An ATF whistle blower got demoted and had other problems:
Edgar A. Domenech says he thought Justice Department officials would welcome information about mismanagement at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Instead, the 23-year ATF veteran says, Justice officials ignored his complaints and later retaliated against him by demoting him, denying him a bonus and attempting to give him a poor job review.
“I realized I was committing career suicide at the time, but I felt I had a moral obligation as the deputy director to protect the agency and the men and women of the agency,” Domenech said in an interview yesterday. “In retrospect, I was naive to believe that the department would welcome my honesty.”
Domenech filed a 13-page complaint yesterday with the Office of Special Counsel, saying that ATF and the Justice Department punished him for raising questions about the performance of former ATF director Carl J. Truscott, who resigned in August 2006 while under investigation for alleged financial mismanagement.
I know from personal experience that people in power do not follow the rules and will find a way to harm you if they decide that is what they want to do. We do not have a “Justice System”. We have “Legal System”. It will not protect you. At best it will give you an opportunity to compensate you for your losses.
In larger terms what this means is that abuse of power is seldom prevented by the legal system. Only when it becomes egregious and a large majority of people demand the abuse stop will it actually take place. Case in point is the ATF and their abuse of firearms owners and dealers. ATF Special Agents who read Brady scripts to the press should be prosecuted for violation of 18 USC 242 but what Federal Prosecutor is going to take on that case? The prosecutor who should be building a case to put the agent in jail is a work associate of of the ATF agent. It’s no different than law enforcement and prosecutors not caring if a few blacks get lynched every once in a while. It may be against the law but, basically, their reasoning will go, the people that did it are “good people” and don’t deserve to have their careers ruined over something like that. “It just doesn’t matter, it’s only about about 10%” (inside “joke” for people that know my sociopathic ex-friend Walter).
In most cases law enforcement will not protect you from government abuse of power. Only you can protect yourself. Naive people believe we have a system of laws that will protect us. But the examples of this not being true are too numerous to even attempt to count.
That is why we have the 2nd Amendment. It is the last ditch guardian of inalienable rights.