[rrggrr]

You are being paranoid. There are over 13,000 FBI agents but probably 5x that number are needed to deal with organized crime, white collar crime, national security threats, public corruption, background investigations and other cases within their jurisdiction. You can bet there were/are a few agents shaking their heads in irritation over what appears to be a waste of resources.

[jessaustin]

This seems like bullshit. It would have been easy to determine ahead of time that Shafer is not a threat to evade arrest, destroy evidence, or harm agents. Based on that, it would have been easy to interrupt Shafer as he headed to his car to drive to work, explain to him his situation, and have him call his wife and ask her to take the children and walk down to the park for an hour. Next time FBI want to harass a citizen like this, they should leave the assault weapons at home.

The public would certainly be safer and happier if there were fewer FBI agents rather than more.

[tobltobs]

That is even more reason for those FBI agents in charge to find something else to legitimate this waste of resources. For a real life example how this works you might google "FBI Keith Gartenlaub"