Posted on 08/07/2008 6:39:32 AM PDT by Virginia Ridgerunner
Prince George's County police announced yesterday that they have arrested a deliveryman and another man who they say are involved in a scheme to smuggle marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients, including a delivery last week to the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights.
The county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics officers raided the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, after intercepting a package addressed to her that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana. During the raid, officers broke down Calvo's door and fatally shot the family's two black Labrador retrievers.
(snip)
Police Chief Melvin C. High would not rule out that Calvo and Tomsic had some involvement in the delivery. Asked whether police had cleared them, he said: "From all the indications at the moment, they had an unlikely involvement, but we don't want to draw that definite conclusion at the moment." He later said, "Most likely, they were innocent victims."
Neither he nor Sheriff Michael A. Jackson apologized for the raid, which they said was conducted responsibly, given what deputies and officers knew at the time.
(snip)
Jackson said yesterday that his team was justified in entering the home as forcefully as it did because Calvo's mother-in-law screamed when she saw the officers approaching the house. The noise, he said, could have alerted any armed occupants of the home or allowed time for destruction of any evidence.
He also defended the shooting of the dogs. He said his deputies were "engaged" by the dogs, by one as they entered the house and by the other as they made their way through it. Neither dog bit a deputy, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I thought at the time that the volume of the plants would have to make a huge package in order to weigh 32 pounds, that it might possibly have been a file video used by the news source. If so, that's very shoddy journalism.
Try this for a hypothesis - in the real world "pot" is the buds from the female plants. In the alternate universe of law enforcement, "pot" is any and all of any plant - roots, stalk, stems, leaves, male, female, maybe even the dirt that's hanging on the roots when they pull it up - it's all weighted and labeled "pot".
Some grower could have weeded out the male plants from his patch and instead of just throwing it in the compost pile, he packaged it up, still green, and shipped it off, maybe for revenge or just plain meaness, and the LEO's did exactly what they were trained to do.
BTW, you don't have to jump at every free thing.
They should all be instantly willing to make the sacrifices that make their jobs possible ~ like let their dogs get shot.
Otherwise, why do they want public jobs.
If we had a real civilian with no connection to the government involved I might very well argue a slightly different position.
The mayor is part of the foodchain in this case.
Or should we say PROHIBIDO ~ capice?
Ever raise a cat?
Parrots last even longer, plus they talk.
That's not at all consistent with the background ideology of the county sovereignty ideology.
I can understand why they tied her up ~ they'd just shot her dogs.
These people have addresses of course, although I'd guess they'll have to relocate to another state after this.
Tell me, do you still beat your wife?
YOu seem to be getting a lot of flack for that post. Sometimes you need to include the sarcasm tag to prevent that.
Throw in some DEA “Task Force” operations that recruit and train local officers, and the lines between federal and local get pretty blurry.
So, yeah, "/sarc" ~ I guess you noticed my post where I let out the truth ~ this was a case of the government's jack booted thugs stomping on the government's main guy ~ the mayor!
Bwahahahahha ~ and they all sided with the mayor.
That mayor is going to be a witness against the dope dealers Fur Shur ~
Right. In the past couple of weeks alone, cops tazed a 16 year-old lying by the side of the road with a broken back; the Minneapolis police gave cops an award for breaking into and shooting up the house of an innocent family; and now this. I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
Allllllll isolated incidents. Just a few bad apples. /s
If this was a one time event, I would be outraged at the abuse of power and the senseless brutality. But I've heard of several such cases so instead, I wonder how often this sort of thing happens and we don’t hear about it. You say he's a part of the food chain as though this was a sting gone bad, the mayor truly is guilty or maybe you think it's just local politics. Either way, you are way too jaded.
Thing is, if it hadn’t happened to a town mayor, there is a good chance it never would have risen beyond the local paper and we never would have known or heard about it.
I hope the mayor is able to move this story to the national level and is able to get the absolute best lawyers working to sue everyone involved and get this insanity stopped.
