TheAgitator.com
The Berwyn Heights Drug Raid: The Police Keep Digging
Friday, August 8th, 2008
The violent drug raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo is now making national headlines. Calvo was also on CNN yesterday.
In the raid, police in Prince George’s County, Maryland intercepted a package addressed to Calvo’s wife that contained about 30 pounds or marijuana. Undercover officers completed the delivery to Calvo’s home, then stormed the place in SWAT gear when Calvo brought the package inside. During the raid, the police shot and killed Calvo’s two black labs, including one Calvo says was running away to hide. Calvo and his mother-in-law were then handcuffed and questioned at gunpoint while his dead dogs lay nearby in pools of their own blood.
Since the raid last week, we’ve learned that police have arrested two men in conjunction with a scheme using delivery services to ship marijuana across the country. The plan was for operatives within the companies to intercept the packages before they reached their targets. The destination addresses may have been random, or simply chosen because of their location along routes convenient to the scheme. In fact, the Washington Post reports in the story linked above that some packages were accidentally delivered, at which point operatives went to the houses of the innocent people who’d received them to ask for their return.
Despite all of this, Prince George’s County police refuse to apologize for the no-knock raid, for the tactics they used in the raid, or for killing Calvo’s dogs.
Prince George’s County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely … innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.
High told the Washington Post that the raid "was conducted responsibly, given what deputies and officers knew at the time." That’s absurd. High doesn’t even seem to consider the possibility that perhaps the officers didn’t know enough to conduct the raid when they did, and that maybe they should have done a bit more investigating before going all commando on the Calvo family.
Interestingly, the state of Maryland does not issue warrants no-knock raids. However, police may determine at the scene that a no-knock entry is necessary if one of two conditions are present. The first if the police have reasonable suspicion that the suspect may pose a threat to the officers’ safety. The second is if police have reasonable suspicion that the suspect may destroy the evidence.
Though these two "exigent circumstances" exceptions carve gaping holes in the knock-and-announce requirement, it’s difficult to see how this situation fit either exception. Prince George’s police say they heard Calvo’s mother-in-law scream as they approached, which they say made them fear someone inside may grab a gun or dispose of the marijuana.
Both prospects are dubious. If the police had done any surveillance or investigation at all, they’d have realized that this was the home of the local mayor, an unlikely candidate to engage in a suicide shootout with raiding cops. And unless the Calvos own an industrial strength toilet, it’s unlikely that he’d have been able to flush 30 pounds of marijuana in the time it takes police to knock and announce themselves.
Moreover, even if seeing the cops approaching did tip off Calvo and his mother-in-law, that’s the whole purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement—to give suspects notice that the police are coming, and to allow them the opportunity to consent to a peaceful search and avoid the violence of a forceful police entry.
Still, courts have in the past been loathe to question police officers who find exigent circumstances at the scene of the search. Perhaps the high profile of this raid will lead to more scrutiny.
Finally, I guess I’d just add that the national media coverage of the Berwyn Heights raid seems to be predicated on the assumption that the most troubling aspects of the raid—the killing of the dogs, the violent tactics, the lax investigation, the likely innocent victims, and the police obstinacy after the fact—are unusual. They aren’t. The only thing unusual about this raid is that its victim happened to be an elected politician.
That was what bothered me about the CNN.com coverage. The only recognition that this happens elsewhere was:
CNN could have done a pinch of research (hell, a 3 minute google search) or even recollected other news coverage (they are a news agency….) and realized that the regrettable actions police took against Calvo’s family are now Standard Operating Procedure across the nation. Maybe you should send the appropriate department within CNN your Overkill whitepaper?
“Perhaps the high profile of this raid will lead to more scrutiny.”
Let’s keep our fingers and toes crossed.
And I’ll say it before someone else beats me to it:
Prince George’s County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were “most likely … innocent victims,” but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.
Is he High?
**
*[rimshot]*
CNN should really have you on the air, Radley. I’d say that you’re far and away the leading expert on cop-on-dog violence.
