TheAgitator.com
More on Mayor Calvo
Monday, September 15th, 2008Over the weekend, Washington Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher wrote a terrific column on the botched drug raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo. Snippet:
Critics of no-knock raids say they not only result in too many errors, sometimes with tragic results, but undermine efforts at community policing, the building of trust and relationships that is critical to effective crime-fighting, such as Berwyn Heights’ requirement that its officers go to every local youth ballgame, get out of the car and walk around chatting with people.
"Telling the people that these officers followed procedure and did nothing wrong sends a chilling message," Calvo says. "And then we wonder why people who live in high-crime areas don’t trust the police. They treated us like animals. They were not there to protect and serve, they were there to search and destroy."
Calvo intends to seek stronger county oversight of SWAT deployments, and that would certainly help. But as long as we continue to glamorize the police when they take on the trappings of the military, more people will be shocked out of bed in the middle of the night, more dogs will be shot on sight, and we’ll have ever more reason to wonder why the police are treated like enemy occupiers.
Fisher attended a Cato panel on no-knock raids that I spoke at last week. After the event, i recorded a podcast for Cato, available here. You can also now watch an archived video of the forum here.
[...] finally, gonna kick it over to my boy Radley Balko… sure, he’s a libertarian which means he’s going to be wrong in every conceivable [...]
Cato really needs to stop using RealVideo.
Great panel! I was particularly impressed by Mayor Calvo’s clear, concise, level-headed and intelligent presentation–especially impressive so soon after the traumatic experience he and his family had.
Oh, and you were great too, Radley. ;)
“Cato really needs to stop using RealVideo.”
Exactly. It’s a dead format.
“They were not there to protect and serve, they were there to search and destroy.”
America 2008? Or Germany 1938?
The truth is hard to swallow.
I continue to be impressed by Mayor Calvo’s courage and candor. His willingness to speak out and suggest real alternatives to continuing police militarization is inspiring. Hopefully his example will encourage many others to research the issue and demand an end to this travesty. As Agitator readers are well aware, we cannot rely only on great leaders to implement radical reform (or even incremental change, it seems), a critical mass will be required to end this mockery of the constitution.
Calvo did a great job. He has a broad view of what happened to him and some public speaking experience, which I think has helped get his case some of the attention it deserves.
He didn’t go into detail, but he mentioned that the time the warrant for the raid was signed after he finished walking his dogs, picked up the package on the porch, and walked into his home. And it was signed in Bowie, Maryland, some distance away. So, it seems like the sheriff didn’t even have a legitimate warrant signed by the time they decided to bust into Calvo’s home.
This was the first I had heard of this (Calvo’s mention of it start at about the 20:00 mark in the Cato Real Video stream). Has this point gotten attention before and I’ve just missed it? Isn’t it a legal problem if the people going to serve a warrant don’t have the warrant by the time they start breaking down doors?
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I’d also mention that the speaker from LEAP really was the 800 pound gorilla in the room. As Calvo and Radley said, the police procedures are a mess, and I agree with the recommendations Radley gave in his podcast segment, but it’s the drug policy that exacerbates these otherwise procedural issues into an ongoing travesty of justice. The whole issue of police militarization, botched raids, civil asset forfeiture, etc. would be a statistical aberration if not for their use in the drug war. Whenever it comes up, some of these other (admittedly important) issues end up seeming like fretting about reducing skin irritation with a better shaving cream when you’re being repeatedly punched in the face.