oooops, our bad... the guy that killed him became their school "Officer Friendly" and that was the end of it.
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.
I agree- that was utter cowardice on their part. In a situation like that, protecting the officers' lives should have been secondary to trying to stop the shooters. I remember watching that and screaming at the television for them to go into the school.
oooops, our bad... the guy that killed him became their school "Officer Friendly" and that was the end of it.
Defend it if you want to. There was every evidence that a crime had been committed, and the police were within their rights to execute a warrant.
So try sending a couple of uniforms to the door, knock, and execute the warrant.
Trust me, if SWAT starts up my front walk, guns at the ready, my wife will probably start screaming too. And my dogs will go nuts, and probably the idiots will start shooting.
***If SWAT just knocked down the homes of FReepers, I would not be surprised if a gun fight broke out and people died (in most cases NOT the SWAT since they would be moving in with fingers on the trigger).***
You really think FReepers would go quietly?
#40 Above = Where?? = I can’t stand it when people post articles and others don’t have a clue WHERE?
FYI / FWIW = California, USA: El Dorado County, east of Sacramento, in the foothills / mountains. (Gold was discovered in Coloma, 1848)
Placerville = County Seat. Shingle Springs = a small, but growing town.
They were investigating a case where a FedEx driver and his accomplice were intercepting packages of drugs sent to innocent people. They had no indication that the people whose houses the packages were sent to had anything to do with this scam. So, yes, I'd consider these people to be innocent civilians.
The police said they started yelling who they were and burst in because of fear that the suspected drug dealers inside might be arming them selves and preparing organized resistance, or destroying evidence.
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. 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."
No, which is what I said in my post. FReepers would probably die because the SWAT would be coming in in force and with fingers on the trigger, while the FReepers would be rushing to grab their fire-arm. Let me add that it is sad that it would be the FReepers going down, because (in my book) if some masked men rush into my house they will be identified as crooks.
Is that "local" enough for your taste?
The cops had the correct address.
Exactly.
That sums up this issue as clearly as anything.
I don’t think they would be too far away from any firearm.
The ONLY time a "dynamic entry" type situation is warranted is in an active hostage crisis. NO "drug bust" is worth the risk of the kinds of screwups that are endemic with "Swat team" drug raids. They SHOULD be proscribed, period.
There simply is none.
This kind of violence won’t stop, as politcians can’t be seen as “soft on crime.” Magistrates don’t have the courage to refuse to sign these “warrants.” The Fourth Amendment is dead. It will continue to get worse. The only pragmatic solution is attrition.
I mean attrition of SWAT team members; attrition of municipal budgets lost to immense punitive judgments; attrition of magistrates removed from the bench.
I didn’t say druggies wouldn’t or don’t hurt anyone. Nice try to change my post though.
What I said is that no one’s life is worth it for drugs. If some moron wants to off himself by injecting whatever drugs he wants, so be it. I really don’t care. But don’t come busting in my house guns a blazing in the name of protecting me from drugs on the street.
If a person commits a crime, they should go to jail. I just don’t think drugs should be the reason to go to jail. If they steal to get a fix, go to jail for theft.
Not because I like drugs, or think they are a good thing. But because “fighting” them is doing no good. Keeping a junkie alive in prison is prolonging the length of time we as society has to deal with them.
Maybe we should stop referring to them as “SWAT” and start referring to them as what they really are: government-trained home invasion gangs.
I bet you even believe that if dope was totally legal none of these people would ever show up at the dealer's door ready to kill him for his stash.
>The dogs are just the canary in the coal mine here. People are dying and the Constitution is being trampled. <
Even when people are just thrown to the floor and handcuffed, there is an enormous violation of Constitutional rights occurring. We should feel secure in our homes, not wonder each night if some cowboy sheriff is getting ready to send a squad full of goons through our door.
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