I’m a law-and-order guy all the way, but this story has my blood on the boil:
When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.
After the raid, Prince George’s County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights’ mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered an hour earlier.
What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home in this small bedroom community near College Park.
The sherrif’s SWAT team delivers a box of pot to an unsuspecting family and then kicks the door down, killing the family hounds in front of a terrorized mother-in-law. And then they cuff the mayor!
This kind of thing could really get out of hand. The SWAT team were wearing street clothes and masks, and if this had happened at my house we could have had us a good old fashioned Roman holiday.
What a goat rope.
Lex, unfortunately this kind of raid has become common ever since the War on (some) Drugs hit high gear. Google “Cory Maye” for an egregious case in Mississippi.
Cap’n,
This story is getting stranger by the minute. First I heard the box was delivered by a UPS driver. The initial suspicion was overseas smugglers using the address as a dead drop. Now its the Prince George’s Country SWAT being
My youngest daughter, her husband and two of my grandkids (including Namesake himself) live in P.G. County. The Lady Katherine and I are also the proud owners of a home with twin Chocolate Lab sisters; so the killing of dogs, unless something like rabies is the reason, in the same county as my grandchildren is a double damn sure thing to get our blood boiling. I can’t wait to see how this is going to be spun and re-spun.
No matter what is said, my response is simple:
‘Save the watches, its getting too deep for the boots!’
I read about this last night. Thinking about it for 24 hours has not changed my mind.
There are too many people dieing at the hands of SWAT teams.
If anyone shoots my dogs, I am shooting back, consequences be damned.
Hmmm, Mr. Mayor, how about a million each for the dogs, sign a non disclosure to never talk about it, and we’ll call it even?
I’m sure there’s a steady string of tort attorneys barraging the house with business cards.
Only reason this is national news is that it was a mayor’s home that was assaulted. Stuff like this happens every day, and you can rest assured that if a SWAT team raids a house and there are dogs present, they will end up dead. It somehow always just tends to happen. To say nothing of all the PEOPLE who have died at the hands of overzealous militarized police forces.
All in the name of stopping people from getting high.
Jackbooted thugs from another rogue agency which has become self empowered as judge, jury and executioner.
The things that really get me are that the cops themselves delivered the package, reportedly killed one of the dogs as it was RUNNING AWAY, and refuse even to apologize.
This is one of those rare occasions when I think it’s truly time to fire up the lawyers.
That ain’t nothing compared to how bad things got here in Atlanta.
http://www.policeone.com/officer-misconduct-internal-affairs/articles/1285083-Atlanta-officers-suspended-for-raid-gone-wrong/
One elderly woman killed. The ENTIRE drug task force reassigned. Every single case the two principals ever touched is up for review and most likely retrial.
Somebody comes busting in my door unannounced, they will get met with a .44 Magnum disinvitation.
As y’all noted, this is normal SOP not only in PG County, but wherever there are SWAT teams. There’s a website that even tracks all of these kinds of killings. They are not trained as well as the SOF teams they think they are, and they are especially not as disciplined. There are certainly good men on SWAT teams, but the War on Drugs, now in its third decade, seems to inspire an unprecedented amount of brutality and stupidity.
PG County is especially known for its professionalism. When I last had the misfortune of living there, late 90s, PGC was supposed to transfer a prisoner to Montgomery County. The handover was to take place in a shopping center parking lot. The PGC officers waited an hour or so, then decided that they had better things to do, and cuffed the prisoner to a lightpost to leave him for MC to pick up. He was soon the richest prisoner in Montgomery County jails.
Street clothes, masks, breaking and entering – I’m with you, Lex, full defensive countermeasures would have been deployed.
Marijuana?????
Maybe the Police Chief (Who had to approve this) is sending a message to other politicians in that area.
Is this Russia?
As a 28 year retired LEO, (and family LEO’s as well) this is appalling and will not get better unless and until the U.S. decides that keeping an item illicit is foundational to empowering the criminal enterprise that flowers with it. I ran a narcotics unit, and have written and served countless drug warrants, and reality tells us loudly that if we have not solved the problem using the same tactics since 1972, we will not ever.
Regardless if drugs are bad, (and many indeed are), our actions (I will extend the benefit and say unintended consequences) have created an international enterprise that thrives on the fact of a black market. Decriminalize it, regulate it, and tax it (and let those who want to destroy themselves have at it). Focus on behavior (DUI for any impairing substance, violent crime, property crime) with all the money now spent on chasing a substance, and re-learn the lesson of our failed efforts re. prohibition.
I’m curious about lawsuits in cases like this. Do the personal assets of the cops involved pay the damages, or do the taxpayers foot the bill? If it’s the latter, and I suspect that it is, it seems a lot like a double screwing.
I’m also not sure that the cost/benefit analysis on cases like this (commando raid for pot) works in favor of the paramilitary approach. Innocent people on both sides of the badge are getting killed. Assuming every ounce of the package had found its way into the lungs of willing users, what was the commensurate risk of deadly violence? How many dogs would have been killed by the stoners? Seems that a box of Twinkees would be more at risk than anyone/anything else.
