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
Please believe me when i say I have no love or respect for guys who use their authority to do whatever they damn well please. They deserve to be in jail for trampling the rights of the people that they have sworn to protect and serve.
Again, my experience is limited to NY and i have seen both good and bad in this situation. But the school of thought that I always thought was best is simply, to treat the people you deal with as you would want your family treated in that situation.
I would say the majority of cops out there (depending on department of course) in NY, try to maintain a professional attitude and do what is right.
It sounds more like Prince gorge County needs to be cleaned out from Administration to patrol. The courts need to be investigated as well.
I suggest that anyone in that area who has any problems with the police there contact the local FBI to report any misconduct. God knows that they don’t do much else that should be done, but they do crucify cops that act in an unlawful manner.
“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.”
I dunno, they might have had an industrial-size toilet.
I think Rosie O’Donnell has one.
/sarc
/humor
Maybe folks ought to keep a flame thrower at their house. Shrivel up their ego inside their armor
I completely disagree. Far too often the available gear determines the tactics. In the absence of the gear the local LEOs would use more measured tactics. It might take longer and have far less adrenaline and testosterone involved but would probable come to the same conclusion.
"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."
I experienced too many opposed, hot LZ insertions with the intent of doing far more damage than serving a warrant to appreciate your condescension. If containment and negotiations do not work and breaching a perimeter is absolutely necessary it should be a State function done by an elite force of trained soldiers, not the local LEOs hopped up on Red Bull and Krispy Kremes.
“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. If these boys want to play Rambo they should visit their local Army or Marine recruiter and know what it is like to kick in doors with the likelihood of a real armed and trained opponent on the other side.”
The original reason for such units being created was the violent terrorism of people such as the Black Panthers, SLA, Weathermen, and so on, back in the ‘60s, who were usually far better armed than the revolver-armed cops of the day. Odd to find that those very same people, or their ideological allies, would be running our country now, and in charge of those very same units.
Personally, I hope he sues the bas$#@&* until they day he dies.
There is way too much of this going on.
My favorite uncle was a decorated NYC police detective, so I started out with a bias toward cops, at least the good ones.
But even he would go ballistic when I'd suggest that police officers would be better off exposing the bad cops than covering for them.
In any event, I've lived in Maryland nearly all my life, and only have experience with Maryland, DC and Virginia police.
I used to think that perhaps only 10% or 20% of cops were bad guys. As time goes on, my experience and what I see suggest that it's the wicked and evil 90% of cops that give the other 10% a bad name.
Okay, okay... maybe only 87%.
But even “good” cops are pretty much bad cops a lot of the time. In my county, which is next door to Prince George's, I've had a few positive experiences with the police when I've called them, but I've seen the very same officers act callously and with disregard for the citizens that they're supposed to serve.
The cops in DC are probably much worse than average, if for no other reason than that the pool from which they draw comprises a high percentage of bad people. At one point, it was found that 20% of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department sworn officers had felony records. That's very inspiring.
Albion Wilde reports rightly that many jurisdictions here in Maryland have quotas for traffic citations. Every ten years or so, old memos are leaked showing that high officials in the Maryland State Police were instructing supervisors on the whys and wherefores of the then-current quotas.
Of course, it seems that the memos that are leaked are always five or ten years old, and the police then tell us, “Well, it was a problem then, but we've cleaned that up.”
But when you see this repeated over the course of the decades, you can figure out what's happening right now.
From what I've observed, the police in Northern Virginia aren't much better. They pick on the folks who can fight back least, and leave alone folks who might be more powerful. In this way, though, they're at least smarter than PG County cops, as evidenced by PG’s assault on a town mayor and his family.
As for the FBI, they're worthless. In Maryland, they're often part of the problem, like when one of these jackals stopped a couple near Baltimore a few years back, for no apparent reason, drew his gun, and shot the man, the driver, in the face. He lived, but the FBI has never to this date explained adequately why they were stopped and the man shot.
In Pure Garbage County, folks are routinely murdered by police, or beaten senseless. One fellow who was suspected of killing a cop a few years back was rousted from bed at o’dark thirty in the morning. Six Pure Garbage County porkies beat him to within an inch of his life, claiming that this sleeping fellow was “resisting arrest.”
Later, they figured out he wasn't the guilty one. They caught up with the guilty one and killed him in a shoot-out in a nearby shopping center parking garage.
No cop was ever charged, or even disciplined, and certainly not charged by federal prosecutors after an FBI investigation, for nearly killing the first guy.
More recently, a man was arrested for allegedly killing a cop. He was put alone in a single cell in the county jail. The only folks with access to him were Pure Garbage County porkies and jail guards. He wound up hanged. The coroner ruled out suicide, said it was a homicide.
The local state's attorney investigated.
No charges. No disciplinary actions, no nothing. I guess you could call it the immaculate murder. He was murdered, but no one who could have actually done it did it.