To be fair, the police are trained to shoot at anything that’s black.
“The only thing unusual about this raid is that its victim happened to be an elected politician.”
BINGO!
Front & center on foxnews.com
I’m actually impressed that this is getting so much coverage.
I’m not. It happened to someone important and not Citizen Nothings, important people are usually identified and treated as proper citizens. This Important Person just wasn’t identified in time and got the regular treatment. That is the scandal.
If you were normal citizen, and you felt threatened by a dog that came into your yard and growled at you, then you shot it, you would not be charged with anything right. Wrong you would be.
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/3347964/
This is even worse, and thank god not as bad, because a 13 year old girl is lucky to be alive.
Even though the address is known to be wrong, the cops would never enter your house without a good warrant.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/3346862/
Thats right different people in a small city, but so close to this Mayor’s story that it is scary. Both events happened yesterday.
Of course the soldier that was threatened by the dog is in troubled for shooting it (his uniform is camouflage, cops clown suits are blue), so when they are scared they can shoot.
The 13 yr old girl scared the cops that should not have been in the house, so she is very lucky that she still lives.
Yup.
Shooting a dog running to hide…yeah that sounds about right. Big brave police officers, protecting us from friendly dogs.
Yes, also typically. Police can always act on too little information, there is never a down side.
This is simply disgusting because it puts human lives behind the value of evidence. It is vile and despicable and should be absolutely barred by law with extremely severe punishments, IMO.
This doesn’t even pass the smell test. They weren’t going in with a knock-and-announce, hence the mother-in-law screaming is irrelevant. Cops have become so arrogant they think everyone is going to fall for this sort of bravo sierra.
The bottomline here is that the police officers engaged in this fiasco are lazy thugs who love their bang sticks and making pew pew with those who can’t fight back. They should all be summarily fired and the standard policy should be to give a bad recommendation if they look for another law enforcement job. In fact, I’d go even further, have it set up so that these guys have this incident and their violent, bumbling ways are part of any credit or criminal background check. Ideally, it should hard for them to get a job on the street corner cleaning the windshields cars waiting for red lights.
What gets me is the supposed progressive community is acting as if this was something that is unusual. as anyone who follows this issue learns quickly, the only thing unusual about this is that the victims were prominent White people.
But what’s really amusing is the silence that you hear from those same professed ‘progressives’ regarding their own culpability in enabling the DrugWar. I’ve been visiting the comment sections of various progressive sites like Digby’s Hullabaloo and bringing up how the ’silence of the (’political’) lambs’ evinced by most ‘progressives’ regarding his issue has led to their political emasculation courtesy of minority group drug offense felony voter disenfranchisement, and all I get is cross-talk about how bad the poh-leece are. Pathetic…
But…I guess it can’t be helped. When you’re an accessory to a crime like this, there’s an almost instinctual understanding it’s best to clam up, rather than be forced to admit that culpability. After all, it was during the so-called ‘Progressive Era’ last century that the drug laws were spawned to keep anyone with a skin coloration 3 shades darker than WonderBread in line. How ‘progressive’ can that be, hmmm?
Considering
So, is THIS mayor going to be handing out medals to recognize the bravery and skill of the police & deputies?
@Mike Leatherwood: If he does, I would like to know the amount of money it took to buy him off.
Just to reiterate:
But, clearly, it was not conducted responsibly, given the actual facts known now. It seems we are hearing that not knowing enough justifies a raid. Bad policy. Further, it is a policy that encourages police to find out as little as possible before conducting raids as the lack of foreknowledge equates to lack of police responsibility when things go wrong.
Of course,
Because, naturally, they would have treated the mayor differently than some ordinary scum without a government job. Moreover, the police don’t go to arrest “an address”, they go to arrest people. So, it was about the residents at that address, even if the police were too deliberately ill-informed to know who they were.
The most disturbing bit to me was the summary of when a raid team can decide that dynamic entry is justified.
