Editing Ruby Ridge standoff (section)

== Federal investigations of law enforcement ==

Defense counsels for Weaver and Harris alleged throughout their 1993 trial that agents of the ATF, USMS, and FBI were themselves guilty of serious wrongdoing. The Department of Justice (DOJ) created the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) to investigate events. It delivered a 542-page report on June 10, 1994, to the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).<ref name=RRTF_OPR_GenRef>RRTF, ''Report of the RRTF to the OPR'' (1994; ''more complete version''), see Bibliography.</ref><ref name=justiceDOTgovRedacted>RRTF, ''Report of the RRTF to the OPR'' (2006) [1994; OPR legacy, highly redacted version, PDF series], see Bibliography.</ref> (This RRTF report, originally available in a highly redacted form,<ref name=justiceDOTgovRedacted /> later became available in a much more complete form.<ref name=RRTF_OPR_GenRef />)

Questions persisted about Ruby Ridge and the subsequent [[Waco siege]], which involved the same agencies and many of the same officials. The Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information held fourteen days of hearings on these incidents and allegations of misconduct, ending on October 19, 1995.<ref name=rdcrtc>{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=NrVeAAAAIBAJ&pg=3112%2C1058923 |work=Lewiston Morning Tribune |location=(Idaho) |agency=Associated Press |title=Reno draws criticism at Ruby Ridge hearing |date=October 20, 1995 |page=2C}}</ref> The hearings were televised on [[C-SPAN]].<ref name=SenSubcommTerrorism96_1>U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, ''Ruby Ridge: Report'' (1996), pp. 1. [Quote:] "Introduction: In the summer of 1995, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information announced that it would hold public hearings into allegations that several branches of the Departments of Justice and the Treasury had engaged in serious criminal and professional misconduct in the investigation, apprehension and prosecution of Randall Weaver and Kevin Harris at Ruby Ridge, Idaho." See for comparison, the opening of RRTF, ''Report of the RRTF to the OPR'' (1994), appearing in the Bibliography.</ref> The internal 1994 Ruby Ridge Task Force Report and the public 1995 Senate subcommittee report on Ruby Ridge both criticized the rules of engagement by claiming that they were unconstitutional.<ref name=RRTF_OPR_IB /><ref name=SenSubcommTerrorism96_D4c88 />

A 1995 [[GAO]] investigation was conducted on the policies regarding use of force by federal law enforcement agencies. Its report said: "In October 1995, Treasury and Justice adopted use of deadly force policies to standardize the various policies their component agencies had adopted over the years."<ref>{{cite report|author=GAO Staff: Rabkin, Norman J.; Harris, Daniel C.; Hamilton, Geoffrey R.|display-authors=etal| author-link=Government Accountability Office|date=March 1996|title=''Use of Force: ATF Policy, Training and Review Process Are Comparable to DEA's and FBI's'' (Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, [Document] GAO/GGD-96-17)|url=http://www.gao.gov/assets/160/155422.pdf|page=33 of 125 pages|location=Washington, DC|publisher=United States [[Government Accountability Office|General Accounting Office]] [GAO] |access-date=February 14, 2017}}{{primary source inline|date=February 2017}} See also p. 3, "Both Treasury and Justice define 'deadly force' as use of any force that is likely to cause death or serious physical injury." ''Note'', this report does not explicitly mention Rudy Ridge.</ref> The major change was that agencies required a law enforcement agent to have reasonable belief of an "imminent" danger of death or serious physical injury in order to use deadly force. This brought all federal LEA deadly force policies in line with the U.S. Supreme Court rulings ''[[Tennessee v. Garner]]'', 471 U.S. 1, 18 (1985) and ''[[Graham v. Connor]]'', 490 U.S. 386 (1989), which applied to state and local law enforcement agencies.<ref>The rulings referred to are  ''[[Tennessee v. Garner]]'', 471 U.S. 1, 18 (1985), and ''[[Graham v. Connor]]'', 490 U.S. 386 (1989). See GAO Staff (March 1996), ''Use of Force'', op. cit. (immediately preceding citation)</ref>

In 1997, Michael Kahoe, the chief of the FBI's violent crimes section, pled guilty to [[obstruction of justice]] for destroying a report which was critical of the agency's role at Ruby Ridge. He was sentenced to 18 months and a $4,000 fine.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-oct-11-mn-41736-story.html|title=FBI Agent Gets Prison Term for Destroying Ruby Ridge Report|work=Los Angeles Times|date=October 11, 1997}}</ref>