Pubdate: Thu, 09 Aug 2012
Source: Daily Inter Lake, The (MT)
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Inter Lake
Contact:  http://www.dailyinterlake.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2501

FEDS NEED TO KNOW THEIR LIMITS

While it is just a story from a town in Texas, it is a story that 
deserves wide attention because it involves outrageous overreach by a 
federal law enforcement agency.

The story concerns Craig Patty, the owner of a small trucking company 
who found out that the Drug Enforcement Agency was secretly paying 
one of his drivers to use one of his trucks to transport large 
quantities of marijuana as part of a string operation - all without 
Patty's knowledge.

And he found out about it only after the truck was ambushed and shot 
up by gangsters aiming to hijack the truck and its valuable load. His 
driver died after being shot eight times.

Not only that, Patty thought his truck was in Houston for repairs at 
the time of the shooting, but a GPS system on the truck indicated 
that the driver took a 1,000-mile detour from the route he was 
supposed to travel, presumably at the direction of the DEA.

This is wrong on so many levels. The government commandeering a 
private company's employee and $90,000 truck to do government 
business without the owner's knowledge is bad enough. But to do so in 
a dangerous law enforcement action, risking the employee and property 
is beyond the pale. What if the hijackers had succeeded in stealing 
the truck? Most likely there would be an "oh well" and a lot of 
shoulder shrugging on the part of the DEA and Patty wouldn't have a 
clue what happened to the truck or his driver.

But fortunately - plenty of sarcasm here - the truck was only riddled 
with bullets to a point where it was rendered inoperable. Patty had 
to dip into his retirement fund to cover more than $130,000 in 
repairs and the truck was out of operation for 100 days, putting his 
business at risk of failure. Now he is seeking compensation for the 
repairs plus $1.3 million for damages to himself and his family, who 
fear retaliation from a drug cartel because of his unwitting 
involvement in a fiasco that was essentially created by our federal 
government. The process of tangling with the DEA in court may very 
well be another long chapter in Patty's story, unless the agency does 
the right thing and provides prompt compensation.

Most Americans like to think there are honorable people in the 
government doing good work, and there certainly are. They don't want 
to think they can be affected by rogue agencies, officials or 
operations. That's probably what Patty used to think.

But these things do happen. Operation Fast and Furious managed to 
walk thousands of guns, untracked, into Mexico where they were 
involved in dozens of murders, including the murder of a U.S. Border 
Patrol agent.

Then there was the General Services Administration scandal, which 
didn't cost lives, but did cost a lot of taxpayer money so that 
bureaucrats could have extravagant parties.

The public should be outraged whenever these things happen. And when 
they do, some form of congressional restraint may be in order. Just 
this week, Sen. Jon Tester announced that the Department of Justice 
has created a position to protect whistleblowers within the 
department as a direct response to the Fast and Furious scandal.

Hopefully this move will encourage people to step forward to report 
wrongdoing, particularly the obnoxiously offensive kinds like the 
drug running boondoggle that happened in Texas.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom