TheAgitator.com
Maryland Senate Holds Hearings on SWAT Transparency Bill
Monday, March 9th, 2009Last week, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee held hearings on a new bill that would require every police agency in the state with a SWAT team to issue quarterly reports on how often the teams are deployed, why they were deployed, what happened during the warrant service, and what was found. It is a small but vital step toward allowing for a proper assessment of just how often paramilitary-style tactics are being used in Maryland, how often things go wrong, and whether they’re being used as advertised.
Several witnesses at the hearing described yet more terrifying wrong-door raids, in cases never before reported.
Karen Thomas told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee that she heard Howard County police shoot and kill her dog in her Ellicott City living room in September 2007, while she lay upstairs on the floor, surrounded by police who had not identified themselves.
“In my mind, terrorists had just killed my son and they were going to kill me next,” she told committee members.
Thomas said that police were searching for drugs, but none were found…
Choking back tears, Boyd Petit told committee members that during an April 2008 raid on his Highland home, a police tactical team had handcuffed him and his family outside his home, at gunpoint and in front of his neighbors, while other officers searched his house.
“Our collective lives flashed before our eyes,” he said.
Petit claimed the raid on his house was prompted by a former customer, who made false allegations about him to police. He said police were searching for a specific weapon, but it was not found.
Right now, it looks like the bill will get through committee. It’s being pushed by Cheye Calvo, the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor who was subjected to a particularly violent but mistaken raid on his home.
whats the over/under on passing?
Radley – what do you make of this – https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/157ehmas.asp?pg=2 – Weekly Standard article.
Relevant portion below
The same principle applies in police work. The Washington Post Magazine recently ran a story about the mayor of Berwyn Heights, a small town in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The county police executed a drug raid on the mayor’s house; the raid turned up no evidence but left Mayor Calvo and his wife traumatized; among other things, the police shot and killed the couple’s two dogs. Even the best police forces sometimes act on bad tips. But those mistakes are fewer when officers are numerous enough to know the communities in which they work. And the errors that remain are less costly when the police force is sufficiently well staffed that an ordinary house search does not resemble a military action. Nationwide, the number of local police officers per 100,000 population stands at 245; in New York City at its peak size in 1999, the NYPD employed 561 officers per 100,000. In Prince George’s County, the number is 195. Given a larger police force, Calvo’s dogs might still live. So might his trust in the decency of his community’s law enforcement personnel.
Re: #2. The statement in the weekly standard sounds reasonable, but is entirely conjecture. As Radley has documented, we have very little information on wrong-door raids, police over-reaction etc. Thus, we cannot develop meaningful statistics on the relationship between force size (or any other variable) and SWAT raids and their appropriateness. That is why this bill is so important.
So this asshat at the Weekly Standard thinks that Calvo’s dogs got shot because there aren’t enough adrenaline junkies manning the Thick Blue Line?
Oh, please, already. They’re going to issue quarterly reports.
Why not just tell them right out loud that they can keep lying to one & all, and have done with it?
Quarterly reports, my ass. Is this someone’s fucking stupid idea of a joke?
What a dumb argument.
The PG county police could have called the Berwyn Heights police and asked them some questions. They chose not to.
The problems with the keystone kops is not that there aren’t enough of them packed into their little cars, but that they don’t know how to do their jobs properly.
A proper warrant service takes 5-10 guys, a couple of camera men, a guy with the warrant, and a couple of guys to keep an eye for anyone trying to sneak out the back.
But hey, then they wouldn’t get to play Gestapo.
I don’t know, he may have a point, counterintuitive though it might be at first glance. Without enough resources, you take shortcuts. Why would the police be any different?
Anyway, I’ll make sure to contact my state legislature rep and urge passage of this bill.
RE “lack of resources” #7
PG County could afford a small paramilitary force, but not a single officer to ask obvious questions? They didnt even bother to call the Berwyn Heights police department. Their databases should have all the information they need: if not, a few minutes with Google is a good start.
The only lack of resources is the one between their ears.
Well, it’s a good, if meager, bill. I came across the Weekly Standard article via Yglesias, of all people. I think it should be taken seriously, and its possible that Obama wants to spend more federal cash on local officers.
As for effectiveness, the whole point is that drug LAWS are bad and there’s no such thing as “effective” enforcement of bad laws.
So, anyone want to take a guess as to how this bill will be gutted…or how police (heroes) will get around being-influenced-at-all-to-do-the-right-thing if it is passed.
@ #2
“Given a larger police force, Calvo’s dogs might still live.”
That’s SOME straw you’re grasping there, Weakly Standard. Let’s see if it works for other things: “Given a boot up the howdy doody pipe of PG Sheriff Michael Jackson, Calvo’s dogs might still live.” OK. I can support that.
The government is still going to be running things, right?
How can change result from status quo?
PG County could afford a small paramilitary force, but not a single officer to ask obvious questions? They didnt even bother to call the Berwyn Heights police department. Their databases should have all the information they need: if not, a few minutes with Google is a good start.
The only lack of resources is the one between their ears.
I don’t want to come across as vigorously defending the author’s hypothesis, since I think it is is speculative. However, nothing in your comment necessarily contradicts his hypothesis. How much does a SWAT team cost to equip, train, and maintain? How much does it then cost to equip, train, and maintain quality officers or law enforcement analysts to do exactly the type of research and
knowledge management you’re refering to? I’m betting the costs are comparable, because then we’re not really talking about hiring “police” so much as we’re talking about hiring knowledge workers.
And I think there lies the problem. You can quantify the number of arrests, and give out medals, bonuses, whatever based on that metric. It’s tangible. But how do you quantify how many times your correction of a database error prevented a wrong house raid? How do you quantify a routine google search or a phone call to double check with local police? All are important, but they don’t lend themselves to impressive end of year performance review stats. It’s subjective. Heck, you might even open yourself up to the “paradox of warning” or “magic tiger repelling rock” argument where because there aren’t a lot of high profile mistakes, your efforts are considered wasted (problem, what problem?) Next thing you know, your budget is cut and the SWAT types are running the show again.
Change the yearly eval metrics, you change the culture. You change the culture, you may very well fix the problem.
Chance, sorry if I misunderstood or misquoted. I agree that the problem is partly one of metrics. Of course, without access to the data, we are entirely reliant on the metrics offered by the department.
I’ve got a better idea.
Make them video tape all raids, and require them to put the unedited tape on the internet after one year. Any exception ( ” uhhhh … the tape broke!” ) allows the raided person to sue all of the individuals involved in the raid personally.
I called in to a recent Kojo Nnamdi radio show (on WAMU) on which Mayor Calvo and Dr. David Klinger, a Missouri-based professor who has written on SWAT teams. Although Klinger struck me as too defensive of paramilitary police tactics to be viewed as an objective observer, he did draw attention to the terminology problem here– the difference between a SWAT team, per se, and “task force” warrant teams which happen to use paramilitary tactics.
That’s a huge problem with Mayor Calvo’s bill: it’s not only a modest step toward accountability, it only requires police agencies with actual SWAT teams to file a report, and then only about those teams’ activities:
It’s not clear to me that under this definition, even Prince George’s County police would have been required to report on the raid on Mayor Calvo’s home. If the law was in effect in Mississippi, it certainly wouldn’t have required any report regarding the search of Cory Maye’s home, because that was an ad hoc team of officers (not specially trained) from multiple jurisdictions (not “within a law enforcement agency”), with not special equipment.
Ben raises the semantic argument, which is applicable in this case.
Humpty Dumpty says that SWAT teams are exactly what he defines them to be.
This bill passes, good-bye SWAT teams, hello new Orwellian term for same.
“You don’t necessarily know the intent of the person on the other side of the door”
that comment shows the mindset of the police in maryland. everybody is a violent criminal until they prove themselves to not be one. there isn’t a chance that these officers think, for even a second, that the people who live behind the door they are about to kick in are innocent. to the LEOs, the people they are about to violate are the lowest scum on earth. they are drug dealers, drug users, gang members, robbers, rapists, murderers, whatever. it is that subtle (or maybe not so subtle) change that creates the environment for police brutality and corruption. and i wont go so far to say it, but i think we all know where that leads…
I used to read this blog and say “glad it’s not a problem here in Nebraska”. Now, within the last 2 months, I have personally read reports of wrong-door raids in Lincoln (and only know of them because they were filed as affidavits in a juvenile case) and heard of another one in a smaller town down the road (where the officers served an expired warrant right before Christmas and opened all the presents in front of the kids) from a lawyer who will be filing suit.
Not a peep from the local media. But how would they know?
Yeah, if the final bill hinges on reporting for a specifically-defined group using paramilitary tactics, and not any police force using paramilitary tactics, then it’s only a matter of time before SWAT Team usage declines and FREEDOM Teams (attacking ciivilians with paramilitary tactics) are formed…..
I concur on the semantics issue. That bill needs a rewrite with a new definition of what constitutes a SWAT team or it’ll be marginalized before it’s passed. Hell, the pigs have probably already started the memo on the name changes.
I was discussing these issues with my father last week. He’s a retired LEO and also served two tours in Vietnam with the Marines. I remember that I specifically mentioned the Calvo raid, which he was familiar with. He agreed with me that this case showed pretty clearly that this could happen to anyone these days, and that things are out of control. He also stated in a clear, unsentimental manner that if the drug unit or SWAT team came to his door by mistake, they would likely be met by an M-14 .
Hmm, The SWAT cops are right on one thing: you never know who is on the other side of the door. It might just be a marksman with law enforcement and military training who will revert to training and do everything he has to do to survive. Time to call this drug war off gents, before things get even uglier.
So, he’s on Ryan Frederick’s side?
Well, I still sent my delegates a request that they support the bill. The journey of a thousand miles and all that.
Purcell Alston, representing the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police, called the bill “reported redundancy,” adding that most of the information being sought in the proposal already is reported.
But several law enforcement officials testified against the bill, claiming that police agencies could handle tactical teams through education and training, and that police already kept the relevant statistics.
So you lied to us Radley?;)
Or wait, they did say ‘most’ of the information and the ‘relevant’ statistics. I guess maybe they have a different idea of what is relevant.
27 years ago, I was in an Army NG unit training at Ft. Meade. One of my comrades was an Ocean City policeman, who summed up his attitude towards ‘civilians’ in this way:
“There are only two kinds of civilians: @$$holes and victims.”
Make of that what you will.
A single drop of liquid into a gallon bucket does not appear to be much.
Simplify it Any agency of government MUST disclose 100% of all information within 24 hours to any citizen asking for it!