Gangsters in Blue

A Prince George’s County, Maryland SWAT team raided the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last night, shooting and killing his two black labs in the process.

"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t."

Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he — wearing only underwear and socks — and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs’ carcasses and pools of the dogs’ blood, Calvo said.

Spokesmen for the Sheriff’s Office and Prince George’s police expressed regret yesterday that the mayor’s dogs were killed. But they defended the way the raid was carried out, saying it was proper for a case involving such a large amount of drugs.

Well no, it isn’t, unless there’s reason to believe that the mayor, his wife, and his mother-in-law are violent people capable of killing cops who might have served the warrant in a less confrontational manner. The possibility of the mayor or his wife disposing of the drugs doesn’t seem likely, either, unless the family owns an industrial-strength toilet: The raid commenced after police began tracking a package filled with 30 pounds marijuana originating in Arizona that was eventually delivered to the mayor’s wife.

Local police are angry that they weren’t notified first:

"You can’t tell me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn’t have been able to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his confidence and enter the residence," Murphy said. "It would not have been a necessity to shoot and kill this man’s dogs."

It’s worth emphasizing that these were labs. Not the most intimidating dog in the world. Of course, offing the dog is almost standard procedure in these things, now.

On the other hand, maybe once a few public officials feel the brunt end of the militarized drug war, we’ll get some real discussion about whether it’s all really necessary.

Last December, I posted about a botched SWAT raid on an innocent Minnesota family.  Acting on bad information from an informant, the police threw flash grenades though the family’s windows, then exchanged gunfire with Vang Khang, who mistook the police for criminal intruders.  Seven months later, no one in the police department has been held accountable for the mistakes leading up to the raid.

However, this week Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan and Mayor R.T. Rybak did give the raiding officers medals and commendations for their bravery in nearly killing Vang Khang, his wife, and their six children.

Said Chief Dolan while handing out the hardware:

"The easy decision would have been to retreat under covering fire. The team did not take the easy way out," Dolan told the crowd. "This is a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the professionalism with which it was handled."

This is really beyond outrage.  The city of Minneapolis is commending and rewarding its police officers for firing their weapons at innocent people.  A family of eight was terrorized, assaulted, and nearly killed, and it’s the "perfect example" of a situation that could have gone wrong?

It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened, either.  In November 2006, a Baltimore County, Maryland police officer was given an award for shooting Cheryl Lynn Noel, a mother of two gunned down in her nightgown when she grabbed a gun after mistaking the raiding police officers for criminal intruders.  The officer then shot Noel a second time from point blank range.  That award came shortly after the Noel family filed a civil suit against Baltimore County.

MORE: Listen to the 911 call from Khang’s wife here. Note how long it takes for the police to finally identify themselves.

One in North Carolina of a man arrested for shoplifting. Another in Louisiana of a man arrested for drug possession.

I’m no fan of Critical Mass protests, either. But damn.

Gothamist is reporting that the bicyclist was arrested and held for 26 hours for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. After the video surfaced on YouTube, the officer is apparently on desk duty pending an investigation. Score another one for copious videotaping of the police.

I believe this is the third case like of a police official using his position to bully a critical blog in just the last year or so:

Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin and the city of Memphis have filed a lawsuit to learn who operates a blog harshly critical of Godwin and his department.

The lawsuit asks AOL to produce all information related to the identity of an e-mail address linked to MPD Enforcer 2.0, a blog popular with police officers that has been extremely critical of police leadership at 201 Poplar.

[...]

The bloggers, who operate under the name of Dirk Diggler — the name of the porn star in “Boogie Nights” — say their site provides an important service to officers and citizens.

“This is another attempt at disrupting an outlet for officers to gather and complain about the administration,” they said on the site.

“Further, this allows us unrestricted communication with the citizens of Memphis. The citizens should be made aware of the scandals that rock the administration and shudder the rocky foundation in which they operate today.”

The bloggers also said city attorneys earlier this year wrote a threatening letter on city letterhead to a company that produced T-shirts for the bloggers.

So police officials respond to a blog that accuses them of abusing their power by….abusing their power to go after the blog.

Some fine police work there, Lou.

Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars’ value.

All of that is pretty outrageous. But it gets better.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled onto the story after investigating the daughter of the city’s police chief. She had been involved in a number of accidents with different cars. On several occasions she had wrecked a car, then simply gone down to the towing service to get a 60-80 percent discount on a new one. After one accident, her blood-alcohol concentration tested at .17. She wasn’t arrested or charged. The department says it has "no idea" why she was let go.

The police department hired a law firm, which concluded that the towing arrangement broke no rules or laws. The chief improbably claims he was oblivious to the deals his daughter was getting (her relationship with the towing service apparently goes back to 2002). The Post-Dispatch reports that the chief’s last public statement on the matter was that, "the absolute necessity in maintaining transparency in the eyes of the public."

He has since declined to comment.

(Via TheNewspaper.com)

After a "wrong-door" drug raid in Harlem led to the death of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill in 2003, New York City officials promised to implement reforms with respect to the use of confidential informants, and institute checks to verify that narcotics officers and SWAT teams were hitting the right residences.

But as civil rights attorney Joel Berger and I explained in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, the city soon reneged, claiming that the promised reforms were merely discretionary, and could be revoked at will.  Soon enough, stories of wrong-door raids began popping up in the newspapers again—and have since.

There were two more in the Bronx this week.

The NYPD is admitting it was wrong when officers broke down the doors of two apartments in the Bronx during a pair of misguided drug raids.

They found nothing, and it turns out both homeowners were innocent.

Officials say the apartments never should have been raided, and they admit the search warrants were based on lies from a confidential informant.

[...]

Police say that three separate times, the drugs from his alleged undercover buys were really drugs that were hidden under his clothing. Cops were fooled, and because of it, two local residents were traumatized.

[...]

On Saturday, when Eyewitness News began questioning cops about the story, they adamantly insisted there were undercover drug buys in both apartments.

[...]

Now, after repeated calls to the NYPD, their story has changed. They now tell Eyewitness News that they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there were any undercover buys in the apartments, just a confidential informant who allegedly lied.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, police say, "We’ve initiated an investigation which has resulted in the informant being arrested for possession of narcotics. The investigation is continuing regarding his conduct leading up to these two search warrants."

They also say surveillance video shows the informant, who was supposedly searched beforehand by cops, reaching into his undergarments three separate times, exchanging the cops’ money for hidden drugs, then allegedly walking out of the building.

Why didn’t they check the surveillance video before conducting the raids?  And how thoroughly could they possibly have searched this informant if he was able to hide drugs in his clothing?  Moreover, if they were this sloppy while using this informant, how do we know other cops in the city aren’t making similar mistakes with other informants?  This particular informant has been the source of information for at least a dozen other drug raids.

Once again, the larger point here is that these raids are too violent and dangerous, the margin of error to small, and the tips and investigations that lead to them too subject to mistakes and bad information for them to be used on nonviolent drug offenders.

“SWAT Team Looks for Purse Snatcher”