I’ve covered many of the bad things about the FBI (Faithless, Brutal, Incompetent).

But the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) is almost as bad, with the “almost” applied only because they’re smaller than the FBI and thus less able to damage the lives of ordinary Americans. But the ethical and moral corruption may actually be worse:

ATF agents cut off the electricity to Bryan Malinowski’s Little Rock home before executing their search warrant March 19. None of the agents wore body cameras, and they covered Malinowski’s doorbell camera with tape to hide their actions.

Fifty-seven seconds after kicking down the front door, Malinowski was fatally shot in the head. His wife, Maer Malinowski, was pulled out of her home wearing only bedclothes and forced into the back of a squad car, where she was held against her will for four hours in 34-degree weather, despite her frequent pleas to check on her dying husband. 

Malinowski had no criminal record and had not even been arrested. A judge granted the ATF a search warrant because they thought he was a gun trader.

That excerpt is from an article about the head of the ATF, Steven Dettelbach, testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, although “testify” is the usual joke with these people as – like his FBI counterpart, Wray – Dettelbach danced around this case by claiming he can’t say anything since it’s still under investigation.

It comes across more like a Mafia hit than what Police are supposed to do. The Committee members, including at least one former sheriff, had some blunt questions for Dettelbach:

How many firearms does someone have to sell to be engaged in the business of firearms?

The answer is none, which means you have no idea if selling one gun makes you a trader while the ATF can treat it as a judgement issue.

Executing search warrants at pre-dawn hours, how does that mitigate risk?

It mitigates the risk to the police, just like it did to the Gestapo, NKVD, Stasi and every other such group. As another Congressman said:

It would have been reasonable to arrest him at work. If you’d done that, he’d be alive today.

Sure, but it would not have been as cool and exciting for the ATF agents. The same Congressman also made the following point:

“If some group of 10 carloads of people showed up and kicked in the door in the dark of night, we would be talking about a planned murder of somebody who had every right to have a weapon in their home, an expectation of a weapon in their home, and an expectation they may use it. Mr. Malinowski was killed doing what any normal citizen does when people enter their home during the dark of night, and they don’t know who they are. I believe he had a very real belief he was defending his wife and family, and you killed him. Those are the facts.

Dettelbach apologised to Malinowski’s wife, who was attending – but only after being invited to do so by the committee. There’s no report of her reaction but if it had been me I’d have taken the opportunity to tell him to his fat face that the apology would not be accepted until justice was done to him and his fascist goons.

The ATF is yet another US Federal Police agency that’s outlived whatever use it may have had and should be defunded, and dismantled, with its functions rolled into another agency, those functions being merely investigative, allowing State or local Police to do the enforcement, since they at least can be held somewhat accountable to the people they protect.