The feds are looking into it, but I expect the same white-wash.
In my own county, which has a relatively good reputation for our county police, a couple of years ago, the assistant police chief's daughter ran away from home. A bunch of his cop buddies went out and found her teenage, under-age boyfriend, kidnapped him, and held him hostage for hours, denying him access to attorneys, parents, or anyone else, and physically assaulted him, hoping to get information about the runaway’s whereabouts.
No charges, no discipline.
Sorry - I see too many eyes winking at too much evil at all levels, from the low-ranking patrol officer right to the top, to believe that cops are generally good and decent folks.
I think that they think that they're good and decent folks, but that they're justified in acting like thugs and criminals when they think circumstances require.
I think that abuse of police authority should draw a sentence of death. In all cases. If we hanged a few of these sons of bitches, maybe the others would get the idea and straighten up and fly right.
sitetest
Bravo Sierra!. The Black Panthers, SLA, Weathermen were NEVER local law enforcement issues. The existence of paramilitary SWAT teams in every middlesex, village and farm is a result of the war on drugs and the prospects of high value property seizures.
I am normally one of the knee-jerk police supporters here but given this department’s record of unprofessional misfeasance all I can say is that they need to be sued.
Mistakes can happen but this pattern clearly demonstrates a complete lack of leadership which if left in place will lead inextricably to a fatality.
On the other hand, out here in the outer boonies, there are some nice officers who have responded well to neighborhood issues. But the highway cops are outrageous. Once, one of them in plain clothes and an unmarked car followed me on the highway for 10 miles until I started to panic and pulled off to a side street, where he attempted to arrest me for speeding. I was outraged. I have a clean driving record for more than 30 years. I told him to go check it; then I lectured him about stalking a female driver on the road, and how I would testify against him and lodge a complaint of harassment. He let me go. I think only because when he actually saw me, he could see I'm not a young chick like he may have thought when following me. B*****d.
I experienced too many opposed, hot LZ insertions with the intent of doing far more damage than serving a warrant to appreciate your condescension. If containment and negotiations do not work and breaching a perimeter is absolutely necessary it should be a State function done by an elite force of trained soldiers, not the local LEOs hopped up on Red Bull and Krispy Kremes.
I’m polite to them. No use creating a situation. Doesn’t change how I feel. Maybe most of the good ones you see on tv. They may be able to force themselves to act rationally for stint in front of the tv camera. Self gratification is what most of ‘em are about anyway.
Oh yeah, these were the just and brave law enforcement officers who heroically shot those dangerous black labs!
Where’s the medals and ticker tape parades for these paragons of virtue?!?!
Only in The Peoples Republic of Maryland.....
Unfortunately, it’s not only in Maryland, it’s happening all over.
Jack
They never showed up because too many officers are assigned to SWAT ... sitting around waiting for an emergency ... even a mistaken emergency will do .... when they get to use all their super cool ninja gear, mail ordered at great expense from SWAT Catalogs, and featured in SWAT Magazines.
Every government agency now has a SWAT, every small town PD, every Sheriff's Dept, every Housing Authority, every transit authority, every airport authority ... soon I suspect the Public Library will have one, breaking down the wrong doors, shooting dogs, and ransacking houses for overdue library books! Instead, cops, especially sheriff's deputies, should be out there busting the many violent criminals with outstanding warrants that infest rural counties and urban areas everywhere. But the donut boys are not stupid. These real criminals are tough guys who might shoot back ... despite the cool gear and black kevlar accessories SWAT boys glory in.
ROTHFLMAO. Yeah right. A lot of the junk does get to auction. One must not look too closely at where the cash and bling go, although a look a the cops' girlfriends might shock you.
Would not shock me. Nor the nickel bags.
>>> Some just down right mean. Luckily where I live, the bad cops are gotten rid of over time. <<<<<
I recall one PG County cop who was an absolute scourge in the community. A nasty piece of work who specialized in harassing teens including beating one kid (about 14 or 15 years old) to a pulp for no apparent reason. A genuine sadistic bully.
We finally “got rid of him” after many infractions and complaints after he ran a red light at high speed and T-boned and killed an innocent driver. He was not in pursuit, he just like to drive fast with his lights on.
The guy was a psycho, but it took several years and much collateral damage for him to finally disqualify himself from the Prince George’s County Police Department.
More to the Baltimore County story:
“He did conceded that Charles Noel had been convicted of second-degree murder 30 years ago stemming from a fight with other teens. He said he left for the army but returned to plead guilty when charges were brought “and he served his time. It’s been a matter of shame for him.” He now works a waste station at the Fort George G. Meade Army base in Anne Arundel County, and has for the past 13 years. Matthew Noel also had problems — he had recently shot a man in the foot with a .45 caliber handgun, an incident that Roberts described as fight among teens.”
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2009/03/police_shooting_lawsuit.html
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