In Maryland last Friday, Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin C. High apologized for a recent paramilitary police raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, in which both of Calvo's dogs were killed and he and his mother in law were handcuffed under suspicion of smuggling marijuana. A package containing 30 pounds of green was sent to Calvo's house, addressed to his wife, and when Calvo picked up the package and went into his house, a SWAT team burst in. This is a small excerpt from Calvo's description of what happened:
The officers called for me to walk downstairs backwards with my handsup, which I did. The officers then directed to me to kneel down in theliving room by the open front door in my boxer shorts with my handsrestrained in plastic cuffs behind my back. I remained in that positionfor a considerable period of time, watching Payton's [one of the dogs] body in the othercorner of the room and my mother-in-law lying face down in the kitchen.
I'd suggest reading the whole thing.
Police now believe that the package was sent to Calvo's house as part of a drug smuggling scheme in which dealers would send packages to random homes and intercept them before they were picked up. This was Chief High's "apology":
"The Calvo family members were the apparent victims of a local drug ring. I called him to express my sorrow and regret for that and for the loss of the family's beloved dogs."
Well, no. They were not the victims of a "drug ring". They were victims of an abuse of power by the PG County police force. If the victim of this raid hadn't been a local elected official, we probably wouldn't even be hearing about it.
As Radley Balko at Reason has been blogging about for months, the use of "no-knock" warrants and paramilitary police units in securing suspects is becoming commonplace even in cases where only evidence of nonviolent offenses is sought and despite the fact that it often ends in embarrassing tragedies like these. It's gotten to the point where police don't even need to request the warrant anymore, and indeed, in the Calvo case, it doesn't look like one was even requested, despite police claims to the contrary.
The FBI has begun a civil rights investigation into the matter at Calvo's request, but, as this approach to law enforcement is in no way confined to PG County, it's something legislators in Congress should be dealing with. But there are so many examples of government lawlessness these days, from wiretapping to torture, to the Bush Administration's declaration that it can seize personal property even without evidence or suspicion of a crime having been committed, that it's hard to believe there are many lawmakers left who take these matters seriously. Instead, this is all likely to be rationalized as an isolated incident. The only thing that's "isolated" about this besides the unusual victim is the "apology" that followed.
--A. Serwer