PG County police are not known for their professionalism or high standards. I lived in Berwyn Heights when I went to UMD, that area was very peaceful, one of the nicest in the College Park area.
The cops can’t get their story neither straight nor consistent. They originally claimed to have a ‘no knock’ warrant, but they did NOT. A BRIEF investigation revealed the drug delivery is part of a known gang procedure – send to unsuspecting address and get the box back (details too complicated for this brief note). The SWAT team was ‘borrowed’ because the original jurisdiction’s team was not available.
A goat rope generally exhibits better planning, organization, and execution.
ON THE OTHER HAND: The SWAT team procedure is ‘kill dogs’ – they can’t have an officer tied up fending off a dog (biting or friendly play) in the middle of a [potential] gunfight. Once they kick down the door, you can’t blame them for doing as they are trained. The original problem – being there in the first place & kicking down the door – THAT was the major mistake IMHO. Your mileage may vary.
Regards from ‘just across the river in Nawth Virginia’
The “war on drugs” goes on and on. Declare this war won. Reduce the number of cops, judges, attorneys, prison cells, guards, gangs and dollars spent. Declare the war won. Open national drug stores, use the income to reduce the national debt. Google Donald Scott, he died because one of these raids in Oct 1992.
As far as suing the violent thugs, most states have “governmental immunity” laws which prohibit suits against individual cops “acting in the scope of their duties” or against state agencies.
Maybe an apology is the best they can hope for.
If the victims were not an elected mayor, they probably could not even hope for that.
Disgusting.
The Second Amendment ain’t about duck hunting.
Gray, you might be interested in a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Sounds right up your alley.
Oldschool, I would agree with the SOP being to “kill dogs” just like their SOP is to “kill threatening humans.” Like you say, the mistake was to use SWAT in the first place. Using SWAT teams unnecessarily just escalates things for no reason.
And re: “no knock” warrants, it won’t really matter because the courts have granted law enforcement wide leway with the exclusionary rule regarding knock and announce warrants. Your “knock and announce” can be one pound on the door and yelling “police” as you knock down the door, meaning it is for all practical purposes no different from a no knock warrant.
I have some comfort for you. There is no Law and there is no Order in this incident, so you don’t have to be “for” any of it.
We have an incident of terrorism. Pure and simple.
Hummer,
I, too attended UMCP and echo your thoughts about PG county’s finest. I don’t like to bash cops – they do a thankless job for not enough money. But if I were going to bash them, I’d start in PG County. Un. Im. Pressive….
Nose, here in NJ they make plenty of money, often approaching six figures, and many suburban localities are quite overstaffed. I’ve been troubled for quite some time over the trend for local police forces to appear as some sort of paramilitary group, with bloused combat boots, buzzed heads, shades, fingerless gloves, etc. I sometimes joke that our license plates should be changed from “Garden State” (no kidding!) to “Police State”.
I don’t CCW for one fairly simple reason; I know myself too well and fear that I might be more willing to draw down on a person that poses a threat and I don’t want that to happen.
OTOH, if the front door gets broken down to my house and armed men start streaming in in civvies – all bets are off. I know the same thing goes for my wife as well. The only difference between she and I is that I would empty the clip. She would empty the clip, drop it, reload, and continue firing.
Several years ago I was in an dance club that a friend of mine owned in Jacksonville, FL. I was standing fairly close to the door when a masked man burst inside and shouted, “Everybody put your hands up.” It ends up it was a police raid for serving and underage informant and the dude in the mask was the informant. I still can’t suss this out. Why was he the first guy into the joint? He was followed a couple seconds later by a couple JSO officers in uniform but still… “Police raid” was not the first thing I heard. Just,”Put your hands up,” from a masked man.
Glad I didn’t have my sidearm on me that day, I probably would have been stitched up by a couple of Jacksonville’s finest and made out to be the bad guy. When seconds count, indeed…
Don’t soldiers wear uniforms precisely so they can differentiate themselves from the civilian population? Failure to do so results in the accords reached under the Geneva conventions being rendered moot, for they are no longer honorable combatants.
I’d submit the same should be said for police. In uniform, announcing themselves, they deserve every protection under the law we afford to the officers. Failure to do so, they’re just another civilian breaking in my home with a gun.
– Max
Gray, I’m with you. Over 20 years ago, the conservative’s Conservative, William F. Buckley made the exact same argument as you did. It’s a no-win situation, and the only way out of it is to do do exactly as you suggested. If the laws were changed, there would be no reason for crackheads to rob and kill, they could simply register as users, go get their fixes, and go sit by the stoop buzzed to the gills. Repeat as necessary. Give very long sentences to anyone who sells OR uses drugs, and make it a very un-nice stay. Anyone who over-indulges simply helps to clean out the gene pool.
