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.
The officers who had a knock-and-announce warrant, but instead charged in without knocking or announcing.
The officers who, when the crap hit the fan, lied about the preceding fact.
There, that was easy, now wasn't it?
(Oh, and you have one more thing ass-backwards. It is liberals who say that people should not be held responsible when they lie, e.g. Bill Clinton. Apparently you're a liberal.)
You are under the mistaken impression that they needed a special kind of warrant to enter the house without their explicit permission. They are required to make a good faith effort to notify the people that they are there to search the premises. That requirement was fulfilled because the mother-in-law saw them and started yelling.
Knocking down the door and going in is permitted if they have tried to leg the people know they are there and they have reason to believe that not going in might result in evidence being destroyed or might put someone at risk.
That's where their decision came in.
They broke the law, and need to be punished.
I don't think you understand the law and are more than happy to jump on the blame the police bandwagon.
As public servants charged with upholding the rule of law, they need to be punished far more severely than some Joe Blow off the street.
Everyone needs to be held equally accountable under the law. If they break the law they should get no special treatment one way or the other.
Anything else is liberal BS of trying to shift blame. Everyone needs to be held equally accountable for their own actions.
If the did break the law, I do agree that they need to be held accountable.
Your fact-twisting defense of these dog-killing, door-smashing thugs is truly amazing.
Do you have a source for that information. All the information I've seen about the scheme to intercept the packages came out after the mayor's house was raided, and I've seen nothing from the police indicating that they knew of such a scheme before they searched the mayor's house and found out the they didn't appear to be involved, which then pointed them at the FedEx workers.
Do you have information that indicates otherwise?
To what purpose? None of them knew the mayor. He's the mayor of some tiny town of 3000 people. Someone else posted that the drugs were intercepted thousands of miles away in Arizona.
The police didn't put the address on the package.
They intercepted it, and then took the package to what by all indications was its intended destination.
Your accusations make no rational sense.
If anything, police officers who break the law should be punished more severely.
And cops who break the law should be held individually liable for any damages, which might actually make them clean up their acts.
So what did the police have to gain in all this? Please enlighten me with your reasoning on how this is an example of police corruption.
If a drug dealer send a package of drugs to your home, which is addressed to you, BUT is meant for the person 3 houses down; cops raid your home, would they still have gotten the correct house, even though the drugs weren’t meant for your use?
Police forces need to justify the cost of SWAT team training and equipment, so they constantly need to find excuses to use them.
Also, the civil forefeiture laws are like Christmas for police forces around the country- they allow them to steal property from citizens without any finding of guilt.
The police love the war on drugs because it allows them to play with cool toys and help themselves to the property of the citizenry.
So you think they should have just seized the package and not bothered enforcing the laws and trying to catch the people they reasonably believed to be dealing in large quantities of drugs?
I can understand to some extent the feeling that pot shouldn't be illegal since it's really not physically addictive or overly harmful, but it's not up to the police to choose not to go after people committing what our legislature has decided are very serious crimes.
No, they should have seized the drugs and continued their investigation. But they wanted to play cowboy and knock down a few doors, with these subsequent results. And let's not forget the lying in an attempt to cover this up.
This clearly could have been handled much differently. You can dance all around that, but it doesn't change the fact this this military style raid on this guys home was really stupid.
Again, the LEOs should have hand delivered the package when someone was home, play delivery man, with backup right there, have them sign for it, then detain them, start the investigation...Find out if they're connected etc.
All this hiding in the bushes, dropping the package, waiting for the innocent victims to take it inside and conducting a military style home invasion, killing the dogs...Gezzzz... No matter how you chop it up, this is just nuts.
Defense of this, is even further over the top.
Yeah, they are “just dogs.”
But, there’s also a very good reason they’re called man’s best friend.
Sure, you could go out and adopt another dog. But, no dog could replace Boomer, Spot, or whatever a dog is named. They simply cannot be replaced.
You’re one of them.
No, I will not give you my papers. Shove a knife in my heart if you want them.
Nice smarmy response, but it indicates you have no clue how much these people (drug users) suck out of our economy.
Drugs account for most of the crime in this country....real crimes like robbery, murder, etc.
Drugs account for most of the accidents in this country....auto accidents, industrial accidents, etc.
I have no problem if you want to use drugs. Just use them responsibly or suffer dire consequences. Do the same for alcohol....it is a drug.
If you want to defend working while under the influence, go ahead.
I prefaced the statement with "in an ideal world". In that ideal world it would have been obvious to her that they were cops.
She was screaming because she saw unidentifiable men with guns. Do you think a completely innocent person should have assumed they were cops?
