Posted on 08/13/2008 3:09:59 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about going after employers that hire illegal aliens? Are you at least consistent? Do you think people should have to identify themselves in order to prove they are eligible to work?
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
Really? So you are suggesting telephone records, email records, cell records, contacts, connections etc, could not be established between the real drug users and these victims if there was a connection without an armed raid?
You're suggesting that the real drug users would send $100,000 worth of drugs to their accomplices with absolutely no communication/contact/connection trail whatsoever between them?
No quite friend.
I can tell you've never conducted investigations, complex or otherwise.
Tell me, what ties to the drugs did the victims have after it was taken into the home, then followed by the military style raid, with their pets being shot to death?
Take you're time with these two questions. I can't wait.
Aha! So this all boils down to some sort of personal problem you have with the state of Merlin.
32 pounds of pot is only "worth" this much because the WOD has made it so, and because one of the WOD's general orders is that local police can plunder whatever they want to, so long as they declare it to be "drug related." Let's say you own an expensive imported car that car that costs $100K. One morning you wake up and find it stolen. Do you think for one minute that the cops are going to lavish as much attention on your $100K case as it does on busting a 32-pound package of weed?
I guess I'm just out of touch since I hadn't heard of it.
That's not relevant. the COPS should be aware of the random-address scam, because being aware of the latest scams is their business.
The people inside the house made reasonable decisions based on what they knew. The people outside the house made reasonable decisions based on what they knew.
The people outside the house were supposed to be the professional investigators who should have been aware of several vital facts they were not cognizant of. They compounded that error by violating the terms of the court warrant they held in their hands.
Cancel the entire Prince Georges SWAT budget for the rest of this year and give it to the mayor as a settlement. Then transfer the SWAT function to the state and resolve to start observing the Constitution from now on.
When your police become militarized, the citizens become the enemy. History has always shown this.
If the risk was so high of hostages and/or losing the evidence, the cops should have been more informed on what the were going into. They (and you) can't have it both ways.
I understand the need for SWAT teams. But with the authority to go in using overwhelming force comes responsibility to only use it when justified. All the cops had was a package of weed with an address. That is not enough to justify these type of tactics, regardless if a woman started screaming or not. Not being diligent is probably going to cost them this time.
Excellent point, one I did not know about.
And the rest were very good points.
I tried to point out to skeptic that telephone records, email records, cell records, contacts, connections etc, could be established between the real drug dealers and these victims if there was a connection, without an armed raid.
In addition real drug dealers would not send $100,000 worth of drugs to their accomplices with absolutely no communication/contact/connection trail whatsoever between them. A connection, if there was one, could have been established without a potentially violent raid.
I wonder if cop spokespersons believe that excuse works in the real world
Why did they complete the delivery before performing more thorough investigation? And why not perform the search at the time of the delivery?
Did they? I thought they stored the house like they expected it to be occupied by people who wouldn't shoot back. Most SWAT wannabes would be slaughtered if they actually went against dangerous crooks.
A police officer serving a warrant is required to announce not only that he is an armed person seeking to enter, but also that he is a police officer and that he has a warrant; he is also supposed to show the warrant. Unless you're claiming that the woman shouted "Hey there are some policemen coming with a piece of paper I can tell at this distance is a warrant!" she could not have "announced" for them.
Substitute something else for the pot, have the normal FedEx driver deliver the package on schedule but with some cops in his truck and some more nearby, and see what happens. Best case, when the driver goes to deliver the package, someone is in front of the house waiting there for it. If the person takes the package, have police close in and ask him if he actually lives there. Check his ID against the property ownership records and if he doesn't live there, you've caught the real crook.
Doesn't that sound like a much better approach?
***Out of curiosity, how do you feel about going after employers that hire illegal aliens? Are you at least consistent? Do you think people should have to identify themselves in order to prove they are eligible to work?***
Absolutely
More correctly the People’s Republic of Merlin ~ yup.
Why do you wish to interject an additional factor of "intent" here?
Can you handle a debate where one item at a time is discussed ~ ?
We should keep it that way.
MY response was smarmy when you posted “put them all on an island”?
Interesting.
From a previous article:
Berwyn Heights’ police chief, Patrick A. Murphy, said his agency was not alerted about the raid by county police and that those agencies need to state clearly that Calvo had no involvement with the marijuana ring.
“I see no connection between the mayor and his family and the persons who have been arrested in this case,” Murphy said. “To keep it vague at this point is a serious disservice to this very decent, very honorable man. I think this continues to be an embarrassment.”
During the raid last Tuesday, Calvo’s mother-in-law was handcuffed and laid on the kitchen floor next to the body of 7-year-old Payton, Maloney said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2058132/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2058350/posts
Photo of the Mayor with his wife and dogs at #75 in the second link.
But I’m the smarmy one.
Throughout the whole thread, you’ve been going on that everybody is in the right.
It’s incredibly not true.
Just because the package was addressed to the mayor’s wife, and the JBTs raided the correct address, doesn’t make them right! The supplier or dealer, whomever, sent the package to that address; the delivery man was in on the scheme, and they had somebody designated to pick up the drugs once they were dropped off.
The cops simply raided the wrong house. How does that make them right?
If someone claiming to be a cop, not in full uniform, says he has a warrant and demands to be let into your house, but refuses to show either a warrant or identification, should you let such a person in? If one would not be under an obligation to let in a claimed cop who presents neither warrant nor identification, but is at least nice enough to state his business, why should one be under an obligation to a claimed cop who neither presents any documentation nor takes the time to even state his business?
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