The obvious question, by that criteria, when is a no-knock raid not justified? I want someone to ask the police spokesdrone that question. “Please name an actual drug raid where, given what the police knew going in, they would have been disciplined for switching to dynamic entry?” As far as I can tell, the only time the police wouldn’t be able to “suspect” that someone in a house might be armed or dangerous or than evidence might be destroyed is if they are certain the place is unoccupied, in which case they will end up busting down the door anyway. This is no limit at all and, as before, it encourages the bad policy of going into a raid with as little information as possible because that justifies any action.
From the same article, I thought this was a gem
Of course not. Why would they? They clearly feel more comfortable releasing uninformed official statements of their version of the raid without any inconvenient conflicts with the statements of the victims.
I agree with others who have said that I am glad this is getting so much attention because the targets are a photogenic couple whose dogs were killed, who are part of officialdom, and who got in front of cameras before the thugs could dig up any dirt on them. The normal media practice is to assume the government is right and the defendants have done something wrong. In this case, it’s a little tougher to pick the “official” story and report the other side dismissively.
‘Progressive Era’ last century that the drug laws were spawned to keep anyone with a skin coloration 3 shades darker than WonderBread in line.
And what does any of that have to do with progressives? And, exactly whom do you specifically speak of when you say “progressives” that enabled the drug laws that were passed the last half of the 20th century? You say a mouthful, with little detail. Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Clinton were the main administrations during that time frame, none to be confused with progressive government, nor was the mostly centrist legislative opposition…again what is your point? There has been little MS political effort to stand up to drug laws as they mounted during any period of time during that century, from prohibition forward, that is well known. Just trying to understand what it is exactly you are trying to say…if anything.
#13 and #14, if he changes his tune, it will most likely be due to intimidation of the local police union or FOP claiming that he is pro-drug and anti-cop before the next election. Then he might feel pressure to pin a medal next to a badge to make it clear he is “against bad police policy and not the officers who execute it”. I hope he resists, but if they get to him, that’s the method I would suspect. These are stick people, not carrot people.
It all sounds right to me. The police screw up and despite all evidence to the contrary, they refuse to admit error. They are perfect. Them and Jesus. I understand that logic is regarded as taboo with our government and especially, our police forces but it seems to me that this could ALL be avoided. Easily. And cheaper. And safer. How much would it take for ONE man to check and verify WHO lives at the resident…are they past criminals….etc? 1-2 hours? Seriously. Instead…I’m sure that the squad was briefed for an hour. Loaded up. Transported. How many men? How much time and effort was wasted for how many men? At least 8 men I would guess. 4-5-6 hours at a minumum from start to finish? But then what’s the comparison between smart, efficient police work compared to guns, grenades, and door smashing. Let’s not forget the added bonus of getting to shoot something live and then be able to claim…” I was scared” and no questions are ever really asked…be it pets OR people. Hell…they even give you ribbons, comendations, and promotions for it. What’s not to like about the system?
Maybe I’m just stupid and missing something….
That’s a handy trick. Police get warrants based on little information, then do whatever they want because they don’t know better.
What I don’t understand is how is picking up a package delivered to you and bringing it into the house a crime when having it delivered to you is less so? I mean, the police delivered the package that was addressed to the Mayor. The Mayor saw it, picked it up, and brought it inside. That’s what normal people do when they have packages. So how is this a crime? Did they think he was going to rip into it and light up immediately? Did they give him time to open it, see it was something illegal, and call the police?
Mack- your stories have imortant differences… the dog went onto the soldier’s property and he felt it was aggressive. Maybe he shouldn’t have shot the dog, but that’s a bit different than going onto someone’s property and shooting their dogs.
The 13 year old girl incident… the cops went in because the door was ajar. This wasn’t a SWAT exercise. While scary and demonstrating inefficient govt. bureaucracy (how many times do you have to come to the wrong address to make a change?!!), this doesn’t look like abuse to me.
” and, in fact, our people did not know that this was the home of the mayor and his family until after the fact.”
