Police raid Md. mayor's home and kill his dogs

Here we go again...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080808/ap_on_re_us/marijuana_packages

By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press Writer
13 minutes ago

BERWYN HEIGHTS, Md. - Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside, putting it on a table.

Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple's two dogs and seizing the unopened package.

In it were 32 pounds of marijuana. But the drugs evidently didn't belong to the couple.

Police say the couple appeared to be innocent victims of a scheme by two men to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana by having it delivered to about a half-dozen unsuspecting recipients.

The two men under arrest include a FedEx deliveryman; investigators said the deliveryman would drop off a package outside a home, and the other man would come by a short time later and pick it up.

Now, federal authorities say they're looking into how local law enforcement handled the July 29 raid. FBI Agent Rich Wolf said late Thursday that the bureau had opened a civil rights investigation into the case.
A furious Calvo said earlier Thursday that he and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, had asked the government to investigate.

"Trinity was an innocent victim and random victim," Calvo said outside his two-story, red-brick house in this middle-class Washington suburb of about 3,000 people. "We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."

Calvo insisted the couple's two black Labradors were gentle creatures and said police apparently killed them "for sport," gunning down one of them as it was running away.

"Our dogs were our children," said the 37-year-old Calvo. "They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in."

The mayor, who was changing his clothes when police burst in, also complained that he was handcuffed in his boxer shorts for about two hours along with his mother-in-law, and said the officers didn't believe him when he told them he was the mayor. No charges were brought against Calvo or his wife, who came home in the middle of the raid.

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.

The FBI will monitor how effective, fair and professional the law enforcement agency's conduct was during the incident, Wolf said. A police spokesman declined comment Thursday on the FBI investigation.

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Why'd they have to shoot the man's dogs? What is they had been kids?

Here's some more info. The PG County Police have a history of not getting things right.


Pr. George's Police Arrest 2 In Marijuana-Shipping Plot

Prince George's County police announced yesterday that they have arrested a deliveryman and another man who they say are involved in a scheme to smuggle marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients, including a delivery last week to the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights.

Post Editorial, "Shoot First, Ask Later"

THE DRUG raid by Prince George's County law officers on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last week was a Keystone Kops operation from start to finish.

Acting on a tip that a 32-pound package of marijuana had been sent by Federal Express from Arizona to Mr. Calvo's home (addressed to his wife, Trinity Tomsic), Prince George's police swung into action. Which is to say they got on the phone, calling law enforcement agencies to see who might have a SWAT team available to bust the unsuspecting Calvo family. (It seems the police department's own team was tied up.) After being turned down at least once, they finally struck a deal with the Prince George's Sheriff's Office, whose track record with domestic disputes is extensive but whose experience with drug busts is slight. And it showed.

Without bothering to alert Berwyn Heights police, sheriff's deputies moved into position. Posing as a deliveryman, a deputy took the package to the family's door. After Mr. Calvo's mother-in-law initially refused to sign for it, the package was finally taken into the home, where it sat, unopened, on the living room floor. Whereupon the deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos' two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor -- in his briefs -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.
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Within an hour, it seems, the police concluded that something was seriously wrong and that there was at least a strong possibility that the Calvos -- whose home contained not the slightest evidence of involvement in the drug trade -- were unsuspecting victims. The deputies left without making arrests. And yesterday, county police announced the arrest of a deliveryman and another person suspected in a scheme to smuggle hundreds of pounds of marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients such as the Calvos.

The Post's Rosalind S. Helderman has reported that when deputies stormed the Calvo household, they didn't even have a no-knock search warrant, the tool specifically designated under Maryland law to deal with searches that police do not wish to announce because they could be dangerous. They had plain vanilla warrants to enter the house and seize the package. In other words, they should have knocked.

Law enforcement officers are justifiably cautious during drug busts, knowing that traffickers frequently are armed and dangerous. In this case, even a cursory investigation prior to the raid might have given the authorities pause about kicking in the door and entering with guns blazing. The sheriff, Michael Jackson, seems embarrassed by the whole episode. He should be.

