Border securityReport on CBP agent border shooting: “Police don’t get to shoot someone in the back because they beat you up”
A new, detailed report provides an in-depth look into a border shooting involving a CBP agent. Juan Mendez Jr., 18, an American citizen, was shot twice by Agent Taylor Poitevent and died at the scene. Following an investigation, Poitevent was not charged with any violations in the shooting death of Mendez. To date there are more than forty border fatalities involving CBP agents since 2005 which have remained virtually closed to public scrutiny. Thomas Herrera, former Maverick County, Texas sheriff, remains doubtful of Poitevent’s innocence. “Resisting arrest does not give an officer the right to kill someone,” Herrera said.
Robert Lee Maril, director of the Center for Diversity and Inequality Research at ECU // Source: ecu.edu
A new, unusually detailed report by the Center for Investigative Reporting provides an in-depth look into a border shooting involving a CBP agent. Juan Mendez Jr., 18, an American citizen, was shot twice by Agent Taylor Poitevent and died at the scene. Following an investigation, Poitevent was not charged with any violations in the shooting death of Mendez.
To date there are more than forty border fatalities involving CBP agents since 2005 which have remained virtually closed to public scrutiny (Andrew Becker, “Did He Need Killing,” Center for Investigative Reporting, 10 September 2014).
The lengthy report, the culmination of a year of research, sheds new light upon the shooting of Mendez by CBP agent Poitevent, 26, after Mendez was caught smuggling drugs near Eagle Pass, Texas. It also traces the subsequent investigations by a number of law enforcement agencies documenting what appears to be, at best, institutional ineptitude and dysfunction. At worst, it may be a cover-up by one federal agency to protect agents in another.
The CBP Internal Affairs played only a very small role in this investigation: it is not allowed to investigate agent shootings. Instead, it is the DHS inspector general who must take the lead to determine whether prosecution of the shooter is justified.
The report describes a law enforcement culture prevalent among CBP justifying border shootings because agents see themselves, as mirrored by their academy training and managers, as comparable to the Marines. But the truth is that these new recruits who have been hired since 2007 have received in some cases less than sixty days of training at the CBP academy in New Mexico.
The report concludes that, “police don’t get to shoot someone in the back because they beat you up.” Neither, according to the experts interviewed, should CBP agents feel that their self-defined status as a paramilitary force exceed the powers of our police when it comes to the use of lethal force.
Says the former police chief of Eagle Pass, Tony Castaneda: “To me, it’s a clear-cut civil rights violation to shoot someone in the back when they’re running away-even someone with a criminal history.”
The report suggests that Poitevent may have escaped prosecution because of a cumbersome, dysfunctional system currently in place as well as the reliance upon the Texas Rangers to provide the initial investigation report of the shooting upon which various federal law enforcement agencies subsequently made their decisions not to prosecute.