Now there’s an example of competent, responsible police work . . .
No wonder some of us are more wary of the cops than of any of the other thugs roaming the streets at night.
““The only thing unusual about this raid is that its victim happened to be an elected politician.”
BINGO!”
Oh and hey chief, don’t forget your blunder is “national headlines”!! Which means global exposure!
One can only hope that many more of the shippers and CI’s will learn the addresses of Police chiefs, swat members, and more elected politiocs!
Then the message will bet heard, one a week?
[...] however, that the FBI will find any fault with the police conduct in this case. As Radley Balko points out, this story is really only unique in that the victim happened to the city’s mayor. Shooting [...]
ZappaCrappa,
You’re not missing anything. Cops are human and respond to incentives just like everyone else does. A bunch of guys get to play soldier; dynamically enter homes; shoot person, property, and pet; falsify reports; skim off the top; shake down informants for info and steal from them after controlled buys; and, best of all, not get held accountable. Better even, they get commendations, medals, promotions, pay grade bumps, and public praise.
This mayor should get in touch with the governor of Illinois about that “elite tactical team” they’re going to be funding with speeding ticket cameras. Let him know that public officials aren’t necessarily immune to these things.
Maybe the cops had to break down the door and shoot the dogs because they were worried that the occupants would get rid if the evidence by feeding it to the dogs…
Marty: :your stories have imortant differences…”
I agree they are not exact, but close and the differences of the after effects are the scary part.
“the dog went onto the soldier’s property and he felt it was aggressive. Maybe he shouldn’t have shot the dog, but that’s a bit different than going onto someone’s property and shooting their dogs.”
Yes the soldier was growled at by a dog from a neighbor in his own yard and then charged for shooting it and shooting in city limits. The cops bust into the mayors house, probably knowing the mayor was innocent beforehand, and they will get nothing for shooting his dog that was running away. Now the biggest difference is one is a citizen nobody (penalized), the other is a clown suited thug (rewarded).
“The 13 year old girl incident… the cops went in because the door was ajar. This wasn’t a SWAT exercise. While scary and demonstrating inefficient govt. bureaucracy (how many times do you have to come to the wrong address to make a change?!!), this doesn’t look like abuse to me.”
The police may act as though they did not know the perp for whom the arrest warrant did not live there for at least 8 years now, and they had been there at least two times prior so I’m betting bullshit is in the air, because they knew. The scary part here is that the girl could have been shot easily, and the cop would have gotten away it, because he would have claimed he was scared by her.
Now I’m not sure how legal the entry was by the police, but by them saying with this arrest warrant, and having seen movement in the house we can enter sounds a little fishy to me.
I do know that I am from a small town in Iowa, and no one even to this day locks their doors, but them farmers would shoot your ass in a heart beat if you just walked in without being asked in.
Every time I read these type of stories…I cringe for all those out there who have no idea of what is happening…across our cities…or that it can happen to anyone…especially when standards are not applied equally to all persons.
A vehicle take down for a buy-bust drug protocol is what was used to approach my son who was to be served with a routine document search warrant. Because gambling was newly included under the narcotics umbrella and since no rules had yet been (and in fact may still not be) instituted for document search warrants for gambling…my son was approached by SWAT officers using a drug protocol which is highly dangerous, and he in fact was unjustly shot and killed by a veteran officer of the Fairfax County Police Dept./SWAT team.
Athough my son was determined to be by police assessment, a low-risk, non-threat, no criminal history, never owned a weapon, Fairfax County optometrist, who was standing errect in his stocking feet, wearing a pair of jeans, and short sleeved polo shirt, while talking with the undercover detective peaceably at the undercover detective’s vehicle, who then signalled the SWAT team, while he (my son) had no idea he was and had been misled by the undercover detective, my son stood quietly compliant while he was nevertheless met with dynamic over-excessive force, and although he made no attempt to move…he had his life stolen from him and our family, at the age of 37.
