Block Club Chicago reports:

About 300 Border Patrol agents were among the federal officers who made a torrent of arrests, deployed tear gas nearly 50 times, tased and assaulted residents and shot two people — one fatally — during Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area last year.

That all happened even though those Border Patrol agents had extensive experience and training, many in crowd control and deescalation, a Block Club Chicago investigation found.

They averaged more than a decade on the job, and about two-thirds of them had some form of special training. More than 100 had “Mobile Field Force” training, which includes deescalating civil unrest and crowd control.

Still, Block Club found that in at least 52 separate incidents across the Chicago area, agents used force against individuals and crowds by deploying tear gas, pepper spray or tasers, tackling or physically assaulting them, or chasing or ramming them with their cars.

After many of those uses of force, agents filed reports with narratives that were contradicted by their own body-camera footage, showing they lied about what they did, misrepresented the actions of bystanders and protesters, overcounted alleged assaults against them, undercounted their own uses of force or failed to report some uses of force altogether. [Continue reading…]