr. Todashev picked up a table and threw it at the F.B.I. agent, lacerating the back of his head. Mr. Todashev then dashed into his kitchen and could be heard rummaging through the drawers.
Regaining his footing, the agent drew his gun as Mr. Todashev, holding a pole over his head, ran at the detective as if trying to impale him.
The agent fired at Mr. Todashev several times, knocking him down. Despite being shot, he tried to regain his footing and again lunged at the detective.
The agent fired at Mr. Todashev several more times, fatally wounding him.
The description of the shooting in Orlando, Fla., was included in more than a hundred pages of documents released on Tuesday by local investigators in Florida and federal officials in Washington who were looking into whether the F.B.I. agent should be charged with killing Mr. Todashev.
After an autopsy, forensic tests and dozens of interviews, the investigators in Florida and Washington ultimately came to the same conclusion: The agent had followed the Justice Department’s guidelines that say agents can fire their weapons if they believe they or someone else is under the threat of violence.
The Florida prosecutor, State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton, said in a letter to James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, that the agent had not shown any evidence of “intentional misconduct or acted with any degree of malice.”
Senior F.B.I. officials had been eager for the report in Florida to be released because it was by investigators outside the Justice Department.
The F.B.I. and the Justice Department have been criticized by civil libertarian and rights groups who believe that the federal authorities, who rarely have another investigative body look at their inquiries into shootings, were too quick to clear their own agents.
The New York Times reported last year that F.B.I. agents fatally shot 70 “subjects” and wounded about 80 others from 1993 to early 2011, and that in every case, the agent’s use of force was deemed justified.
Tuesday’s reports about what occurred in Orlando, after the Boston Marathon bombing, were different from the initial accounts provided by the F.B.I. In the aftermath of the shooting, federal law enforcement officials said Mr. Todashev ran at the F.B.I. agent after he knocked him to the ground.
The F.B.I. agent, who was based in Boston and was not identified in the reports, went to Florida in May with two Massachusetts State Police detectives to interview Mr. Todashev as part of the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (The authorities have uncovered no evidence tying Mr. Todashev to the bombing last April, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.)
While the investigators in Florida and the Justice Department cleared the agent, a joint panel of F.B.I. and Justice Department officials will continue to study the shooting to determine whether lessons can be learned from it.

pacino wrote:women have a role in the contraception case before the Supreme Court? YEAH RIGHT

And contrary to Justice Antonin Scalia’s dismissive suggestion that cost isn’t a factor (“That’s not terribly expensive stuff, is it?” he said at one point) the four methods at issue in the Hobby Lobby cases, such as IUDs, are among the most effective — and expensive.

The Nightman Cometh wrote:Nate Silver just posted a good article about why Hillary has a good outlook for November 2016.

I know some democrats really dislike her, but the alternative is nonsense like Paul or another Bush. Get on the Hillary train.

Bucky wrote:the intelligence, education, and psychological bars are extremely high for FBI agents, so I don't have much of a problem believing those clearances.

pacino wrote:there was also a mass state trooper there, fwiw

SK790 wrote:

Werthless wrote:

pacino wrote:i said they are being worked on, such as offering birth control with insurance so women have control of their cycles, their bodies and lives. paid sick leave, equal pay discrimination laws, and so on. things that will actually help people's daily lives and put them in a place to be able to get more money and be able to educate their children. but, birth control appears to be some big issue now after it used to be a settled matter. people don't appear to get that it isn't aborting anything. paid sick leave has somehow been spun into a burden on business owners when they would have less turnover if they had it. equal pay only makes sense.

1. such as offering birth control with insurance so women have control of their cycles, their bodies and lives
2. paid sick leave
3. equal pay discrimination laws

Putting aside that 1 and 3 are already the law of the land, what solution do you think these policies would bring? I'm guessing an increase in out-of-wedlock children among low-income people.

how the heck do you come to the conclusion that more out-of-wedlock children are going to be born because of these 3 things.

TenuredVulture wrote:Neither child custody nor equal pay laws do much for poor and uneducated women. Again, I would place much of the cause on all this on high levels of incarceration and the absence of entry level jobs that pay enough to support a family. Those two factors alone have made things much worse for all. I think you overestimate the availability of birth control to low income people--first of course, the effective use of birth control requires education. Second, many forms require access to a physician or other health care professional. Finally, there's a cost involved. And the rhetoric surrounding birth control and the ACA, on top of "legitimate rape" type comments that are common lead to world where there are substantial obstacles to effective birth control.

swishnicholson wrote:

Bucky wrote:the intelligence, education, and psychological bars are extremely high for FBI agents, so I don't have much of a problem believing those clearances.

I find this case literally physically sickening. I think they tortured him until he snapped and found an excuse to execute him. Not that he was a good guy in any way, but this really does give me a lot of pause about the abuse of authority. None of us know what happened (nor will we, given the absence of a trial if even that would have helped) so it's all conjecture, but that's definitely my visceral reaction. And sadly I don't see it as that far a stretch from the FBI agents I've known-not that they would murder a guy like this, I think we're talking about a couple of bad apples, just that it's not such a leap from the profile.

pacino wrote:i don't view single mothers as a problem in need of a solution

Werthless wrote:

pacino wrote:i don't view single mothers as a problem in need of a solution

Are you concerned at all with the worse life outcomes, on average, of children raised by a single parent?

Werthless wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Neither child custody nor equal pay laws do much for poor and uneducated women. Again, I would place much of the cause on all this on high levels of incarceration and the absence of entry level jobs that pay enough to support a family. Those two factors alone have made things much worse for all. I think you overestimate the availability of birth control to low income people--first of course, the effective use of birth control requires education. Second, many forms require access to a physician or other health care professional. Finally, there's a cost involved. And the rhetoric surrounding birth control and the ACA, on top of "legitimate rape" type comments that are common lead to world where there are substantial obstacles to effective birth control.

How does an absence of entry level jobs that pay well increase the proportion of single-parent kids?

(Also, if "the absence of entry level jobs that pay well" is the problem, then good luck with the solution. You're probably not going to earn $30k/year without marketable skills or education, unless the government distorts the labor market in a major way, creating many other problems.)

pacino wrote:

Werthless wrote:

pacino wrote:i don't view single mothers as a problem in need of a solution

Are you concerned at all with the worse life outcomes, on average, of children raised by a single parent?

Werthless wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:

Bucky wrote:the intelligence, education, and psychological bars are extremely high for FBI agents, so I don't have much of a problem believing those clearances.

I find this case literally physically sickening. I think they tortured him until he snapped and found an excuse to execute him. Not that he was a good guy in any way, but this really does give me a lot of pause about the abuse of authority. None of us know what happened (nor will we, given the absence of a trial if even that would have helped) so it's all conjecture, but that's definitely my visceral reaction. And sadly I don't see it as that far a stretch from the FBI agents I've known-not that they would murder a guy like this, I think we're talking about a couple of bad apples, just that it's not such a leap from the profile.

I have no idea what happened. This case is just reason number 56382 that recorded interactions with the police/FBI are so important. They both protect us and they protect the officers that may be unjustly accused of misbehavior.