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Mayor of Maryland town, his dogs dead, still waiting for apology Cops in Prince George's County, Md., have a proud tradition to maintain. In May, a former county officer was sentenced to 45 years in prison for shooting two furniture delivery men at his home last year, one of them fatally. (He claims they attacked him.) In June, a suspect jailed in the death of a local police officer was found strangled in his cell. Authorities have no idea how that could have happened. It's unlikely Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Md., was thinking of his county's behaviorally challenged...

Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight. The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs. And, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children. Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point...

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law. But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out...

I saw the local police are angry about the swat team going into the Mayors house. Not only are they Friends of the mayor, the local Police Chief said that if one of his guys had been driving by when 5 heavily armed men in plain clothes and masks were kicking in the Mayor’s front door, they would have been fired on them thinking they were terrorists attacking the mayor’s home. Besides the shooting of dogs for no reason, which is bad enough, why do they have masks over their faces? Bad guys were masks so they can’t be identified...

Armed men in street clothes and masks kicked down the doors of innocent citizens, guns blazing, and rounded up the residents. When they left, the floors were smeared in blood. It reads like the first line of an intense novel, a Reuters story from Darfur or Zimbabwe, a history of the conflict in Kosovo, or a smuggled-out account of the Chinese pre-Olympics roundups. Recently deceased Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the scourge of the abusive Soviet leadership, could have written it. Sadly, it comes from far closer to home: Maryland’s Prince Georges County. Last week, the “PG County” Sheriff’s SWAT team stormed the...

4 gunmen bust doors, yell ‘FBI,’ loot home BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Two men kicked in the front door, splintering it near the bolt-lock. Two more kicked in a side door. All four had guns. It was 3 a.m. “FBI! FBI!” the men shouted, one pulling what looked like a badge out of his shirt before stuffing it back in. “Where’s your money?” Lloyd McCuien lay facedown on the living-room floor of his Pulaski County house — off Arkansas 365 outside Maumelle and within sight of Interstate 40 — surrounded by seven family members. “It took me about...

The FBI has launched a review of the violent law enforcement raid of the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo in Prince George's County last week that resulted in the deaths of the family's two dogs. The agency has begun "reviewing the events that occurred at Mr. Calvo's residence," said Richard J. Wolf, spokesman for the FBI in Baltimore, which has jurisdiction over federal civil rights investigations in Maryland. (snip) Courts across the country in recent years have ruled that it is almost always unacceptable for police to kill pets in the course of searching a home. Cases in...

Berwyn Heights' mayor is expected today to ask federal officials to investigate possible civil rights violations stemming from last week's raid of his Prince George's County home by police officers who shot and killed his two dogs, his attorney said. Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, will ask for a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry during a 2 p.m. news conference today outside their Berwyn Heights home, said Timothy Maloney, their attorney. "They're going to call for the Justice Department to come in," Maloney said. Calvo's home was raided by the county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics...

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He'd been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I've reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going...

MIAMI -- Officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives barged into a South Florida home Wednesday only to discover they had the wrong address. The ATF agents were supposed to conduct a raid at a home in the 2600 block of Northwest 49th Terrace in northwest Miami-Dade County, but they were off by one block. They entered a house on Northwest 49th Street instead. A mother and her 2-year-old boy were among the innocent people inside the home when the agents came in

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― Two months ago, a terrified mother called 911 to report strangers breaking into her North Minneapolis home. The intruders were not violent criminals but members of the Minneapolis Police Department's SWAT team. They were raiding the wrong house after an informant gave investigators bad information. The I-TEAM tracked the 17 hours that led up to the raid. Shortly after seven in the morning on Saturday, Dec. 15, a young woman walked into the downtown police precinct and said her boyfriend had threatened her. She told police Jermaine Brown belongs to the Rolling 60's Crips street gang, and...

McKinney, Texas (AP) -- A man who underwent surgical castration after he was shot in the groin during a police raid has been sentenced to five years in prison for firing at the officers. Guillermo Urquiza, 27, said he was asleep at home in April 2006 when a police SWAT team burst in to arrest him and look for evidence that he had solicited an informant to kill a police officer. Urquiza shot at the officers but didn't hit anyone. The officers, who said they fired after hearing gunshots, wounded Urquiza in the groin and stomach. He has since undergone...

