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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.
We can’t legalize DRUGS. The analogy to Prohibition is obviously false, because just because. We have to get the POT off the STREETS! It’s for the children.
The last one had the convenience of, um, regional boundaries to largely (though not completely) identify the parties and allow them to organize like nations ("states" doesn't quite work here). I'm trying to imagine an "internalized" CW where the factions are distributed all over, though with variations (I live in a blue state).
The package was apparently detected in Arizona, and was intercepted by LEOs, and was delivered to the unsuspecting victims, by LEOs.
From what I understand, this was a LE operation gone very bad.
If in fact this is what occurred, any fool with a bone to pick, wanting revenge, could set anyone up for an armed, violent, home invasion raid, all done by LEOs.
Think about it.
They had red light type areas in Switzerland where people went to do drugs,if they got caught out side those areas they were arrested
Legalize it,let the druggies work low level jobs where their not a danger and put the money thats being spent on jail and raids and all that kind of crap into anti drug education programs
First of all, since when does possession of plant material justify a higher level of police attention than robbery with violence? That's a problem of legal definition. Second, any police department with an IQ higher than a donut is going to be aware of whatever current scams are going around. The 'delivery to a random address' scam is one we civilians (or Crown Subjects, as the case may be) have all heard of. Cops who are not aware of this have no business playing with military equipment.
I'm pretty well armed, a good shot, and fairly well self taught in tactics, and I have no illusions that I could hold off a SWAT team for any length of time at all. They use the two key elements of overwhelming force and surprise to prevent the suspect from standing any kind of chance, as I would of course expect.
When they break in at two in the morning, or just after dinner when your wife and kids are lounging in front of the TV, you're totally unprepared. Add to that that they frequently arrive in near platoon strength, and you really stand no chance unless your house is made of a welded steel cage of 1/2" sheet steel, and you have trip wires and trap doors with punji sticks waiting for them. Along with a fully equipped Vulcan .30 cal. Otherwise, you're just dead meat, no matter how bad you think you are.
Concur, but your boys seem largely incapable of staying on their side of the line.
If they don’t go after civilians, it defeats the purpose of HAVING SWAT teams.
The fact is the SWAT teams are pu$$ies. They go after one person or two people that are not very dangerous (relatively speaking).
The cops know where the gangs hang out. They know where the strongholds of the gangs and drug dealers are. They never go in with force and take them down because they are pu$$ies.
They want to terrorize John Q Public by raiding small fish or wrong addresses, and offer an “OOPS, Sorry” when they kill the wrong people and their animals. Keep in line or SWAT will get you.
But the nazis never go after what they were designed (or at least what they SAID they were designed) to go after.
This was my idea. Make SWAT an adjunct of the National Guard, with real military training, stationed at NG armories and activated only by the governor when requested by local police. They would operate on salary in the state budget and would get no part of any property seizures.
He obviously didn’t listen to the other SWAT officers telling him to drop his gun and get on the ground.
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“....for a box of pot.”
Your thought brought out another little secret fact.
Police get a lot of money doing drug raids. They can seize just about everything, and they get a nice hefty cut of it.
It’s like pharmeceutical parking tickets. They are revenue generators. It’s not just about getting drugs off the streets. There is a financial link between it as well that benefits the cops.
Thats why I'm afraid we are going to have go the route of a constitutional amendment to end the drug war and the noknock warrents/ property seizures,its become a money making,power seizeing scheme for the goverment
These military types should be sent to the Mexican border or middle east.
How often do suspects seek to engage in shootouts with police? Given that police are less likely to be killed on the job than taxi drivers, and that most police fatalities are a result of vehicle collisions, the widespread use of pseudo-SWAT raids is patently unreasonable.
What's wrong with the old-fashioned approach of forming a perimeter and using a megaphone to get a suspect's attention? If a citizen looks out his window and sees a half-dozen cop cars with flashing lights, he can have a pretty good clue that the people outside are police (among other things, most non-badge-wearing criminals would be loath to call such attention to themselves). By contrast, in most pseudo-SWAT raids, the police deliberately try to avoid letting citizens recognize them as police. How can that possibly be a wise or reasonable idea (and by extension to the latter point, how can it possibly be legitimate, since per Article VI and Amendment IV, any unreasonable searches are illegitimate).
From what I've read, the cops did not have a no-knock warrant. Can you suggest any even-remotely-reasonably exigent circumstances that would justify the no-knock raid?
On the other hand they actually had a warrant.
I generally use the term pseudo-SWAT. By my understanding, the original SWAT teams were a highly-trained elite. Today, most so-called SWAT teams are little more than ordinary cops who are handed fancier weapons and told to play "cops and robbers".
Another reform would be to recognize that if a jury who knew about the background and execution of a search would consider it unreasonable, it's unreasonable and therefore illegitimate. Defendants should be allowed to require that the prosecution justify any searches used to collect evidence against them, and juries should be instructed to disregard any evidence from searches they find to be unreasonable. Note that jurors who live in fear of SWAT teams breaking in their door would be less inclined to find such tactics reasonable than those without such fear.
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