By Brad Heath, Kristina Cooke, M.B. Pell and Benjamin Lesser
July 30 - Christian Garcia admits that he threw a water bottle toward officers guarding a federal building near Los Angeles during an immigration protest last summer.
The plastic bottle was empty, he said, and hit no one but Garcia himself – the wind blew it back at him. Yet Garcia, a 32-year-old amateur photographer, was arrested by agents, jailed for three days and charged with a crime that could have kept him in prison for up to a year. He said he lost both of his jobs, as a security guard and an undercover shopper, after his bosses told him they had been called by investigators.
Then, with no public explanation, prosecutors dropped the case.
The Trump administration has brought criminal charges against at least 851 people accused of attacking or impeding federal officers, only to abandon them at an unusually high rate. A Reuters review of federal court records found that 31% of these cases that have been completed so far have ended in dismissal. That compares to 8% of all federal criminal cases that typically end in dismissal, according to records compiled by the Federal Judicial Center.
#garcia
July 30 - Christian Garcia admits that he threw a water bottle toward officers guarding a federal building near Los Angeles during an immigration protest last summer.
The plastic bottle was empty, he said, and hit no one but Garcia himself – the wind blew it back at him. Yet Garcia, a 32-year-old amateur photographer, was arrested by agents, jailed for three days and charged with a crime that could have kept him in prison for up to a year. He said he lost both of his jobs, as a security guard and an undercover shopper, after his bosses told him they had been called by investigators.
Then, with no public explanation, prosecutors dropped the case.
The Trump administration has brought criminal charges against at least 851 people accused of attacking or impeding federal officers, only to abandon them at an unusually high rate. A Reuters review of federal court records found that 31% of these cases that have been completed so far have ended in dismissal. That compares to 8% of all federal criminal cases that typically end in dismissal, according to records compiled by the Federal Judicial Center.
#garcia
3 months ago
