There's the idealistic, optimistic part of me that wants to believe that federal authorities are good people. I know for a fact that many are, as I've had the pleasure of knowing some. However, there are too many stories out there that illustrate how a lot of them aren't for me to accept what I want to be true as actually being true.
Just look at what happened to Tate Adamiak and the Weaver family, just to name a couple of examples.
And, according to prosecutors, the ATF's history of shady dealings seems to have another entry.
Federal authorities have now dropped charges against three robbery suspects, of which two were shot during an undercover ATF gun trafficking operation.
Prosecutors claim they obtained new evidence contradicting the ATF and FBI agents' original version of events, according to court records obtained by the ABC7 I-Team.
...
Court records show new evidence obtained by prosecutors contradicts the account of events given by ATF and FBI agents.Chicago police shot 18-year-old Demond Edwards on June 9 during the altercation. His lawyer says video taken by a bystander shows Edwards was unarmed, and wearing different clothing compared to descriptions of him at the time by an ATF agent involved in the incident.On Thursday, charges against Edwards were dropped after a request by the Northern District of Illinois' U.S. Attorney's Office.
Late Thursday night, Edwards attorney filed suit against the government saying nothing justified the shooting of his client, who is now paralyzed, and the ATF agent whose testimony led to charges needs to be investigated.
However, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois shared a statement with ABC7 Thursday evening, saying the situation is still developing.
"Late last week the government filed a criminal complaint against multiple individuals arising out of an attempted armed robbery and assault on federal officers occurring on June 9, 2026," the statement read. "The facts are fluid and developing, and multiple investigations are ongoing and more facts will be forthcoming. Our decision to dismiss the complaint today should not be read at all as a retreat of this case or the events giving rise to charges."
The judge in the case has scheduled a hearing regarding possible sanctions against the government, and this is just the latest prosecution from that office to fall apart.
The report doesn't go into exactly what the inconsistency was, only that agents told one story and the video shows another. This seems to be a regular thing for the US Attorney's Office in that neck of the woods, which isn't a great thing, though it's better than manipulating the evidence to try and get a conviction.
Still, if this isn't what was reported, and the judge is considering sanctions against the government, all while one of the reported suspects is filing a lawsuit against the government for what happened, it sounds like this was just another absolute cluster...flop by the ATF-Troop. Once again, someone got hurt--paralyzed, apparently--and the facts don't seem to be backing up the agents' accounts.
Of course, that doesn't mean a crime wasn't happening. The judge dismissed it without prejudice, which means new charges can be filed later if they ever figure out how to get their stories straight and it matches up with the video evidence.
I swear, we live in a world where almost everyone is walking around with a video camera at all times, and they don't think there's going to be video of whatever it was they did? Seriously?
Again, though, we don't have the gritty details of what supposedly happened, what actually happened, or any of that.
But since it's the ATF, I'm willing to believe any number of things about how horrifically this case was handled and how badly the agents screwed up in the field. I mean, it's not like they don't have that history I mentioned before.
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