I’m surprised to see Conservatives promote the legalization of drugs. After all, it sounds like such a Canadian thing to do. So where do
theyyouthey stand on the legalization of prostitution? Just curious.PG county MD- the Wild West police. If you are on the PG police you WILL draw your gun- simple as that. Usually works the other way around.
PG county itself is the big experiment. Constantly in conflict, there really are some bad Hombres there….
re Max’s Declarative: “Failure to do so, they’re just another civilian breaking in my home with a gun.”
Sounds very American. However to do so means nearly instant death. While I know I could probably get the drop on the first 2-3 if alerted you’re cooked when the team shows up…The cop team that is. Raids like this, while glamorized on Cop TV, = tragedy in the making. A long time ago my brother represented the family in a lawsuit against the feds who raided the wrong house near SD. The tenant, spending the night in his new house, heard something and went down the stairs, of his own house (for emphasis) and was shot dead on the stairs by law officers. See? Be careful Max.
b2
B2, not saying it’s the safest option, nor is it particularly wise to take up arms against the police power of the goverment, in fact it’s quite likely going to look like that final scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” One need only read of the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver’s family on Ruby Ridge to understand that once opposed the odds of a peaceful settlement drop drastically.
But then, what is one to do? Submit the protection of one’s home and family to the state and hope it all turns out in the end?
If police were to always wear uniforms so they were identifiable, I submit these incidents would be much more uncommon.
– Max
Uniforms aren’t a cure-all. In that recent hit out in Pheonix (sorry, can’t find a link), the Mexican drug gang hit men were dressed as city SWAT – fortunately the real SWAT team was in the area and was the first responder, or there would have been even more people killed.
I live in neighboring Mongtomery County and would rather rent in southeast DC than own in PG. I second the comments above regarding the mitiarization of the police: city cops need to wear blue, county cops and state troopers some khaki/brown/grey theme and NONE of it needs to look like an Army or Marine uniform. I’m sure readers of this blog understand the impact of uniform upon mindset.
Properly trained SWAT teams are a great asset. They save lives by taking risks and by not using force. I interviewed the captain in charge of the New Orleans PD’s SWAT team in 1994. He was incredibly proud of his unit’s then-current streak of 400+ consecutive “rolls” without a round fired. He said his guys had confidence, borne of training and equipment, that allowed them to go deeper into an encounter than a beat cop would before deciding to shoot. Often, incredibly far past the point where it lethal force was legally justifed. Usually, somewhere past the point where they could shoot, they gathered enough awareness to understand that they didn’t have to shoot. Among other, more important things, they saved the city a great deal of money.
I’ve been on the wrong end of a drug war SWAT raid myself. It was all a big misunderstanding–they “rolled” on a college fraternity pledge event deep in bayou country. To my great good fortune, the deputies had the confidence to see how the situation developed and we all parted friends, nobody shot and nobody cuffed and nobody embarassed. They were well trained and confident and we were clean. Later, in law school, I saw my rural NY county sheriff disband his SWAT team because, while he had the Special Weapons aplenty, he didn’t have the budget for proficiency in Tactics. I think that’s how it plays out all too often–but most sheriffs don’t have the judgment to leave the M4s and MP-5s and sojer gea locked away until the budget permits recurrent training.
I’ve seen enough local news coverage of PG event to know that no trained and confident officer should have shot those dogs. Take the lab’s bite, tough guy, and look for the shooters (that you know wouldn’t be there, had you done your job). Yank their badges and put ‘em out writing parking tickets. These PG cops obviously haven’t “the training, nor the inclination” to bear arms on behalf of the State.
Max,
I wasn’t criticizing you in the least Sir, just pointing out the danger of resistance..It’s a dilemma fer sure..
Me? I’m with you. Reflex. So was that guy I mentioned above and I am sure we all remember the soldier taken down by a sniper from the MD State Police in my county, disturbingly close to PG, on Christmas Day 2006…Remember that? After a 24 hour Mexican standoff they created, propagated and not-so-neatly finished..Because THEY could. I haven’t forgotten. I still remember the “State” sniper’s name..Coldly chilling, ain’t it?
b2
Prostitution? Let it be like in Nevada, not legal but also not illegal either. Don’t talk about it all.
lv4921391:
Reduce the number of cops, judges, attorneys, prison cells, guards, gangs and dollars spent.
You’ve hit on the exact reason this “war on drugs” will go on forever. It has turned into an industry. Since government can’t turn a profit, the only measure of success is growth. An unwinnable war provides the perfect excuse for ever more personnel, equipment, usurpations of citizen rights, etc., all fueled by civil forfeiture.
This event happened two blocks from my house…a couple of nice Labradors, too. Popular sentiment among my neighbors is that the Maryland State Police should keep the PG constabulary outside of Berwyn Heights!
Well, all I can say is make sure yer front door, etc., are as stout as you can make them, and decide to sell your life dearly. That’s all we can do, and what we all should do.
Oh, uh, 3.