Posted on 07/14/2009 4:28:15 PM PDT by Leisler
Late last month, Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo took the unusual step of filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department of his own county. The suit stems from a 2008 SWAT team raid on Calvo's house that resulted in the shooting deaths of his two black Labrador retrievers. In pushing back against the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Prince George's County police department, the mayor is helping expose a more widespread pattern of law enforcement carelessness and callousness throughout the state of Maryland.
Prince George's police originally obtained a warrant to search Calvo's home after intercepting a package of marijuana sent to the mayor's address. Calvo and his family were innocent—the package was intended to be picked up by a drug dealer. But instead of first investigating who lived at the residence, or even notifying the Berwyn Heights police chief, the county police department immediately sent in the SWAT team. In addition to having his two dogs killed, Calvo and his mother-in-law were handcuffed for several hours, and questioned at gunpoint.
To his credit, the mayor concluded early on that if this could happen to him, it was probably happening to others. "In some ways, we were lucky," Calvo said at a University of Maryland event this April. "We had the support of our community, who knew we weren't drug dealers. It didn't take long for me to realize that many people this kind of thing happens to don't have that kind of support."
Calvo also learned just how obstinate and unapologetic police and government officials can be, even (or especially) when they're clearly in the wrong. Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High actually praised his officers' conduct, insisting that if they had to do it again they'd conduct the Calvo raid the same way. "Our investigators went in and showed both restraint and compassion," he told a local TV station.
Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson told a local newspaper that Calvo would get no apology for the slaying of his dogs. Johnson's puzzling explanation: "Well, I think in America that is the apology, when we’re cleared.... At the end of the day, the investigation showed he was not involved. And that's, you know, a pat on the back for everybody involved, I think."
It took nearly a year for the Prince George's police department to release its report on the incident. The conclusion: officers did nothing wrong.
Within a few weeks of the raid, other victims of botched search warrants in Maryland began contacting Calvo. One couple was raided after their teenage son was found with a small amount of marijuana during a traffic stop. Another elderly couple had their dog shot and killed by Prince George's officers in a mistaken raid. And in Howard County, police broke down a door in front of a 12-year-old girl, battered a man with a police shield, then shot and killed the man's Australian cattle dog. They were looking for someone suspected of stealing a rifle from a police car. The suspect didn't live at the residence.
There were more:
• Eleven days before the raid on Calvo's home, Prince George's police raided the home of a Secret Service agent after receiving a tip that he was distributing steroids. They found no drugs or incriminating evidence.
• In August 2007 police raided the home of a Prince George's County couple to serve an outstanding arrest warrant for their son. The parents were handcuffed at gunpoint. Police later learned that the couple's son had already been in police custody for 12 days.
• In November 2007 Prince George's police raided the wrong home of a couple in Accokeek. Though the couple presented the police with evidence that they were at the wrong address, the police still detained them at gunpoint, refusing even to let them go to the bathroom. The couple asked the police if they could bring their pet boxer in from the backyard. The police refused. Moments later, the police shot and killed the dog.
• In June 2007 police in Annapolis deployed a flash grenade, broke open an apartment door, and kicked a man in the groin during a mistaken drug raid. When they later served the warrant on the correct address, they found no drugs.
Most victims of these mistaken raids experienced the same callousness and indifference from public officials that Calvo did. When police in Montgomery County conducted a mistaken 4 a.m. raid on a Kenyan immigrant and her teenage daughters in 2005, the county offered free movie passes as compensation. When police in Baltimore mistakenly raided the home of 33-year-old Andrew Leonard last May, the city refused to pay for Leonard's door, which was destroyed during the break-in. When Leonard called the city's bulk trash pick-up to come get the door, no one came. Days later, city code inspectors fined Leonard $50 for storing the broken door in his backyard.
Just last month, Baltimore's ABC affiliate reported on another mistaken raid, and noted that city officials generally make no effort to compensate homeowners when police trash their houses in search of contraband that doesn't turn up. "If you're searching for drugs or unlawful firearms, these things are not left out in plain view on the living room table," City Solicitor George Nilson explained. "You often will have to do some damage to the premises and...the police department doesn't and we don't pay for those kinds of damages." Even if the police find nothing, Nilson said, the city has no obligation to pay, because, "it may have been the stuff that you're looking for was there three hours earlier, but somebody got it out of harm's way."
At least none of these raids ended with the loss of human life. In January 2005, police in Baltimore County conducted a 4:50 a.m. raid on the home of Cheryl Lynn and Charles Noel after finding marijuana seeds and cocaine residue in the family's trash. After taking down the front door and deploying a flash grenade, SWAT officers stormed up the steps and broke open the door to the Noels' bedroom. Because their daughter had been murdered several years earlier, the couple kept a gun near the bed. When the police entered the bedroom, 44-year-old Cheryl Lynn Noel stood with the gun, clad in her nightgown. She was shot and killed by an armor-wearing SWAT officer, who fired from behind a ballistics shield. Police found only a misdemeanor amount of illicit drugs in the home. Shortly after the family filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2006, Baltimore County gave the officer who shot Noel an award for "valor, courage, honor, and bravery."
