Posted on 08/13/2008 3:09:59 PM PDT by LibWhacker
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians.
Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law.
But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out to be a big mistake. After reviewing the case, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey acknowledged that the Calvos were victims of a multistate drug ring that used innocent people’s names and addresses to hide shipments of contraband drugs. But the mayor and his family were also victims of a home invasion by the SWAT team, based entirely on what turned out to be a false premise.
In a groundbreaking study in 2006, former Cato policy analyst Radley Balko documented a disturbing pattern of cases across the country in which innocent citizens were killed by armed-to-the-teeth SWAT teams who either acted on the basis of wrong information from an informant or stormed the wrong house by mistake. “One thing I’ve noticed while picking through the depressingly long list of botched drug raids: The cops always shoot the dog,” Balko noted. Sure enough in the local case, Mayor Calvo and his family lost their two beloved black Labrador retrievers, but it could easily have been his own life or that of a family member that was lost. An apologetic “oops” from the responsible officials just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Originally set up to handle volatile, high-risk situations involving snipers, hostage takers or prison escapees, militarized SWAT teams have been unleashed on civilians with predictably disastrous results — as the fatal shooting of unarmed optometrist Salvatore Culosi by a Fairfax County SWAT team two years ago illustrated all too well. Sending a SWAT team to arrest Culosi was excessive compared with his alleged crime of betting on football games.
By sending a SWAT team to Calvo’s home, the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Department made the same mistake, setting the stage for a violent confrontation that could easily have escalated into something far worse.
It’s long past time for law enforcement agencies to restrict SWAT teams for use only in situations where massive lethal force is their only remaining option.
> “Reminds me of that elderly lady in Atlanta that got shot by police because they barged in her house on a no-knock warrant. She thought she was being burglarized, grabbed her gun and got several dozen bullets.”
What was worse was that after they killed her, they PLANTED drugs on her.
Yep. That was the worst excuse for police work ever.
And I could see my granny picking up her gun if some people busted in like that.
The packages were delivered to houses that had no connection with the intended recipient (who was supposed to go to the dropoff house and steal the packages from the porch). Ergo, a JBT raid on the delivery house was a raid on the wrong house (in addition to being inherently unjustifiable in itself, as such tactics have no place outside a genuine threat situation such as emergency extraction of hostages about to be killed).
Nonsense. The police had not established the slightest indication that a situation (e.g. hostages about to be killed, armed criminals preparing for an assault) existed that might require such tactics.
And, in any case, they did not have a warrant for surprise armed entry, and lied about that fact when the investigation began. Those facts in and of themselves are sufficient to throw them under the jail.
The template being used by the poster concerned cops finding the wrong house ~ not a house where the residents had no connection to the "crime" being pursued.
I'm afraid unless we have some common agreement about what words really mean we will have to give up written communications.
There are at least two gaping holes in the standard rationale for using these tactics in drug cases (”If the police act lawfully by knocking and announcing, the bad guys will flush the evidence.”):
1. Modern forensic chemistry can detect parts-per-billion (and in some cases parts per trillion) of chemicals in water — drops-in-a-swimming-pool level. Ergo, flushing wouldn’t actually get rid of evidence; enough traces would remain (even plastic bags leach a bit when dunked in water).
2. Even if the bad guy walks after flushing a large quantity of drugs, he’s still lost the drugs. That’s worse than anything the legal system is likely to do with him, especially if he’s a dealer and owes a percentage of proceeds to his supplier.
Note that the 13th Amendment has an exception for criminal punishment. In a just world, they would be able to outright own and sell the JBTs, ideally to some Turd World pesthole never to return.
Some do; some don't. Whether or not the ones in this jurisdiction do or not will be determined by their actions -- either they'll honestly blow the whistle, or they'll corruptly practice blue-line omerta.
Did Bill Clinton teach you how to evade issues using bogus semantic distinctions, or did you teach him?
I've read every article on it.
I find it bizarre beyond belief that so many people automatically find it important to defend a PG County town mayor over the police.
There is NO DIFFERENCE. This is about PG County, not some civilized part of America. All their politicians and cops are either ignorant hillbillies, former street hoodlums, low level white collar criminals, etc.
This is Stenney Hoyer country, a man who almost made it to be Speaker of the House.
Let me assure you if you find the Nancy woman disgusting, Hoyer would be several orders of magnitude worse.
So, no, whatever happened to the mayor of that town was undoubtedly deserved.
A couple of cops in uniforms when there is $100,000 worth of drugs involved?
Knocking on the door is a bit redundant when there is someone inside screaming about you being out there.
Trust me, if SWAT starts up my front walk, guns at the ready, my wife will probably start screaming too.
Yea, I can't blame the mother-in-law for screaming. In an ideal world she would just react calmly since she knew they had done nothing wrong. In an ideal world we wouldn't have people abusing drugs (of course the definition of abuse is up for debate), and wouldn't have criminals that are willing to kill others for $100,000.
