FBI Shooting Probes Always End Well for FBI

If you're an FBI agent and you wind up shooting someone, good news: You were probably justified, as far as the FBI is concerned. With the bureau's promise of a full internal investigation into the shooting of unarmed Boston Bomber pal Ibragim Todashev in the news, the New York Times reports on how those investigations tend to go, via interviews and records it accessed via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The answer? Since 1993, every single shooting in which someone was injured or killed has been deemed "justified."

From 1993 to 2011 there were about 150 such shootings, roughly 70 of them fatal; all were declared kosher, documents reveal, and an FBI spokesman says the same is true of all such shootings since. The FBI had disciplined five agents for what it terms "bad shoots" (meaning they weren't made in accordance with FBI policy), but none of those shots hit anyone. FBI officials defend the sterling record as a product of the FBI's experienced agents and meticulous operation planning, but one criminal justice professor says the numbers are "suspiciously low." Click for the NYT's full report. (More Ibragim Todashev stories.)