Gangsters in Blue

Yesterday, I mentioned the case of Darryl P. Ross, a man shot and killed during a drug raid on his home. Curiously, there’s been no mention of what, if any, illicit drugs police found in Ross’s home. His family is calling his death a murder, and trying to raise money for a private investigation.

That may now prove difficult. A judge has ordered all police documents in the case–including the search warrant, police affidavit, and evidence return sheet–sealed. The given justification was to protect the identity of the confidential informant in the case.

Police serving a search warrant in Haltom City, Texas say an officer had no choice but to shoot and kill an “aggressive”–wait for it–Jack Russell terrier.

Here are the details, from Cato’s website:

Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine?

POLICY FORUM
Thursday, September 11, 2008
4:00 PM (Reception To Follow)

Featuring Cheye Calvo, Mayor, Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Radley Balko, Senior Writer, Reason and author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Peter Christ, Co-founder, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.

The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

The Prince George’s County police department is under fire for a recent drug raid on the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo. Unbeknownst to Calvo, a box containing marijuana was delivered to his home. Shortly thereafter, police officers kicked in the front door and shot both of Calvo’s pet Labrador retrievers. The police have subsequently cleared Calvo of any wrongdoing but are unapologetic about their raid tactics. Are no-knock, paramilitary raids an appropriate tactic for drug investigations? Or do sudden, unannounced entries bring unnecessary violence to police investigations? Join us for a discussion of the Prince George’s incident and, more broadly, the militarization of police work in America.

Cato events, unless otherwise noted, are free of charge. To register for this event, please fill out the form below and click submit or email events@cato.org, fax (202) 371-0841, or call (202) 789-5229 by 4:00 PM, Wednesday, September 10, 2008. Please arrive early. Seating is limited and not guaranteed. News media inquiries only (no registrations), please call (202) 789-5200.

If you can’t make it to the Cato Institute, watch this forum live online.

A comparison of what happens to frightened citizens who shoot at threats they can’t see during a drug raid vs. what happens to frightened police officers who shoot at threats they can’t see during a drug raid.

You could substitute Ryan Frederick or Derrick Foster (among others) for Cory Maye. And you could substitute Dep. Christopher Long and a whole host of others for Chavalia.

Police who make mistakes during drug raids get suspended with pay, and ultimately vindicated. Citizens who make mistakes during drug raids go to jail.

Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo on the police raid on his home earlier this month:

"The reality is that this happens all the time in this country and disproportionally in Prince Georges county and most of the people to whom it happens don’t have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition but I hope you’ll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have."

Good for him. And he’s right. 

Prince George’s County police have now cleared Calvo and his wife of any wrongdoing (though they still won’t apologize for the raid), and the FBI is investigating possible civil rights violations.  Here are a few excerpts from Calvo’s letter to the Justice Department requesting that investigation:

My mother-in-law was made to lie face-down on the floor in the kitchen, several feet away from where Payton was bleeding to death. Her hands were restrained with plastic handcuffs behind her back. She laid there on the floor with her head held down by police so that she could only see Payton’s lifeless body for a considerable period of time.

The officers called for me to walk downstairs backwards with my hands up, which I did. The officers then directed to me to kneel down in the living room by the open front door in my boxer shorts with my hands restrained in plastic cuffs behind my back. I remained in that position for a considerable period of time, watching Payton’s body in the other corner of the room and my mother-in-law lying face down in the kitchen.

[...]

Georgia was questioned by a detective named Kim, who in the course of her questioning managed to talk on her cell phone and to make a veterinary appointment for her dog. Georgia overheard Kim tell her friend that, this was her first raid and that it was "exciting" because it was the mayor’s house.

[...]

Without ever investigating what happened or speaking to us, both the sheriff and the county police chief have announced public conclusions in this case defending the raid. More disturbing, we now have received reports of similar misconduct involving other innocent homeowners, including invasion of the homes of other innocent country residents and killing of other innocent family pets. This appears to be a pattern and practice in our law law enforcement agencies where a lack of training and supervision is apparent.

At this point, I’m pretty jaded about this stuff.  But that third paragraph nearly made my eyeballs explode.

A Lima, Ohio jury has acquitted police officer Joseph Chavalia of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson.  Chavalia shot and killed Wilson and wounded her infant son during a drug raid last January.  Wilson was unarmed.

During the raid, one of Chavalia’s fellow officers shot and killed the two dogs owned by Wilson’s boyfriend and the target of the raid, Anthony Terry.  Chavalia testified that he mistook his fellow officer’s shots at the dogs for hostile gunfire coming from the bedroom where Wilson was standing with her child.  Chavalia then fired blindly into the bedroom.

The jury concluded that Chavalia reasonably feared for his life when he heard the gunshots.  I guess they were then willing to overlook Chavalia’s mistaking an unarmed woman holding a baby for an armed drug dealer, and the fact that he fired blindly into a room without first identifying what he was shooting at.  It’s too bad that that same sort of deference isn’t given to the people on the receiving end of these raids when they too understandably confuse the police officers who wake them from sleep and invade their homes for criminal intruders.

This case illustrates the low margin for error in these raids, and why they’re a bad idea even when the police do hit the correct house.  Anthony Terry may be a bad man.  But these sorts of tactics are too volatile and too dangerous to be using on anyone except for those people who pose an immediate risk to the public.  Even the smallest mistakes can lead to unnecessary casualties.

It also shows how layer upon layer of flawed arguments can allow something as unjustifiable as the shooting death of an unarmed woman and the near-killing of her infant son to be dismissed as mere collateral damage.  The initial argument is that we need to prohibit drugs to protect people from the harm they cause.  That’s followed by the argument that we need to use aggressive, paramilitary raids to apprehend drug dealers, because they might dispose of evidence or shoot cops were drug warrants to be served by less confrontational means.  That’s followed by the argument that we have to forgive cops who kill innocent people in these raids because the raids themselves are incredibly volatile and dangerous.  Never mind that the police created the danger and volatility in the first place.

Put those arguments together and you get the absurd premise that the government’s killing of Tarika Wilson—and all of the drug raid deaths that came before her—is an acceptable consequence of the government’s responsibility to protect her (and all of us) from the effects of illicit drugs.

That simply doesn’t add up.

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.

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.