They always shoot the dog
Mayors dogs killed in drug raid. This one is a bit odd. Seems the mayor had 30 pounds of weed mailed to him:
“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.”
And a bit of like you and me only better:
“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.”
Well, now that this has happened to somebody important, maybe something will be done about it.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:02 am
What was the results of the raid? Did they find any drugs?
July 31st, 2008 at 10:03 am
30 pounds of marijuana.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:06 am
OK, lets forgive him, he lost his dogs.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:16 am
“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.”
30 Lbs of marijuana does not make you a drug dealer?
“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.”
If the mayor was crooked, I guess I would not have notified the police chief either, they may have been joined at the hip.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:39 am
New motto: “Always think puppycide”
July 31st, 2008 at 10:43 am
very much like you and me, only much, much better.
why exactly do drug warrants have to be served while anybody’s in the building to be searched, anyway? wait for the occupant to leave, trail him/her a few blocks, then serve the warrant at a traffic stop. soon as the homeowner touches the warrant, radio in the signal to pick the front door lock, or give the homeowner a chance to surrender the keys and help control any dogs, say it’ll be counted as “cooperating” and extenuating circumstances. how would that not work just as well with far less damage?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:03 am
One reason that it is best to serve warrants when people are present is because drug dealers use boobie traps, fish hooks hanging on fishing line to block doors, shot guns with trip wires ect. When dealers are present they are less likely to have them in place. Traffic stop are not good because you do not want the subject to go mobile if they do and decide to run then they are putting the public at risk. The reason for the quick entry is to prevent them from getting rid of the drugs. The beat way to prevent any of this is don’t do it. If you play with shit then you will more than likely get some on you.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:27 am
or if you make political enemies out of somebody who can afford to mail you some shit, it seems. militarized police using dynamic entry techniques to serve warrants is only the “best” idea from the police’s point of view, and even then only if you ignore the backlash whenever they hit the wrong house. i’d prefer if police tactics were decided more based on what’s best for society at large, keeping in mind that cops make mistakes too.
oh, and no, having 30 pounds of pot mailed to you does not make you a drug dealer. selling drugs is the only thing that makes you a drug dealer. i guess we’ll have to wait for the trial to see if there was any credible evidence of such goings-on.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:38 am
I used to live in Berwyn Heights-it’s a sleepy small town that is somehow within the Beltway in PG County. Yes, that is possible. I am also familiar with the attitude and type of person who end up working as PG County cops, having known a few of them at one time. You know what? I don’t believe the cops are telling anything resembling the truth here. What they had was a package with an address on it-which is something that anyone can ship to a randomly selected address and easily track using UPS or fedex. A name and address is not enough to justify what happened, and yet that’s what the cops are saying. What happens when you come home and find a package on your porch? You take it inside-is that surprising? If that’s all it takes to allow a swat team to raid one’s home-then it’s basically being done on the say so of the police. Is that what we really want in this country? What is surprising is that this tactic is getting some notice in the WaPo of all places. The cops broke in, guns blazing, and then find that the “suspect” hasn’t even opened the package and that they have to back down on their big drug bust. They didn’t do their homework and check up on their suspect because they wouldn’t have done this kind of raid otherwise. Just a little bit of due diligence on the cop’s part would have spared the lives of two dogs and they still would have gotten to arrest someone.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:48 am
“The beat way to prevent any of this is don’t do it. If you play with shit then you will more than likely get some on you.” End quote
Tell that to Kathryn Johnson……oh wait she can’t hear you, she’s dead. The cops who killed her then planted drugs to cover this up.
Tell that the Ryan Fredrick at least he is alive, but a LEO is dead, based on a lying informant, no drugs were found.
If they had a local LEO posing as the UPS (or whomever) delivery guy they sure as hell could have had him step outside to sign for the package, take him down and slap on the cuffs. Viola!!!!
Instead you have a overzealous SWAT team (this isn’t the first time) playing with their toys. If you let them start looking like an occupying army, soon they will start acting like one. Pretty soon people will start treating them like one.
Please take this in the most gentle way possible:
Tell th
July 31st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
30 pounds of marijuana is worth about 28-30 thousand, someone must really want to get him bad. Why not just sneak into his house and put some child porn on his computer, that would be cheaper and works better.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
well, that’s assuming somebody actually wants to specifically get him. can we yet rule out the possibility of some drug dealer just being an idiot and writing down the wrong destination address on the package?
(or, for that matter, is it certain yet that it was actually a package of 30 pounds of pot? as opposed to a 30-pound package with some pot in it / that some drug dog alerted on due to contamination? either one could end up reported in the press as “30 pounds of pot” if i know anything about journalists.)
July 31st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
30 pounds of marijuana is worth about 28-30 thousand, someone must really want to get him bad.
One might be able to sell that amount of marijuana for that much money. It certainly does not cost very much to grow that amount — I would guess less than a hundred dollars. Sounds like a pretty cheap way to “get” somebody — and the way the laws are written, that amount will “get” you pretty bad.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:12 pm
“Well, now that this has happened to somebody important, maybe something will be done about it.”
Yeah, the “importatnt” people will make sure that the cops dont raid the homes/offices/etc of state, city, county, and federal officials.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Nobody had to be out to get anybody-this could have easily been a mistake in addressing, a package contaminated in transport, or an actual real drug delivery using someone else’s address as a drop. How hard is it to discount any of the above in the first place? If the police didn’t do that much they didn’t do their job, especially considering the tactics that they decided to use. For example, consider the third possibility above:
1) Bad guy needs to ship 32 pounds of pot cross country.
2) Bad guy picks a random address in a “nice” neighborhood.
3) Bad guy uses UPS with tracking, and then tells his friends at the other end.
4) Bad guy friends track package, and wait up the street for the brown truck.
5) Bad guy friends take package off porch 30 seconds after the UPS guy drops it off.
6) Profit!
Seriously, that took me 30 seconds to think through, and I’m a suburban middle aged non criminal type. Why can’t the cops do that?
July 31st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Well, now that this has happened to somebody important, maybe something will be done about it.
They’ll check to make sure it ain’t the mayor’s house before dynamically entering and dynamically shooting the dog. For the rest of us, it won’t change a dynamic thing, dynamically or otherwise.
III
July 31st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
How about this:
How does somebody having 30 pounds of weed hurt anyone? Who is the victim of 30 pounds of weed?
We need to quit this war on drugs bullshit. It’s the biggest door to tyranny ever built, yet we keep building it bigger and bigger, then open it right up.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Look up the Al Woodbridge arrest.
Always refuse to sign for packages addressed to you by unknowns.
If one is left on your doorstep, leave it there, get the trashcan out, put the package in the trash, and haul it to the curb.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
One does wonder how many such raids on others this mayor may have defended as being “within policy”.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Considering that the package is weed is based only on the police. I do not consder that proof. Quite possible the drug sniffing dog got it wrong. Until I have confirmation I will not believe that it was drugs. It was sent to the mother in law that resides at the mayors house. They shot the lab as it was running to the back of the house since the older dog already was shot.
I am sick of the SWAT tactics. If the mayor had come running out with a gun he would have been shot. Just knock on the door and execute the search. Ask the homeowner to put away the dogs. There is no reason to be shooting dogs or people for drugs.
I regret to say the only way police will give up the love affair of SWAT tactics is if they get shot by the homeowners. SWAT tactics are dangerous to the occupants and the police.