ATLANTA - Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter and other charges in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid at her home last fall. Officer J.R. Smith, who also agreed to resign from the police department, told a state judge that he regretted what had happened. "I'm sorry," the 35-year-old said, his voice barely audible. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, violation of oath, criminal solicitation, making false statements and perjury, which was based on untrue claims in a no-knock warrant obtained to enter Kathryn Johnston's home on Nov. 21. Former Officer Gregg Junnier,...

(WSB Radio) Fulton County's top prosecutor plans to seek charges against several current and former Atlanta police officers in the fatal shooting of an elderly Atlanta woman. WSB's Veronica Waters reports lawyers for three officers have been informed that Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard will take the case of Kathryn Johnston's shooting before a grand jury February 26. The proposed indictment would include 17 charges, including felony murder, burglary, aggravated assault, making false statements, violation of oath of office and criminal solicitation. Newly retired Atlanta police officer Gregg Junnier has been cooperating with the federally-led joint investigation into...

"Cpl. Christopher M. Long has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the Dec. 1 shooting death of Peyton Strickland, District Attorney Ben David said today." "Strickland, 18, was shot in the head and right shoulder area and fatally wounded Dec. 1 in the house he lived in at 533 Long Leaf Acres Drive. Strickland’s death is attributed to a gunshot wound to the head, officials said. His shooting came as members of the sheriff’s heavily armed and armored Emergency Response Team and UNCW police officers sought to arrest Strickland at his home at 533 Long Leaf Acres Drive....

One week after the fatal shooting of Peyton Strickland, New Hanover County Sheriff's Office Deputy Christopher M. Long was dismissed from his job. Friday's announcement came late in the afternoon in a terse release from the sheriff's office. The press release advised that it would be fruitless to ask any questions about the firing, citing ongoing investigations by the State Bureau of Investigation and the New Hanover County District Attorney's Office "regarding Long's recent actions." Sheriff Sid Causey did not return a call seeking further information. Long, 34, was a corporal and a member of the sheriff's office Emergency Response...

WILMINGTON - New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey said Wednesday he doesn't yet know whether three of his deputies followed proper procedures when they shot and killed Peyton Strickland, a Cape Fear Community College student from Durham. "I would certainly hope so," he told The News & Observer on Wednesday. Causey added that he did not know why the deputies shot Strickland or who fired the fatal shots, because the SBI has not completed its investigation. But the autopsy added to questions already raised. The bullet that struck Strickland in the head and killed him was likely fired through his...

When police came to search Peyton Strickland's rented house for stolen PlayStation 3 consoles, they feared they might find him amid a small arsenal of firearms, according to a search warrant released late Monday. Police found snapshots on the Internet of a man they suspected to be Strickland's robbery partner posing with an assault rifle, pistols and a shotgun. A detective had seen that man, Ryan David Mills, 20, hanging out at Strickland's rental home, according to the search warrant. So, when UNC Wilmington campus police headed there Friday, they brought reinforcements picked from the New Hanover Sheriff's Office's elite,...

Channel 2 Action News has learned major new details today in the controversial police shooting that left an elderly woman dead. A source close to the officers involved now tells Channel 2 only one of the officers was hit directly with a bullet – the two others were hit with shrapnel. The source also says all the officers involved are in the process of getting lawyers. ... But a source familiar with the injuries of two officers, including the one that Channel 2 spoke with yesterday, say the wounds were caused by bullet fragments.

Atlanta, GA (AHN) - An unidentified police informant is in protective custody following a television interview in which he said officers had told him to lie about buying narcotics at a home where an elderly woman was shot and killed during a drug raid. Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington said at a press conference Monday, that the informant's comments contradicted statements made by officers who were at the scene when 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston was gunned down by plain-clothes officers. "The officers are saying one thing, the confidential informant is saying something else," said Pennington, in his first public comments about...

Five days after an elderly woman was killed in a gun battle that left three officers wounded, Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington said Sunday night his department will review its policy on "no knock" warrants and its use of confidential informants. Speaking for the first time since the Tuesday night shooting death of Kathryn Johnston at her home in northwest Atlanta, Pennington said his office "will turn over every stone to make sure we get to the reason why this tragic incident happened." Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington says the policy on 'no knock' warrants will be reviewed. Pennington provided...