We don't live in an ideal world. Occasionally what are reasonable decisions with what you know at the time lead to really bad situations.
But try and give a rational argument about what they should have done differently given what they knew at the time, rather than an emotional argument based on the fact that such a thing could also happen to you, me, or any of us?
When the evidence shows probable cause that they are dealing with what very well may be a dangerous criminal despite outward appearances, what should they do?
I've heard people say they should have waited and performed a more through investigation, but that's not really all that reasonable when they had just helped complete the delivery of 32 pounds of pot.
In an ideal situation none of the officers surrounding the place would have been seen before everyone was in place, and they could have knocked on the door and presented them with the warrant, and if no one freaked out it could have gone smoothly.
That is unfortunately not what happened, and in reality you really can't always avoid someone looking out the window at the wrong time and reacting with fear.
Also if you have less officers in less protective gear you are more likely to have the dogs getting shot, not less. Because if the officers think they are going into a dangerous situation and there aren't people to watch their back while they are dealing with an aggressive dog, they are going to have to remove the threat of the dog so they can deal with other threats.
A dog is less of a threat to a team with protective gear than one or two plainclothes officers that have the human occupants to deal with as well. The more of a threat dogs and suspects pose the more likely you are to have to use deadly force. A stronger team, gives the police more options.
The question is if they made reasonable choices considering the options they had.
In regards to going in. In hindsight not the best option, but not an unreasonable one with what they knew at the time.
Was shooting the dogs a reasonable option? I'm far less sure about that one. The evidence may well show that was not a reasonable option. If that is the case, then the officers need to be held accountable.
My sympathies go out to the mayor's family. They should not have had to go through this. However, that does not necessarily mean that the officers were wrong to have gone in when they did. Making what is the correct choice with the limited information you have doesn't guarantee desirable results, and waiting to get more information is also a choice that may not produce desirable results.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Yes. That's what their warrant authorized.
give a rational argument about what they should have done differently given what they knew at the time
They knew at the time that their warrant was to knock on the door and wait for the occupants to admit them. (They also knew this at the time when they perjured themselves about it, but that's a separate crime.)
Ever growing militarization of our police forces ping.
It all makes sense; it's all so PG Countyish.
No. They were investigation a case where drug dogs found 32 pounds of pot in a FedEx facility. They took the place of the deliverer and delivered the drugs themselves.
At first the who accepted the delivery left the package outside the door, which could have indicated that they were suspicious for some reason. After a while, someone came out and took the drugs inside. They waited about an hour, but no one else showed up. The people in the house also didn't call the police saying that they had 32 pounds of pot mistakenly delivered to their house. So they executed the warrant for which it would seem they pretty clearly had probable cause.
However, after they raided the house, it became apparent that the occupants were not involved. That led them to expect the FedEx workers.
The people in the house were innocent civilians. However, the cops don't have crystal balls. They have to make reasonable decisions and take action based on what they know at the time, the can't go back in time and use the benefit of hindsight like the idiot armchair quarterbacks on this thread.
The cops might as well claim that the house was full of nukes and aliens, for all the investigation they did. If they had spent 20 minutes checking who lived at the house, they would have figured out it was the mayor.
So you're saying that mayors of tiny little towns with a population of 3000 people in a relatively bad area of the county can't be crooks? He should have been treated differently because he was the mayor?
To any thinking person, that would make you pause and consider whether the people in the house were likely to be drug dealers "arming them selves and preparing organized resistance, or destroying evidence."
I hate to break it to you but drug dealers that deal in those kinds of quantities don't usually live in crappy little crack houses. They have the low level customers come to their homes, but when you're dealing with 32 pounds of pot, you are likely dealing with someone that distributes it to others to sell rather than selling it directly to the users.
I'm sure they ran a check on his wife, to whom the package was addressed, and turned up a clean record. Because he was the mayor of a tiny little town of 3000 people in a huge county, it isn't surprising that the didn't realize he was the mayor, and a quick check for prior crimes wouldn't turn that up. They could have even checked who his employer was and found out it was the town without realizing he was the mayor. However, even if they knew he was the mayor, it really didn't change anything.
Well it would have at least gave a better explanation for why they failed to contact the local police for the town since the mayor appoints the chief of police. I suspect the reason they didn't bother was because the police in a town of 3000 people have very little resources and wouldn't likely be any help.
There were a number of things that would have made them consider if the occupants were really drug dealers or not. That's probably why they sat and watched the house for an hour after dropping off the drugs. However, just sending everyone home and leaving $100,000 worth of drugs sitting in that house wasn't a viable option either. They pretty much had to go in, and they had to treat the situation with the seriousness that it deserved.
OK let’s compromise....just use SWAT against RAT politicians.
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