The sheriff of San Juan County, Utah, won’t rule out asking state prosecutors to bring charges against federal agents he said acted brutally during the federal government’s controversial round-up of accused Indian artifact traffickers, The Salt Lake Tribune reported this afternoon.
Sheriff Mike Lacy, whose brother was arrested in the high-profile raid, told The Tribune he is “not saying yay or nay” on pursuing state charges against the federal agents. But San Juan County Attorney Craig C. Halls sounded doubtful. ”My initial reaction would be [filing charges] may be questionable,” Halls told the newspaper.
Attorney General Eric Holder received flack from Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett of Utah for the force used in the raid, even though the most serious injury was a suspect’s broken toe.
Hatch said in June that the use of more than 100 armed agents to arrest 24 alleged perpetrators for non-violent crimes was “unnecessary and brutal.” Two defendants have committed suicide since the June 10 raid, and a man with white supremacist ties was indicted for threatening to tie a government informant to a tree and beat him with a baseball bat.
Read our previous report about the suicides here.
Utah U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman said in a June news conference that the raid was conducted under standard operating procedure and to deny that excessive force was used.