Cops can be chasing someone through your yard and your dog doesn't like it, like he thinks it's his yard, so they kill your dog. Or they get the address wrong and kick in your door at 3 am. Your dog doesn't like it, like he thinks it's his house, so they blow it away. The adrenalin rush of it all is too much for you and you stroke or maybe you keep a gun under your pillow and when you reach for it, you're blown away along with your dog. These have happened and will happen again and again. Maybe you are or someone you care about is next?
This is not a war on drugs, this is a war on the Constitution and We, the People. How many more of these do we have to have? Like I said, I hope the mayor sues and wins enough to make it hurt. And then he and his wife can enjoy their new puppies and their twilight years.
Is your whole act just some bizarre form of sarcasm I’m not getting?
You got that right. I went back and looked -- here were some FReepers' responses to the news that cops had broken down the door of a 92 year old woman and shot her to death in her own home when she fired at the home invaders to try to defend herself:
"She had the wherewith all to hit three policemen with five rounds. This is on top of the reported fact that her niece recently bought her the gun. She seems alert and competent to me. She knew who she was shooting at. She figured she would survive because who would shoot an old lady. She would play the race card too. The problem with getting old is believing this crap. She got what she deserved."
"In this case, an undercover cop bought drugs from this household. They had very good probable cause. All the dopey Libertarians are crying foul because of the war on drugs. I say she got what she deserved because she in all probability knew drugs were sold from her premises. She wanted a gun to protect herself from local competition or hoodlums who knew she dealt. She especially got what she deserved because she shot first without any warning and continued to shoot men wearing the customary POLICE vests until shot dead. she made her choices in life. There are consequences for bad choices."
"THESE WERE NOT BAD COPS!!!!! THEY WERE NOT YAHOO SHOOOT FIRST ASK QUESTIONS LATER!!!! THEY DO THESE RAIDS EVERY DAY!!!! My gosh, lets crucify these guys, put them in jail and lock them away. It's so easy to second guess what they did. But then we don't deal with people who kill eachother daily for a smoke, or sell their own kids to get a rock. There is not enough space in the paper to print all of the disgusting stuff that goes down in Atlanta or other cities where the crime is high. Besides, most people don't really care unless it gets into their neighborhoods. I guarentee you they will find Sam. As the poor womans relatives said, she lived alone and didn't have many visitors. The perfect mark for a dealer. He probably befriended her and was dealing right under her nose without her knowledge. I also doubt that Sam was just some guy selling joints. My brother worked narcotics, they don't even bother with the lower guys. We really don't know what Sam was doing."
"Hmmm.... these relatives that are saying this is such a tragedy were probably the ones selling drugs out of her house. They should be charged with elder abuse if nothing else. Its too far fetched to me to believe that everyone in that house was 'innocent'."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742967/posts
There are customs and traditions around there that you'd expect in the Deep South, way back off the main roads.
All of the police forces in PG are clown shows.
And yes, we are jaded with their shenanigans. On the other hand, it's a hard core Democrat party redoubt ~ Stenney Hoyer, doggone near the Speaker of the House, used to run the place.
He probably doesn't see a thing wrong about any of this, and you probably thought Nancy Pelosi was a disaster ~ Stenney almost snaked her out of the job.
Their "hometown newspaper" is the Washington Post.
I could climb on my roof, grab the telescope, and see this guy's house.
What is going on is not a sudden discovery of Fascism in a small town but a simple reappearance of Fascism as it's practiced by traditional Democrat party stallwarts.
Look, this guy is an elected official in PG county ~ so is the Sheriff who hired those guys.
They are not an anomaly in their community ~ they are the norm. A century ago they'd been out marching around in KKK outfits. These days they're cops. Place never changes. Most of us hope they stay on their side of the river.
I disagree. The correct term is "home invasion robbery".
Per Article VI, the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. Any actions contrary to the Constitution are illegitimate. Performing a no-knock raid without due diligence is patently unreasonable, hence forbidden under the Fourth Amendment. Consequently, conducting such a raid when occupants are expected to be home is an illegitimate forced entry of an occupied dwelling for purpose of attacking the occupants. Home invasion robbery.
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