Sorry in advance for the horrible pun, and I’ll probably set richtaylor off with this story, but I’ve been following this story in the local news for the past week. It made the national news yesterday. The Washington Post reported on the original story last week:

A police SWAT team raided the home of the mayor in the Prince George’s County town of Berwyn Heights on Tuesday, shooting and killing his two dogs, after he brought in a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been delivered to his doorstep, police said.

...

“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.

Things have gotten a LOT more interesting over the last week. First, it appears the mayor’s wife got caught up in an identity-theft scam:

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.
...
High said one of the men arrested was an independent contractor who worked as a package deliveryman. The police chief did not release the name of either man.

High and Maj. Mark Magaw, commander of the county’s narcotics enforcement division, said the two suspects worked in tandem. The officials said that the deliveryman would drop off the package and that the other man would come by shortly thereafter and retrieve it.

At other times, the officials said, the suspects exchanged packages face to face in parking lots. In two instances, Magaw said, the deliveryman mistakenly took drugs to the wrong address, then went to the houses and asked for the packages.

Next, it appears that the county policy didn’t bother to talk to the local township police, and had no idea of who the suspect actually was:

Berwyn Heights police Chief Patrick A. Murphy appeared with the mayor yesterday and said his agency was never informed of the investigation, despite an existing memorandum of understanding to work together on such operations.

He said not knowing about the raid could have led his officers to fire upon the sheriff’s SWAT team because its members were wearing street clothes, masks and carrying weapons as they approached the mayor’s house.

“What about the safety of my officers?” Murphy said. If consulted, he added, “We could have gotten the mayor to put the dogs away and consent to a search.”

The County Police are completely unapologetic:

Police Chief Melvin C. High would not rule out that Calvo and Tomsic had some involvement in the delivery. Asked whether police had cleared them, he said: “From all the indications at the moment, they had an unlikely involvement, but we don’t want to draw that definite conclusion at the moment.” He later said, “Most likely, they were innocent victims.”

Neither he nor Sheriff Michael A. Jackson apologized for the raid, which they said was conducted responsibly, given what deputies and officers knew at the time.

from the above WP article, and from today’s CNN report:

Taylor, a self-described dog lover, expressed sympathy for the loss of Calvo’s dogs, but stopped short of apologizing for the incident.

“We’ve done these similar kinds of operations over and over again, to the tune of removing billions of dollars of drugs from the community and without people or animals being harmed,” she said. “We don’t want any of our operations to result in the injury or loss of anybody, and certainly not animals.”

The deputies have said they killed the two animals because they felt threatened.

“I would say that the dogs presented a threat, I would imagine, to the special operations situation,” Taylor said.

The report on CNN that I saw this morning said that the FBI has agreed to get involved in the investigation, although all the reports I’m finding on the web seem to indicate that they’ve been asked, but haven’t responded yet.

P.S. These are the same Prince George’s County cops who mysteriously had a cop-killer suspect in solitary confinement die from strangulation without hanging himself last month.

People want to make the case that this is “just” about more victims of the drug war:

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.

I think that actually minimizes what went on here. Yes, it was a drug case, and it was one over pot, which a lot of us don’t think should be illegal. But this same thing could have happened with any sort of potentially-dangerous contraband (e.g. guns, weapons components, etc). It’s about a much larger issue - abuse of authority, and belief in absolute power. This police department clearly needs a shakeup; there is clearly a leadership failure in play, given the track record of the department, and emphasized by their failure to consult with the local cops. The only upside to this story, if there is one, is that it appears that it will be the deaths of a couple of dogs, rather than a couple more people, that causes some heads to roll.

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The Agitator:

I guess I’d just add that the national media coverage of the Berwyn Heights raid seems to be predicated on the assumption that the most troubling aspects of the raid-the killing of the dogs, the violent tactics, the lax investigation, the likely innocent victims, and the police obstinacy after the fact-are unusual.  They aren’t.