I just read this and was coming to the forums to post. I'm appalled! Thing is, this happened to the mayor. How many regular folks have been subjected tot his treatment? all this over a package of marijuana?

CityGirl said:

I just read this and was coming to the forums to post. I'm appalled! Thing is, this happened to the mayor. How many regular folks have been subjected tot his treatment? all this over a package of marijuana?

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They've arrested an FBI agent and harassed a news reporter too.

Here's the story on the reporter. They had to have recognized her, she has been a reporter in DC for years. She worked the White House for ABC News in the 1990's and has been a reporter for WJLA, the ABC affiliate for about 10 years. She was working a Police corruption story.

I haven't found the FBI agent story yet. It was in about the same time frame, 3 or 4 years ago.

[SIZE=+2]Reporter Alleges Excessive Force[/SIZE]
Journalists Are Stopped While Following Pr. George's Official
[SIZE=-1]By Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 13, 2005; B01[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]

A reporter for WJLA-Channel 7 and her cameraman were following a high-ranking Prince George's County official and her police officer driver to investigate a news tip last month about the possible inappropriate use of a county car when they were suddenly surrounded by county and Cheverly police and ordered out of their vehicle at gunpoint.


Andrea McCarren said in an interview yesterday that she was manhandled by a county police officer who she said yanked her right arm out of its socket during the April 15 incident. McCarren said that happened after she followed police commands to get out of her Toyota Highlander sport-utility vehicle with her hands up and slowly walk backward toward the officer.
McCarren filed a complaint Wednesday with the internal affairs unit of the police department, alleging excessive force.


Through a spokeswoman, Prince George's Police Chief Melvin C. High said, "We have not had the opportunity yet to investigate, but on the face of it, it appears that our officers followed proper procedure." He said the department will look into the incident.


Police said the officer being observed by McCarren saw that he was being followed and called for backup.


McCarren said she and her cameraman, Pete Hakel, were following the officer who is assigned as police liaison to Chief Administrative Officer Jacqueline Brown. The officer was identified by a law enforcement source as Cpl. Danon Ashton. Ashton could not be reached.


McCarren and Hakel, who was in the back seat, started out behind the officer in a residential area in Bowie about 8:20 a.m. After about 10 minutes, McCarren said, she lost the officer, who at the time did not have a passenger, when he turned onto a side road.


Minutes later, McCarren said, she saw the black SUV driven by the officer pass her, and she resumed following. At that point, Brown was in the SUV.
About 8:40 a.m., McCarren said, she and Hakel were surrounded by seven county police cruisers and two police squad cars from Cheverly on Landover Road near Route 50.


A videotape of part of the incident, taken by Hakel, shows her sitting in the driver's seat, looking in her side mirror. Calmly, McCarren says, "He's got a gun pulled on me."


The video then shows McCarren, 41, stepping out of the vehicle with her hands in the air and slowly walking backward.


It does not show what happened when McCarren reached the officer. McCarren, who is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 110 pounds, said the officer grabbed her right wrist and yanked it behind her back.


"I immediately felt like my shoulder was on fire," McCarren said. McCarren said her shoulder continued to hurt in the following days. When she saw a doctor April 21, the physician told her that her shoulder had been yanked out of its socket, she said.


McCarren said she's been wearing a sling and undergoing physical therapy since she saw the doctor. She said her doctor told her that she may need surgery.


A still photo taken from the WJLA video shows three county police officers with their guns out. One is behind a police cruiser, apparently pointing his service weapon in the direction of McCarren or Hakel. A second officer is behind the open driver's side door of another cruiser, apparently pointing toward McCarren. The third has his gun out at waist level, with the weapon pointed toward the ground.


The WJLA video also shows Hakel following police commands to walk slowly backward toward a county police officer. Hakel followed police orders to put the camera on the ground, pointing it at the officer who was directing him, McCarren said.


In the video, the officer is shown putting Hakel's hands over the cameraman's head while another officer walks toward the Toyota Highlander to check it. The officer dealing with Hakel gets the attention of the second officer and makes a hand motion. The camera is then turned away from the officer and Hakel.