Conscience seems to be lacking in many who cause mayhem and then are abled and allowed to just walk away without so much as a second thought for those whose lives they traumatize or change forever.
I am sorry that two of God’s four-legged creatures were killed…but what was done to my son, broke God’s fifth commandment…and our families hearts.
Everyone needs to wake up and stop the insanity…eventually we all will be accountable…if not now…then to Him someday.
# 29
I neglected to add our website which will be updated shortly.
http://www.justiceforsal.com
I wish people would recognize that cops who unlawfully break into houses for the purpose of attacking the occupants aren’t just civil-rights violators; they’re robbers, and should be regarded as such. If someone, whether an innocent or an robber, gets killed during such a break-in, the robbers are murderers.
And we all accuse China of civil rights violations.We are such hypocrites.
What do you mean “we”, lazerhead? I’m sure you’ve noticed that many here do not give the US a pass when it comes to human rights. I’m not violating the rights of others, so I feel free to call out China, and the US as well.
Notice how Sheriff Jackson is squealing like a stuck pig (pun intended) now that the Justice department is going to do a body cavity search on him and his department over this?
The asstard needs to bend over and take it like a man. If I had my way, he would be bending over — over a prison bunk, that is.
Or maybe we should bring back the whipping post and show Jackson how the rest of us on the plantation live.
Well, maybe the police only shot the dogs to prevent them from getting high. Did you ever consider that possibility, huh?
Whiners. They got 30 pounds of pot. The cartels are probably already out of business. Imagine the improvement in GPA now that the kids won’t be able to find any pot to smoke.
Hopefully, the mayor isn’t expecting an apology. Police never do anything wroung.
“Prince George’s County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were “most likely … innocent victims,” but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.”
Chief, what you been smokin’? Whatever it is, it couldn’t be pot.
Ben, as I explained in the thread at Digby’s, the fact of the matter is that during the historical period known in American history as the ‘Progressive Era’, the first national drug prohibition laws were formulated. Those laws were promulgated under the rubric of being products of social engineering, purportedly to create a better society through prohibiting what were then cheap, legal substances.
However, there was a much uglier impetus involved as well…a racial one. Recall the old line about how you couldn’t sell ‘firewater’ to ‘Injuns’? The same rationale - based upon the same ugly prejudice - was involved in the formulation of the drug prohibition laws.
Minorities were thought to be literally barely civilized and that tenuous veneer of civilization would be destroyed courtesy of exposure to those then legal drugs. Blacks were thought to become unstoppable, rapacious killers that could not be brought down by the then standard .32 caliber ammo supplied to police departments, hence the ‘upgrade’ to .38 caliber ammo. Mexicans were thought to become insane machete-wielding dervishes after toking The Demon Weed. Such were the beliefs of the so-called ‘progressives’ of the day.
Now, you’d think that in these supposedly enlightened times, with nearly a century of proofs belying those stereotypes, that there would be a great hue-and-cry from so-called ‘progressives’ to eliminate these racially offensive laws. Particularly when you consider the very damaging effect that these laws have upon the political fortunes of the Democratic Party, which is heavily dependent upon the votes of minority members of the population as a large portion of its’ base, and which considers itself the political home of ‘progressives’.
Recall what happened in Florida during the 2000 Election, with all those voters stripped from the rolls? The vast majority of those who were, in the case of those who were legally on that list of the disenfranchised (and not those lumped in because their names were similar to the felons) were minorities. Minorities who were disenfranchised thanks to felony drug convictions…for something that wasn’t a crime prior to the ‘Progressive Era’.
You’d think the ‘progressive’ community would be raising Hell, wouldn’t you? You’d think there’d be ringing denunciations of the provable racist nature of the drug laws, and therefore, the DrugWar. But what do we hear, instead? Crickets chirping sound positively deafening in comparison to the silence when the subject is brought up in those very same ‘progressive’ quarters.
