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 ...
The author of the article is Daniel Valentine.
It's also interesting to note a slight negative correlation between number of arrests and reported usage. As arrests were rising from 1970-1980, so was mj use, peaking in 1979. Marijuana use declined during the 1980's, and arrests declined modestly. From 1990-2004, reported mj use was flat to slightly higher, as the number of mj related arrests more than doubled.
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/fed-data/crime/intox-arrests.htm
They had intercepted the package, and new it had drugs. Then the police delivered it to his door. When his wife noticed the package and took it inside, they snuck up on the house, guns drawn, to invade. The grandmother saw them and screamed, and they took that as a “warning” and so they broke in the doors. The dogs barked and they shot the dogs, pinned the grandmother down in the kitchen, harassed the family for a while.
They never bothered to check the address to figure out it was the Mayor.
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