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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGuats,' 'Tonks' and 'Subhuman Shit': The Shocking Texts of a Border Patrol Agent
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/matthew-bowen-border-patrol-trial-847878/How an Arizona officer accused of hitting a migrant with his truck could put his agencys toxic culture on trial
Two weeks later, on December 3rd, 2017, Bowen was on patrol near Nogales, Arizona, when he spotted a suspected unauthorized border crosser. Identified as Antolin Rolando Lopez-Aguilar in a federal affidavit, the man had been hiding but took off running back toward the Nogales point of entry, in an apparent effort to avoid apprehension, the affidavit states.
Instead of pursuing Lopez-Aguilar on foot, Bowen chased after him in his federal vehicle, known as a Kilo Unit in Border Patrol lingo. As caught on camera, Bowen maneuvered the front grille of the truck directly behind Lopez-Aguilar, according to the affidavit. With the F-150 bearing down on him, Lopez-Aguilar reached back to push off of the hood before Bowen accelerated the Kilo Unit directly into the back of Lopez-Aguilars body, knocking Lopez-Aguilar to the ground, the document states. The Fords tires came to a full stop within inches of running Lopez-Aguilar over where he lay on the ground.
. . .
Bowens trial is due to begin in August. But the case is already shining a spotlight on a troubled culture at Border Patrol, the law enforcement arm of Customs and Border Protection, at a moment when both agencies have been grappling with a surge in migrants, and faced allegations of widespread wrongdoing, ranging from physical and sexual abuse of minors to housing migrants in substandard shelters, including one likened to a human dog pound.
The text exchanges between Bowen and fellow agents entered into the court record by the defense, which seeks to exclude them at trial suggest a work environment in which demeaning epithets, ranging from guat to fucking beaners, are common, and in which violence against undocumented border crossers is treated as a joke.
Throughout the texts, illegal border crossers are referred to as tonks. A federal court case from 2004, which also centered on accusations of excessive force by the Border Patrol, includes an agents definition of tonk as the sound heard when a wetback is hit over the head with a flashlight.
https://www.scribd.com/document/413294879/BowenTextsExhibit
hurple
(1,306 posts)Of course, when he's found guilty and locked away, he'll spend all that time stewing over how society screwed him over
tblue37
(65,269 posts)MineralMan
(146,282 posts)It's like those cops in Phoenix. Despite knowing that they were being captured on video, they continued to display their racism and ugly violent natures. They feel invincible. They believe nothing will happen to them.
So, it's not surprising that border patrol cops have contempt for border crossers. They think nothing will happen them if they display their prejudices and act out with violence. So, they text each other with it, never thinking their garbage will be exposed.
Response to MineralMan (Reply #3)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
PatSeg
(47,354 posts)In this day and age, people are still stupid enough to put compromising information in texts, emails, and on social media, like no one will ever notice. Then they are shocked when it comes back to bite them in the ass.
onetexan
(13,033 posts)Sadly these are the types that the racist Idiot has enabled.
PatSeg
(47,354 posts)I am often shocked at intelligent, well educated people who send photos and damning texts on their phones, as if no one will ever see them.
Docreed2003
(16,855 posts)This is disgusting and that agency should be purged of all of these types. Instead, they are being enabled by a racist, asshole "President"
grantcart
(53,061 posts)Prosecution by federal prosecutors after an internal affairs by HSI investigators against the Agent.
Not meant to undermine your comment about Trump undermining professional standards.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,309 posts)It wouldn't surprise me if federal prosecutors suddenly withdrew.
Faux pas
(14,657 posts)kimbutgar
(21,103 posts)A man of Hispanic origin peered into our car. I gave him an angry look. I hate this administrations policies.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,315 posts)dalton99a
(81,426 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,852 posts)The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics
by Edwin Black
Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," from which the following article is drawn.
Excerpt...
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
Continues...
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
Response to Kid Berwyn (Reply #9)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
Locrian
(4,522 posts)I certainly didn't get that from the poster you responded to.
It would seem the info is relevant since the boarder patrol crap is genuine USA made hate and worthy of Nazi comparisons.
LuvNewcastle
(16,843 posts)Hitler writes how he admires eugenicists in America. He got some of his policies from observations he had made from studying racial laws in the South. The Nazis would have committed atrocities without any help from others, certainly, but there were some Americans who were big influences on the Nazis. It's an historical fact.
paleotn
(17,902 posts)see my response below. Hatred didn't spring from the rocks and trees of North America and infect Wiemar Germany. German anti semitism has a long, dark history that predates America by a millennium. Haters using each other as an excuse to hate doesn't let any haters off the hook for their own actions.
malaise
(268,846 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,852 posts)And I am a longtime DUer. Never been banned, too.
h2ebits
(642 posts)Didn't one of Trump's wives say that Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table and read it religiously? Is this what Trump and Stephen Miller are attempting to do today?
paleotn
(17,902 posts)Violent anti semitism, among other cultural and racial biases, has been alive and well in Europe for centuries. We inherited our hatreds and propensity to hate from our mother countries.
Kid Berwyn
(14,852 posts)Have you read how one honored physician treated patients in Puerto Rico?
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-horrifying-letter-in-which-a-scientist-confessed-1507897479
And some people wonder where Trump gets his ideas.
paleotn
(17,902 posts)It comes in many guises from the same well. None better or worse than the others.
Kid Berwyn
(14,852 posts)At first glance it seems strange that the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe. It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you. And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe.
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
malaise
(268,846 posts)pillars of civilization
LuvNewcastle
(16,843 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,078 posts)I hope they throw the book at this POS.
lambchopp59
(2,809 posts)I worked for an ambulance service in So. Cal many decades ago with several "wannabee cops" I've long lost touch with. I know one of them was accepted to some police academy when I left the service for college.
I was called some names behind my back because I could only shake my head at their racist rants, this sounds like just the Nazified sort of shit they'd bellow.
MagickMuffin
(15,933 posts)All of these messages need SUNLIGHT in the Court of LAW not hidden in the darkness where these lost souls dwell!!!