Leaving aside that he is the mayor of this small town inside Prince Georges County,MD, what makes you think that a major drug distributor would have 32 pounds of marijuana delivered directly to his own house?
I routinely come home to my house in metropolitan Washington DC after work to find a FedEx/UpS/USPS parcel left on the front door step. You could send 32 pounds of marijuana to me and pick it up off of the step after the delivery but before I got home and I would never even know it had been there. Further, even if I was at home, they just leave the package. They don’t ring the doorbell. So, I could be inside and not know for hours that there was a package on my front step.
As for “accepting” the package, it doesn’t say he signed for it in the article. He came home and found it on the door step. The package is addressed to his wife. So he picks it up, takes it inside, and places it on the (entrance?) table. But even if he had signed for it, so what. His wife got a package. He signed for it. I don’t open the packages my wife receives. She doesn’t open mine. Besides being the law, it also is just common courtesy. So when the Prince Georges SWAT Team broke into his house, surprise, surprise, the package was unopened.
I have no idea of how the package was actually delivered (whether they just drove up in their SUVs and placed the the package on the doorstep (unlikely) or if they used a FedEX delivery van with the team already in position observing (likely)). But if the shipment was a genuine attempt to deliver drugs and I were the pick up person, I would have “eyes on” the location for hours prior to the expected delivery time (based on tracking information in the shipping service’s website). You can bet that having several black SUVs come up, park, and have nobody get out would set off my “need to leave quietly now” radar. From the perspective of a drug dealer, the loss of 32 pounds of marijuana would just be a cost of doing business.
Personally, I think it was a set up because I have never heard of such a large amount of marijuana (14.5 kilos) being delivered in this unusual way. Much larger amounts are delivered, of course, but it is usually by vehicle with a direct hand off. But perhaps I am wrong in this regard.
Someone with access to the drug decided to send a large amount in a package to this mayor’s wife all the way from Arizona. They used a delivery means sure to pass through a drug detection protocol. That just doesn’t make sense unless you wanted it to be detected enroute to instigate police action. And that doesn’t sound like a simple attempt to deliver the product to a downstream distributor or a customer to me.
Well stated.