‘Progressives’ have been noticeably absent in the legislative trenches in the fight to end drug prohibition. And yet they’re the first to decry situations like this when they happen. But…they refuse to consider their own culpability in acquiescing to the underlying problem leading to the results.
If every time you bend over, you feel a sharp pain in your anus, and you keep seeing the same guys hovering around your backside wielding sawed-off broom handles and wearing evil smiles, and you can’t make the connection, then you may be pitied for being stupid.
If you can make the connection, and won’t, then you have no excuse for what happens.
Drug Prohibition has hurt this nation by depriving millions of the chance to change society peaceably via the democratic process by their being stripped from the voting rolls and socially and economically marginalized to boot courtesy of not being able to get a job thanks to those laws.
Arguably, this hurts the ‘progressive’ community several orders of magnitude more that it does what passes for the ‘conservative’ one. Yet, as I pointed out, their silence on the issue of the drug prohibition itself is suspect. Which makes any righteous indignation uttered in response to this and other similar incidents ring hollow.
I call BS on the claim the police did not know it was the mayor’s address. You mean to tell me the police did not do a look see to make sure there were any known felons at the address? To check if any outstanding warrants were in effect for the residents? That they did not look at any available site or building plans?
Also I recall reading a couple of years back about the practice of sending pot or other controlled substances then picking up the package before the addressee had a chance to bring it inside. So how is it that the police department and the sheriff’s department had never heard of this practice?
HOLY SHIT!!!! http://wjz.com/local/police.raid.mayor.2.790454.html
Radley we need one of your updates…
“”This has happened before, and without oversight, it will happen again,” said Mayor Calvo. “If that is the standard of justice that Prince George’s County Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department want to operate, I think we have a fundamental problem. They’re not allowed to rewrite the Constitution of the United States.”
Now county police say the package had nothing to do with the mayor. They say it was part of a larger drug scheme, and they’ve made two arrests, collecting six large packages containing $3.6 million worth of marijuana. That’s 417 pounds of pot, but they still believe the raid was justified.
“There was a search warrant involved in that situation that authorized those activities,” said Chief Melvin High, Prince George’s Co. Police.
Mayor Calvo is demanding a federal civil rights investigation into the no-knock raid, a raid he says a judge never authorized.
“We were astonished that not only did they not apologize, but they refused to clear our names,” said Mayor Calvo.
He has the support of several lawmakers who are calling for action.
“When I heard about this, all I could think of was, my goodness, this could have happened to anybody,” said Sen. Jennie Forehand.”
Cops Screwed The Pooch…
Sorry in advance for the horrible pun, and I'll probably set richtaylor off with this story, but I've been following this story in the local news for the past week. It made the national news yesterday. The Washington Post reported on the orig…
This case is far less egregious than the Lima one. So, from the POV of officers, compare the comments on a popular law enforcement social network in this case with those in the Lima one.
There is an entire culture here that needs to be challenged.
The police have attacked people whose credibility with the public is greater than their own and have done so in an obviously petty and cruel manner. They have wronged the family involved in a way which cannot be dealt with in a private settlement. Moreover their victims see this as part of a systemic problem, at least in the police force concerned. There is a chance of some good coming out of this.
But the problem is still the public supporting anything that makes them feel safe no matter what harm is done to others. There is too much rationalizing and excuse making by the public. Not enough people are willing to describe the well intentioned as evil or to see that when good intentions become obsessive then they become a source of evil.
[...] first, and apparently, the raid has turned out to be a huge mistake. The mayor’s house wasn’t the intended recipient of the drug package, and the SWAT team didn’t have a no-knock warrant to conduct the raid anyway. Yet the Prince [...]
Lots of news for a few days. Promise of an FBI investigation. Then SILENCE. Why no followup? Why no interest? Can all parties really be exonerated after shooting family pets in the back? -ab-
[...] first, and apparently, the raid has turned out to be a huge mistake. The mayor’s house wasn’t the intended recipient of the drug package, and the SWAT team didn’t have a no-knock warrant to conduct the raid anyway. Yet the Prince [...]