When police are standing out in the open undercover, they wear plain clothes. However the officers approaching the house would have been wearing something indicating they were police. Those in plain clothes would have either put on a vest that said police, or taken off a plain clothed shirt to display clothing indicating they were police.
I haven't seen any reports that indicated otherwise.
However, that doesn't really mean that she realized they were police. She may very well have been focusing on the fact that they were armed and just reacted out of fear.
Even if she did realize they were cops and they were obviously dressed like cops, that doesn't mean seeing them with guns out wouldn't be very frightening to her.
A lot of people in big cities have never been around guns much and have a very strong irrational fear of them. The seem to expect that they will take over the person using them and cause them to start shooting for no good reason.
Though if there was not good reason to shoot the dogs, the officers that shot them might have reinforced that belief.
It is a good thing that will be investigated by people outside of the sheriff's office.
However, when determining if the officer's actions were reasonable, it really doesn't matter who she thought they were, only if they could have reasonable interpreted her yells as having alerted others and that it created a reasonable chance that evidence was being destroyed, or that by waiting it could reasonably have put someone at risk.
They can't really know what she was thinking, just like she couldn't really have known what they were thinking.
The police discovered the package by a drug dog finding it.
I would assume that they also had to open the package and test the contents before a judge would give them a warrant.
The police, having already discovered the dead-drop scheme, knew that the residents at the delivery address didn't have any idea what was in the package.
Where are you hearing that from? Everything I've read would seem to indicate that they discovered the dead-drop scheme only after searching the mayor's house and finding nothing led them down that path.
Ergo, the only possible result of having the police deliver the package and then search for it would be to corruptly implicate people they knew to be innocent.
Which is completely irrational and would cause a rational person to reconsider their assumptions, such as the police being aware of the dead-drop scheme in advance...
Performing a raid on a house where there is no criminal activity going on isn't going to help justify a SWAT team, it's going to cause a backlash even if the evidence did seem to justify it at the time.
Also, the civil forefeiture laws are like Christmas for police forces around the country- they allow them to steal property from citizens without any finding of guilt.
If having a package with drugs in it end up on their property is enough to justify seizing it, why didn't they seize all the FedEx facilities and trucks?
I don't like the civil forfeiture laws either. I believe they are far too easily abused. However, I'm not seeing any evidence they played a role here.
The police love the war on drugs because it allows them to play with cool toys and help themselves to the property of the citizenry.
Your tin foil hat really is on too tight.
If they seized the drugs and didn't try and deliver them they would have tipped people off without creating any solid tie between the drugs and their suspects. They might as well have seized the drugs and made an announcement that they had them and that the bad criminals should quit dealing in drugs.
And let's not forget the lying in an attempt to cover this up.
I've seen evidence of some bad media coverage and possibly a police spokesman that made comments without knowing all the facts while scrambling in the face of bad press.
It makes no real sense that they would lie about the nature of the warrant because the truth is bound to come out. These officers have to be familiar with having to testify in court about such things and would know lies would come back to bite them.
It's not unusual for the story to be a bit muddled in such a situation because the spokesmen make assumptions when pressed for answers rather than waiting to get all the details and then providing clear, correct answers.
Yea, most people give up trying to talk to people who assume that the police must have purposefully raided this house even though they obviously knew they weren't involved with the drugs. When dealing with people that jump to the conclusion that there couldn't have possibly been any reasons for what they did, and they must have been intending to steal their house under seizure laws, making a rational argument often isn't much help.
If doesn't matter that going in could be legally justified once the mother-in-law started yelling, because they have assumed that the police would have gone in anyway because they believe the police are evil. The facts about what actually happened don't matter. The press said they should have had to have a no-knock warrant, it doesn't matter if its true or not, the press said it and they want to believe it.
They don't really want to consider if the actions of the police were reasonable based on what they knew because they have already decided the police are guilty so they will just come up with other things they could have done that in hindsight might have worked out better. They don't particularly care if those alternatives are practical or would result in the police collecting useful evidence if the people in the house really had been using drugs. They don't consider collecting evidence worthwhile because they believe the war on drugs is evil and anyone who is involved must also be the evil spawn of Satan.
Again, the LEOs should have hand delivered the package when someone was home, play delivery man, with backup right there, have them sign for it, then detain them, start the investigation...Find out if they're connected etc.
And then they would have no solid ties between the drugs and the people in the house because they could credibly say they had no idea what was in the package. At least try and come up with an alternative that lets them collect some solid evidence rather than tipping off people without giving them a reasonable chance of every prosecuting anyone.
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