In March, a federal jury returned a verdict in favor of the police. The winning argument in the Noel case is a common one—but it's also paradoxical. Police argued both that these volatile, confrontational tactics are necessary to surprise drug suspects—to take them off guard before they have a chance to retaliate, or dispose of the contraband. At the same time, police argued that Cheryl Lynn Noel should have known the armed men storming her home at 5 a.m. were police; therefore she had no right to be holding a gun, and the police had every right to shoot her. Unfortunately, under the law the jury (and the police) was probably correct. The police didn't appear to violate any department policy.
It's the policy that's the problem. Drug war hysteria has so twisted our sense of right and wrong over the last 30 years that we've come to accept the idea that sending SWAT teams after minor potential drug offenders is an acceptable police tactic. The occasional wrong house, murdered pet, or police killing of a mother of two are regarded as regrettable but acceptable collateral damage—the price we pay to keep drugs illegal.
Maryland is hardly unusual. The last 30 years have seen a massive increase in the use of SWAT and paramilitary police tactics. High-profile botched raids like the Calvo incident occur all over the country. They inevitably get reporters digging and activists looking—and generally finding—other victims who were too frightened or embarrassed to come forward earlier. That's usually followed by promises for reform...then a return to business as usual once the attention dies down.
But something good may yet come out of Maryland. Mayor Calvo was able to get first-in-the-nation legislation passed in his state that will bring some transparency to how police agencies use their SWAT teams. Every department will be required to submit a quarterly report detailing each SWAT deployment.
That at least is a start. It will enable some honest assessment of just how often these tactics are used, and what they're actually turning up. Terrible as it sounds, it may well take more mistaken raids on high-status victims like Calvo to generate real debate over the wisdom of using violent, high-risk police tactics to serve warrants for nonviolent crimes
You may sleep well thinking that cops do so with the best intentions, halfright, but I don’t. Some good, some crooked. Some just down right mean. Luckily where I live, the bad cops are gotten rid of over time. But it takes a while. And people do pay in the process.
I don’t trust cops unless I know them outside of being a cop. Good rule to follow, I think.
So glad I left it, but these swat commandos are everywhere, I’m sure some are competent professionals, but most are just authoritarian personalities who revel in their jack booted facist roles. I have no use for law enforcement.
One of the reasons drug raids are a sacred cow for police departments is that the real dealers have loads of cash and other materials that can be seized by the Department. Bling, tricked-out high-end vehicles, all the trappings of the dealer’s life can be confiscated and sold at auction. This is a non-tax, extra-budgetary source of revenue that, consciously or unconsciously, PD’s may not want to give up. So they work themselves into a permanent state of hysteria over drugs in order to justify their “habit.”
... refused to give a coherent explanation for their actions.
I would guess that the raid on your house was a training exercise.
Sorry to hear about your experience
Me, too. We could walk to school and to the shopping malls. We had the conservative Washington Star newspaper in our house -- never the Washington Post. Then the government decided to start changing society. Now we have a third-world county right next to the Nation's Capital. We can't even go to visit our family's graves that go back to the early 1800s in Rock Creek and Fort Lincoln without carrying a gun.
That is an ignorant thing to say. If you read the article, it says that the SWAT officers who did break into a bedroom in the wee hours of the morning shot the woman who held a gun -- and that they were behind bullet-proof shields with face masks. The first rule of police training when confronted with an armed suspect pointing a gun at the officer is to shoot first. The travesty took place in the courts, who refused to recognize the woman's right to self-defense from an unknown assailant in the middle of the night.
Taking this to court as a class action is the first step, which it sounds like Calvo is doing.
Since I moved to Maryland, I have personally witnessed police misconduct based on arrogance on three occasions that cost citizens time, money, lost days at work and gratuitous fear. There was a huge ice slick on a hillside near here with six cars already in the ditch. A red-faced cop insisted that other (stopped) motorists proceed down the road, whistling and waving angrily. Soon there were 18 cars in a huge smackpile at the bottom of the hill, grimly exchanging insurance information in the bitter cold while no one was getting to work or school. That's just one example.
The cops in Maryland have quota days when they arrest people for speeding, and many ludicrous speed traps in which to do it. They have two beltways and a huge superhighway that are opportunities for "enterprise." While I am grateful when they arrest a genuine speeder and lane-switcher, often they merely go after the low-hanging fruit.