The confidential informant on whose word Atlanta police raided the house of an 88-year-old woman is now saying he never purchased drugs from her house and was told by police to lie and say he did. Chief Richard Pennington, in a press conference Monday evening, said his department learned two days ago that the informant — who has been used reliably in the past by the narcotics unit -- denied providing information to officers about a drug deal at 933 Neal Street in northwest Atlanta. "The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs,"...

ATLANTA -- Three Atlanta police officers were shot and wounded and an elderly woman killed at a house in northwest Atlanta Tuesday night. The woman, identified by relatives as 92-year old Kathryn Johnston, opened fire on the officers from the narcotics division at a house at 933 Neal Street, according to officials. Atlanta Police Asst. Chief Alan Dreher said at a news conference Wednesday that an undercover officer made a drug purchase at Johnston’s address late Tuesday afternoon from a male suspect. Officers were able to obtain a search warrant after that. Asst. Chief Dreher said as they were executing...

Drug War Police Tactics Endanger Innocent Citizens Winston Churchill is commonly credited with having said, "Democracy means that when there's a knock in the door at 3 am, it's probably the milkman." One wonders what Churchill would make of modern-day, drug war America. For the last year, I've been researching a study on SWAT teams, "no-knock" raids, and the rise of paramilitary tactics in domestic policing (the study was released this week). The trends I've found are troubling, and some of the individual stories are absolutely heartbreaking. Each day in America, police SWAT teams raid more than 100 private homes,...

Paper on America's love affair with the SWAT team and "dynamic entry" raids. See scary accompanying map of botched no-knocks and other SWAT-style raids.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence even if they don't knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush's new justices. The 5-4 ruling signals the court's conservative shift following the departure of moderate Sandra Day O'Connor. Dissenting justices predicted that police will now feel free to ignore previous court rulings that officers with search warrants must knock and announce themselves or run afoul of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said Detroit police acknowledge...

Breaking... Major 5-4 decision. This case was reargued and apparently Alito cast the deciding vote.

"Policia! Policia!" JIM MAHONEY/DMN Policia! Policia! That's what six masked men – dressed in black SWAT gear labeled "police" and armed with what appeared to be high-powered assault rifles and handguns – yelled as they swarmed into a small welding business that also doubles as the home of Camilo Rodea, his wife and two small sons. "They said, 'Give me the marijuana!' " Mr. Rodea said Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after the attempted robbery about 10:20 a.m. in the 9400 block of Bermuda Road in southeast Oak Cliff. "I said I didn't have any. "They said, 'If you love...

<p>Dww.papercut.biays after cops ransacked the home of Marie and Robert Rogers and held the Queens couple at gunpoint in a mistaken drug raid last year, their attorney issued a prophetic warning.</p> <p>"We must do a better job of no-knock search warrants," lawyer Norman Siegel said during an October press conference. "Otherwise, someone might wind up dead as a result of how we implement this procedure."</p>

A family in Pueblo, Colo., is suing the DEA and the Colorado Bureau of Investigations after a no-knock raid resulted in their two sons being arrested and jailed despite the fact no drugs were found on the premises. According to the suit, "black-masked, black-helmeted men brandishing automatic weapons and wearing all-black uniforms with no insignias suddenly burst into the house unannounced, kicked the family's dog across the floor, ordered the entire family to 'get on the [expletive] floor,' held them at gunpoint, searched the house, found no drugs or contraband, but nevertheless carted off the family's two sons, Dave and...

Man shoots, kills would-be robber in TV-style invasionBy Yolanda Jonesyojones@gomemphis.comApril 2, 2002Asize Lee Coady and her boyfriend, Odie Harper, were watching Law and Order Sunday night when a sudden knock on the door was like a scene from the cop drama. Shortly after 9 p.m., two men posing as police officers burst in Coady's southwest Memphis home in the 1200 block of Michigan yelling "police, police, get down," said Harper, 63. "Asize was the first one to the door, and when they burst in, she fell down," Harper said. "I didn't know what was going on." What happened next is...