First, we’ll warm up with the FBI. Then, we’ll single out a couple of recent disciplinary cases from ICE. From the Telegraph (UK):
One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress’s house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent “drunk and uncooperative” and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.
A woman e-mailed a “nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend’s wife” and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.
But the sexually explicit picture was only one of what FBI assistant director Candice Will described to CNN as a “rash of sexting cases”. The network was the first to obtain the logs.
Two other employees, whose genders were not specified, sent sexually explicit messages to fellow members of the Bureau, one a work Blackberry during office hours.
The second employee included a nude photograph which “created office gossip and negatively impacted office operations”.
via FBI agents caught sexting and dating drug dealers – Telegraph.
OK, but when ICE screws up, they really screw up. Here’s a couple from the Naughty Boys and Girls roundup that they send out to the troops now and again:
Misuse of Official Passport; Lost Credentials, Badge and Cell Phone: An employee used a government-issued passport for a personal vacation after being denied permission by their supervisor. The employee subsequently lost their government-issued credentials, badge and cell phone while on vacation. In aggravation, the employee used poor judgment by disobeying a supervisor, bringing government-issued equipment on vacation, and failing to safeguard the equipment. PENALTY: 14-day suspension. OFFENSE: Lost Credentials and Badge.
Lost Firearm: An employee placed their service-issued firearm on the roof of a government owned vehicle (GOV) and drove away forgetting about the firearm. After a brief search, the employee was unable to locate the firearm. In aggravation, the employee is a law enforcement officer and held to a higher standard of conduct. The employee demonstrated complacency with respect to accounting for a service-issued firearm and the incident created a safety hazard that could have serious repercussions for the community and agency. PENALTY: 5-day suspension. OFFENSE: Loss of Government Property (Firearm).
And then there was this guy:
Thirty-nine year old loser Vincent Diantonio called the police around 10:50 to complain of a foul odor that was coming from a business nearby. This business apparently stockpiles animal fat/grease and Mr. Diantonio did not like it. Instead of closing his windows or going somewhere else, Mr Diantonio decided to do what ever rational thinking adult would do: he lit the 55-gallon drums of animal fat/grease on fire!
But wait…there’s more!
Diantonio (who goes by the nickname of “Boy Genius”) decides to call back the police forty minutes later to complain about the smell except this time he’s riding a tractor. Officers then notice beer cans, butane lighters, and smoke. As it would turn out, Diantonio was extremely drunk and decided he was going to set the animal fat on fire. Now he’s in jail for arson. Worst drinking story, ever.
Yes, he was a special agent in ICE’s Philadelphia office. A first-year, probationary SA. So he’s gone, right? Errr…. We should say, is a special agent because when the Reaper came for his career, he threw the “I can’t he’p mysseff, I gots a problem” card and checked into a drying-out academy, then bugged out to active duty (the assclown is a warrant officer in the Marine Reserves…) and the combination has tied the ICE personnel system in knots (not hard to do, it’s not like the agency’s best gravitate to HR). It gets better, though: this was his second disciplinary rodeo in a few short months with the agency. He also totaled a G-ride (a brand new one!) and he had so many different stories about the single-car accident — which was never reported to local LE — that his supervisors finally figured out that he must have been so drunk at the time that he doesn’t remember the accident at all. By that time, there was no way for them to discipline him without looking bad, themselves, so they let the totaled-Charger incident blow over.
Since the FBI was firing all those people for sexting and stuff, surely that’ what the ICE did to the careless badge losers and gun scatterers, right? Er, no. Look at the excerpts again. The agent that lost the credentials got a fourteen day suspension. The agent that lost his sidearm got seven days.
Obviously, if you’re going to be a crummy agent, the consequences for your crumminess are a lot less, well, consequential in ICE than down the hall at FBI.
You might ask, why no discipline information from BATFE? Well, once an ATF agent gets to the supervisor level, he never gets disciplined. They can do all this stuff that the FBI SA gets the sack for, and that even ICE gets suspended for, and raise that to providing Mexican drug cartels with three thousand plus guns, and they get promoted. So that’s where you want to go if you’re a bozo: you’ll fit right in, and rise rapidly in the ranks.
Our personal favorite was the guy who was prostituting himself in a hotel room. He brought his own door and replaced the hotel bathroom door — his had a hole in it, which in gay prostitution (and ATF senior management, but do we repeat ourselves?) circles is called a “glory hole.” Caught by local police, he’s still employed at a decent six-figure salary and benefits at ATF HQ.
On the other hand, while you have to admire his resilience as a payroll patriot, this is one case where it truly sucks to be him.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
2 thoughts on “ABB: Agents Behaving Badly”
Loadsa Badges in the US of A, and inevitably a few bad eggs.
To be smashed and thrown out.
Plenty good men out there, some work here:
http://www.northern.police.uk
Respect is due to Can Mounties, PSNI, yer local POs and all the other guys in blue.
It’s the good agents who tip us to these things. Thank God there are more of them than there are of the bozos. Unfortunately the bozos make for more entertaining reading. But we honestly don’t lose sight of the fact that they are a small minority. We just wish (like the good agents wish) that they’d be dealt with appropriately. Losing your gun, like a negligent discharge, should be an automatic dismissal.