Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife Trinity Tomsic are pictured above at a press conference following the events. AP Photo )
Posted on 06/21/2009 8:05:36 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson said Friday deputies acted "in a professional and acceptable manner" when they shot two dogs inside the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last summer. During a press conference Friday morning in which Jackson made public selected details from an internal investigation, he said, "The release of today's findings are consistent with what I've felt all along — my deputies did their job to the fullest extent of their abilities."
Calvo has filed complaints that police and deputies needlessly shot the dogs when they raided his house on July 29, 2008, after mistakenly believing that the home was linked to an illegal marijuana shipping racket. Calvo was later cleared of any involvement in drug activity, and police linked the 32-pound package of marijuana that was listed for delivery at the Calvo home to a Fed-Ex courier and arrested him.
Reached Friday, Calvo said the investigation's conclusion that deputies followed procedure misses the point. "They're turning what was horrible judgment into a model operation," Calvo said by phone. "That this is the best they can do? That's disturbing." The raid sparked an outcry in the community and among state leaders, who last winter passed a bill requiring law enforcement agencies to track and report the activities of their SWAT team units, including how often guns are fired and when animals are killed. National groups have taken up the case as an example of overly aggressive police tactics in the national drug war. Calvo's lawyers have also filed notice for a potential lawsuit against the county police and sheriff's office, which served the warrant on behalf of the police. A spokesman for Jackson said that Calvo's lawyers could seek up to $5 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at gazette.net ...
Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife Trinity Tomsic are pictured above at a press conference following the events. AP Photo )
Unbelievable.
Ridiculous and unacceptable. The failed drug war is a war on you.
Cops shot two dogs INSIDE this guy’s home?? Had these bums killed my lab puppy, a judge would be the least of their worries!
Well known methods of shipping drugs are to either pick an address on a route for the delivery company driver to take it or ship to a house where the owner won't be home during the day so someone can pick it up off the front porch. I don't think that merely being the addressee of a package of drugs should be sufficient to allow a no knock raid.
My ten pound golden retriever would eat them.
The lying and justifying of this type of mistake has got to stop and I hope eventually this mayor gets his justice.
I normally don’t like folks getting lawsuit happy. This time I’ll make an exeption.
Any particular state this happened in?
Oh. Tanks. Seems to be happening more and more everywhere or just being more widely reported. Not Sure.
I only know that answer because I’ve traveled through Prince George’s County. It’s an unimportant area in the middle of the East Coast. ;)
Sorry to say it mysterio but conservatives for decades built the WOD, empowered, funded, and supported the Police State we live in today. I am a fiscal conservative but have always been wary of how ready and willing many conservatives are to control the behavior of other people. By controlling the behavior of other people I mean that if you go to your city councilman and demand a new law to for instance ensure that every dog has an adequate water dish, that law will be enforced by an armed city employee at the point of a gun. So, 30-40 years of effort have gone into building this wonderful police state we live in, and it has been birthed by law and order republicans. Now, I drive the 5 min. to my local grocer and the median at the first intersection is crawling with 20-30 cops shining flashlights into my car. So, we live in a police state, and nobody should be surprised if somebody shoots a dog or two too bad, just the price to be paid for an orderly society. So if you are a law and order republican, and you know who you (not accusing you mysterio), don’t complain because you built this. If you are a government employee with a badge and a gun, an armed union thug, and you know who you are, you have spent a career building and supporting this kind of stuff.
The solution is to vote down every bond issue that funds Police Fire. You also call the city manager every time you see them applying for Federal grant monies for new police and police cars and ask them not too. My city just applied for a new federal grant to hire police officers. I can’t figure out why... I just saw 30 of them crowding an intersection in front of Wal-mart pulling over momma in her mini van on her way to buy groceries... cause she didn’t have the right tax stamp, cause one of the kids had unbuckled his seat belt, cause, cause cause.
Conservatives didn’t do it. Statists pretending to be conservatives did it. Republican doesn’t mean conservative. In fact, it often means quite the opposite. One of the best things I ever did was to stop self identifying with any political party.
Sheriff Michael Jackson (D), speaking at a memorial service last year, is among the politicians considering a run for county executive in 2010. (Prince George's County Sheriff's Department)
Maryland suburbs right outside of DC, near the U of MD campus.
If this can happen in a Mayor’s house what does that mean for the rest of us?
Suppose he (Calvo) had a gun and tried to defend HIS family against an apparently lethal intrusion? Before he realized it was OK, it's just a paramilitary SWAT team invading a private citizen's home on a flimsy pretext, no need to be concerned.
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