Killing of Mayor’s 2 Dogs Justified, Pr. George’s Finds – washingtonpost.com
The Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office has concluded in an internal review that its deputies were justified when they shot and killed two dogs belonging to the mayor of Berwyn Heights during a July drug raid, Sheriff Michael Jackson said yesterday.The sheriff said that one dog was engaging an officer and that the other was running toward a second officer at the time the black Labs were shot, but the ruling did not satisfy the mayor, who said the inquiry was incomplete and misleading.
According to the necropsy, 7-year-old Payton was shot four times, twice in the chest and twice in the head. One of the shots entered through his mouth and lodged in the back of his neck.
Four-year-old Chase was shot twice. One bullet entered the dog’s back left leg, then lodged in his right back leg. The other entered his side and passed through his chest.
“The report confirms what me and my family saw, heard and lived and makes it clear the sheriff was not telling the truth,” Calvo said.
He said the number of gunshot wounds to the two dogs indicates that the violence used in the raid was “unbelievably excessive.”
Jackson said the department looked at each shooting in detail. The first dog was engaging officers near the front door, he said. The second was shot, he said, as it ran away from the deputy who fired and toward an officer standing in an adjacent hallway with his back turned.
Calvo said there was no way a deputy shooting from the kitchen could have seen another officer in the hallway as Jackson described. He called on the sheriff’s department to release photos taken of the dogs the night of the raid, which he said will prove the point.
The Sheriff’s Office did this internal review without interviewing Mayor Calvo or his mother-in-law, both of whom sat in handcuffs near the collecting pool of blood from the first shot dog. What did they expect the officers involved in the raid to say, that the dogs were not threatening and the second dog was actually running away, as Mayor Calvo asserts? Of course the cops are going to say the dogs were attacking, because part of the standard operating procedure in these drug raids is to kill the dogs as a “shock and awe” means of pacifying the victims of the raid.
Questioning the killing of the dogs misses the larger point: are the police ever justified in breaking in and terrorizing citizens over marijuana? There was more violence committed by cops in that drug raid than is committed by a thousand stoners in a year!
Ahhhh heck, there all kinda the same, just different Uni’s. John Walters might not have used this kind of method to make the bust, but X Drug CZarrrr Barry McCaffrey would have. McCaffrey had a military backround and some sheriffs do too. Not sure if this one has, but if not, he has watched a lot of TV or he feels he owns the town. Usually same result, they make a bust and someone pays a HIGH price for it usually, JAIL!!!!
I think you touched on the larger issue, and the individual officers on the scene were actually in the right (from their standpoint safety wise) to open fire on the dogs, as the dogs saw then as intruders and if loyal would attack and injure them.
That larger issue IS why are we attacking Americans in their homes with paramilitary raids for social crimes? The mayor is probably pursuing this from a point of view of “well I am innocent of drug crimes so they are wrong for using excessive force on my dogs” as if finding a pot plant (or even an ounce of meth for that matter) would make all the difference.
The officers participating in the raid do not know your guilty or innocence, they are usually rank and file personnel not attached to undercover people in the investigation.
War on drugs?
War on sanity.
This sends a powerful message to the rest of the world. There’s nothing you can do to us that we aren’t doing to ourselves.
This was not a police action. The police would use stake-outs, wire-tapping, and an investigation that would last for years. This was a military op. Shock, awe and control using force.
Of course their reason for killing the dogs are ”
justified”….the same in the case of Rachel Hoffman, whom the grandy jury found TPD and DEA negligent….but you know they have to make excuses and jutsify their wrong-doings…Its like the drug czar and ONCDP (even Palin) and justifying slander and lies about MJ to keep laws more restrictive and tigher.