This is a disgrace. When will citizens start shooting back? The time is fast approaching to water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrannts.
Indeed. These raids are a violent gang rape of personal liberty.
They make a no-knock raid on no more than a tip. What kind of judge issues a warrant on no more than a tip?
What does it matter? The information itself is useful.
Take a play out of the libs' playbook and overwhelm the system. If you live in Prince Georges County, drop a dime on someone. Take your pick: the budding community activist, the head of the HOA, the liberal "cool" teacher, the environmentalist, the loudmouth lib at the office, or any other annoying liberal. Keep them busy with something other than complaining about gas guzzling, SUV driving, meat eating, church attending, racist, sexist, homophobic, right wing extremists.
So they go through your trash?
Cocaine residue?
Seeds?
Has anyone checked their bird food lately?
It contains the same seeds.?
parrot owners beware!
This is as petty as it could possibly be.
::spit::
Aside from the fact that I am exceptionally polite to everyone I meet, this is one reason I go out of my way to be polite to police officers. It reminds them that there ARE good people out there that they swore to protect and defend, and gives them a pleasant break from the "in your face" @$$holes they normally deal with. I cannot imagine the courage and moral strength it takes to be a police officer and deal with that sh!t every day. I can barely watch "Cops" because I'd just shoot 75% of the d!ck heads they deal with.
OTOH, it appears that these SWAT guys are completely out of control. Kind of reminds me of the old saying "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
That's the crux of the problem; not the cops, the judges. Judges who issue warrants without reading it, judges who rubberstamp every LEO whim and request, judges who allow cops to testilie, judges who aren't doing their job of upholding the constitution. We have a serious judicial problem in this country.
Police policy is not to blame. It is the court and the judicial system.
If a judge signs a warrant, then the police act under the guidelines of the warrant an it is wrong, then no one is held accountable because the Judges can not be held accountable.
If they enter the wrong house, (different than dictated by the warrant) the police are held accountable or should be.
If they give bad information to the judge to obtain the search warrant then the police are held accountable or should be.
If the judge does not examine the witnesses or evidence properly and gives a warrant to the police and they execute it according to the terms, then no one is held accountable because judges are exempt from such scrutiny. There is the problem.
>I remember this case but my facts may be wrong...I recollect, if they had a warrant, it wasn’t a no knock warrant.<
Most narcotics cases in NY are no knock because the drugs are disposed of so easily. I don’t know about any other states, but that is generally the rule.
Even though a warrant is no knock, police officers STILL are required to announce themselves as they enter though.
they just don’t have to wait for someone to open the door or permit entrance.
But if they don’t announce themselves the whole things becomes a real mess for everyone. If a cop gets shot in NY and there was no announcement, the person who shot him/her can walk scott free.
>Is that legal for them to just kill people’s animals and then get an “atta’boy” for it?<
They really need to show that the dog was a threat to officer’s safety in NY. If not, your a55 is on the block.
>just another reason why i hate cops<
just like any profession, you have your good and bad ones.
You are kidding, right?
have you scoped the newest supreme court nominee?
The fact that such a biased and unqualified person as Sotomeyer has been nominated to the USSC merely demonstrates how poor the quality is in the pool she is drawn from.
The quality of the judges from munincipal court all the way up to the federal courts is dismal and dismaying.
We won’t fix the problems in law enforcement until we fix the problem in the courts. The fish rots from the head down.
>There is NO reason, rationalization, or justification for the existence of paramilitary units equipped with black uniforms, face masks, full body armor, assault weapons, explosives, and armored vehicles at the local or county level.<
That is like saying that there is no reason for a citizen to be armed.
The weapons out on the streets are generally much more dangerous than what street police officers are issued.
The gear, tactics and equipment used is seriously necessary in some cases. I don;t always agree with using SWAT teams, but in some cases it is a must. If not you would have cops dropping like flies and then you would see the use of force continuum change through the courts drastically.
I have the distinct feeling if you ever had to execute a warrant on a real posse or blood / crip gang hold out, having to avoid booby traps, anti personnel devices and face gunfire, you would feel the same way as your statement says.
If I recall correctly, at the time, it was never established that it was a no-knock warrant, and in fact, there was substantial evidence that it wasn't. The police actually justified themselves by saying that when the mayor's mother-in-law started screaming about armed men (without any police identifiers on their clothing or their black masks) coming across the yard, the police decided to go “dynamic.”
As for “ the drugs [being] disposed of so easily...,” it was 32 lbs. of pot. Unlikely that they'd dispose of it all that quickly.
This is a case where all the porkies involved should have been hanged, and everyone involved in the chain of command, up through the sheriff and the county police chief (both were involved) should have been hanged along with them.
After a fair trial, of course. Which is more than these folks afford many innocent people whom they harm.
sitetest
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