Prince George's County Police overstep authority by Haven Shoemaker
Hampstead mayor Haven Shoemaker has weighed-in with his take on the home invasion by Prince George’s SWAT officers in the last days of July 2008.
If you will recall; after a small army of heavily armed SWAT team members attacked the home of Berwyn Height’s mayor Cheye Calvo, they tied the mayor and his mother-in-law up and shot and killed his two dogs - - only discover it was all mistake.
No word as to whether or not the Prince George's County SWAT team will get an award or not - as just occurred in a similar situation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, q.v.: 20080729 Minneapolis SWAT Team honored for raiding wrong house.
Mayor Shoemaker is an excellent writer and his recent column, in the “Other Voices” section of the Carroll County Times is a must read:
On July 29, the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Cheye Calvo, came home from work and saw a package addressed to his wife sitting on the front porch.
If he's anything like me, he probably assumed his wife had been watching the Home Shopping Network, so he brought the package in and put it on the table.
Unbeknownst to him, the box actually contained 32 pounds of marijuana, one of the few things you can't buy on QVC.
While changing his clothes, Calvo heard his mother-in-law scream. According to media reports, she saw and reacted to police officers rushing the house. The police burst into the home without warning. In the ensuing chaos, officers shot and killed the family's two dogs. According to Calvo, one of two black Labradors was running away from the officers when it was killed.
Apparently, the officers did not believe that Calvo was the Mayor of Berwyn Heights. They kept him handcuffed for two hours, in his boxer shorts, lying next to his dead dogs. As it turns out, Calvo and his family were most likely the random victims of a scheme by real drug dealers.
Apparently, the police have already arrested people behind the plan to smuggle millions of dollars of marijuana via deliveries to unsuspecting citizens. Unfortunately, that little bit of law enforcement intelligence wasn't available to help Calvo or save his dogs.
[…]
But what bothers me the most about the Calvo mess is the dogs. If for the public good it becomes necessary to handcuff me in my briefs for two hours, well, OK. If the police want to take my mother-in-law into custody, I can promise my full cooperation.
[…]
It's not like the anyone was going to flush 32 pounds of dope down the toilet in the time it took for the police to announce the entry. I could add my thoughts on the modern low water capacity toilet, but as the kids today say, TMI, or "Too Much information."
Read Mayor Shoemaker’s entire column here: PG police overstep authority
20080825 PG Police overstep authority by Haven Shoemaker
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.