Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 08/07/2008 6:26:37 PM PDT by Kjirstje
When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.
After the raid, Prince George's County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights' mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered earlier.
No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo's home.
This week Prince George's police arrested two men for orchestrating a plot to deliver marijuana to the addresses of unsuspecting recipients -- among them, Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic.
Thursday, Calvo called on the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division to investigate the raid. He said officers burst into his house without knocking or announcing themselves, in violation of the warrant they had.
"Trinity was an innocent and random victim of identity theft. Apparently, so were four or five other county residents whose names and addresses were stolen and used as addresses on drug packages,"
Police officials in Arizona first intercepted the package when a drug-sniffing dog alerted them to the presence of marijuana. It was addressed to Tomsic. An undercover officer in Prince George's delivered the package near 6 p.m. and was told by Calvo's mother-in-law to leave it on the porch, according to Calvo's attorney, Timothy Maloney.
Prince George's County police arrested two men involved in a scheme to transport marijuana. Once packages were dropped off by a deliveryman, a suspect would pick them up -- with the addressee oblivious to the plot. Police seized a half-dozen packages that contained about 417 pounds of marijuana, including the 32 pounds delivered to Tomsic.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
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This sounds suspiciously similar.
What do you want to bet a court will agree with the police that it was a reasonable response. Nothing to see here, move along ....
Several stories about cops of late have totally ruined me about COPS - the TV series.
PG County Ping!
Looks like thing haven’t changed much.
Heck, no. The police are well within their rights because marijuana is horrible and evil and it is against the law. So, regardless of how you come to possess it, it is so bad that you should be arrested and subjected to full cavity searches, just to make sure. The laws are only there to protect us, the citizens. From ourselves. Because we would be a bunch of stoned-out zombies if the wise leaders of our society hadn't made sure to make it illegal, with severe penalties to discourage its use. And if the cops need to go search a persons house with the element of surprise, any and all harm to people or pets is justified to make certain that drug dealers with illegal handguns and assault rifles and pit bull dachshunds do not cause any harm to the police officers who are only doing their job, and following orders according to the drug laws.
No. This wouldn’t have happened a few years ago, though. The Lieutenant and Sergeant in charge of the SWAT team was a lot smarter then and would have known where to go to get a correct warrant. However, the County force has been demoralized for the past decade and the better cops who could left.
I still have two nephews on the force, but they’re in the south of the county.
Oh, the lieutenant and/or sergeant? My eldest brother.
I can think of THREE examples of this kind of thing—the police deliver a package of marijuana to a house and then wait outside for it to be taken inside.
Once someone inside accepts the package, that gives them probable cause to raid the house, in the expectation (hope?)of maybe finding something else conclusive.
However, a known way for drug suppliers to get their stuff distributed is to mail it to random addresses, and the delivery man is their real receiver. The random ‘recipients’ never miss the package (which isn’t delivered) because they weren’t expecting it in the first place.
Police must know this; just as they must know that the mayor’s house was involved; just as they must know that he might have had police protection or a gun of some kind himself.
This whole thing smacks of a set up. Or a dumb, really dumb police force.
Mayor, wife and two dogs
“I would have picked up the pot, but I got high.”
In case you didn't know, Berwyn Heights is a small city, more of a big town, in P.G. County. The local force has 8 police total. The county police didn't know Calvo was the mayor.
I agree it's gross incompetence on the police force's fault. It's not as if the pot was going anywhere.
Terrorism within a false claim of authority is still terrorism. If it can be proved that these SOBs knowingly entered without a no-knock warrant, send them to GITMO and try them for terrorism.
At a minimum, it seems reasonable to identify the offending officers and have their personal vehicles siezed and crushed to the size of a mailbox in front of them. No need to take revenge on their personal pets — their pets should be removed from their custody and given to the victims of their horrific acts.
I know if any ordinary citizen acted in the manner they did, we would be either be dead or locked in a deep dark hole.
At some point, an enthusiastic squad will crash through a door of a well armed and experienced veteran who has committed no crime. He will kill several police officers under the belief that they are home invaders.
He will be tried and acquitted of multiple counts of murder, even if tried several times.
Only then will the message *start* to get through the thick skulls that this is not an appropriate use of police power, except in extraordinary circumstances. But many instances of this kind, perhaps ending up with dozens of dead officers and innocent homeowners, before policies are changed.
Someone who is a criminal may actually rig a site so that it is a death trap capable of killing many officers, but even they might do it in such a way that it appears to be accidental. Say be creating a weak floor over a basement full of carbon dioxide gas, generated by a “defective” piece of equipment. Once the floor collapses, the officers would suffocate in a few seconds, before they could climb out.
A criminal organization could systematically wipe out the drug squad of a police department, as they are doing in Mexico. It is almost a wonder that they haven’t tried to do so already.
In the Post (paper version) they pointed out that the pot delivery was one of many that cops were tracking. The county cops didn’t notify the local cops who could have told them he was Mayor. Also the county cops didn’t have a no-knock (shoot the dogs) warrant, only a regular warrant which would have required knocking and they lied about which warrant they had.
If the drugs were inside, would it have been impossible for the police to send two detectives to knock on the door, show a warrant and go inside?
A drug house surrounded with pit bulls, barbed wire, and known to have several armed residents with long prison records in residence, is one thing.
But a suburban couple with no record is another (i.e., no need to use the SWAT squad; their most likely form of resistance will be to call a lawyer).
Pr. George's Police Arrest 2 In Marijuana-Shipping Plot (Update)
Thread from this evening:
Mayor wants federal probe after SWAT raids house, kills dogs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2058350/posts
I will. They were jack booted thugs and the bootlickers on FR are already defending the cop thugs actions.
I guess it would be within the realm of possibility to turn a Lab mean. I have never seen a mean one tho. They just may be the friendliest dog ever bred. Mine would at least bark, then jump up on a stranger trying to lick his face. I guess to a cop that would be considered a deadly assault and excuse for killing the dog. I mean he might have rabies.
LOL
You sound an awful lot like alot one many militant bootlickers that unfortunately frequent this site. A police state mentality and authority is never ever wrong outlook on things is very conservative and a natural way to express ones desire for liberty doncha know.
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