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The U.S. Attorney’s Office blew two chances to prosecute J.T. Ready for pulling guns on illegal immigrants months before the neo-Nazi gunned down four people in Gilbert, records show.
The documents were released by Nick Martin of Talking Points Memo (and former Valley reporter), who broke the story about the missed opportunities yesterday.
The cache of documents from the U.S. Border Patrol give further details on how baby-killer J.T. Ready and his wacko followers hunted immigrants in the desert for sport — and how U.S. authorities processed the immigrants they caught while failing to go after Ready and the gang for their vigilantism.
Ready, once the buddy of SB1070-author Russell Pearce, is described in
the documents as clearly in charge of the other members of the “Border
Guard Group” during a confrontation with suspected border crossers. Ready even bragged to authorities that he had trained his dog to detect the scent of marijuana.
In one of the incidents Last July, says one of the reports, real Border
Patrol agents reported to a location in the Vekol Valley were Ready and
some guys had reported that they had three migrants “to be turned over.”
The migrants told officers that two of Ready’s men had pointed their
guns at them. The migrants had also been told to empty their pockets.
Ready turned over a few grams of pot supposedly found on the migrants.
Authorities took custody of the men, as Ready wanted them to. No charges were filed against Ready or his group.
The documents dug up by Martin support previously drawn conclusions, notably by Phoenix New Times‘ Stephen Lemons in his May 10 article, “Why Authorities Could’ve Prevented J.T. Ready’s Murder Spree,” that Ready should have been behind bars at the time of the killings.
