This is an amazing and awful story:
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told The Associated Press.
David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.
[…]
Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn’t believe him. She didn’t realize he’d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.
He once threw boiling water at his ex-wife while she was holding his three year-old child. His employment history was spotty. He served in the Army in Afghanistan after the recruiter advised him to go off his psych meds for a year and come back. The story paints a picture of a violent and disturbed human being unfit for law enforcement. Yet he was hired by ICE.
His hiring was a feature, not a bug. He fits the profile of the kind of thug that Trump, Miller and the rest want to put on masks and go out attacking their perceived enemies. Abolish ICE and prosecute the criminals who have sown terror throughout the country. That’s the new minimum for me, at least.
