Update II on Dog-Shooting Story: Police Arrest 2 In Marijuana-Shipping Plot

Pr. George’s Police Arrest 2 In Marijuana-Shipping Plot – washingtonpost.com
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.

The county Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and narcotics officers raided the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, after intercepting a package addressed to her that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana. During the raid, officers broke down Calvo’s door and fatally shot the family’s two black Labrador retrievers.

Police said the package was one of about a half-dozen retrieved by authorities in the past week along the route of a deliveryman in northern Prince George’s. The packages contained a combined 417 pounds of marijuana valued at about $3.6 million.

So the mayor and his wife may be the completely innocent victims of a large-scale marijuana shipping plot?  You’ve rounded up six packages on this guy’s delivery route, but you just couldn’t wait to put the pieces together without dressing up like Rambo and terrorizing who you thought was an “evil doper”?

The Washington Post wrote an editorial on this case called “Shoot First, Ask Later”:

…[T]he deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos’ two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor — in his briefs — and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.

Wihin an hour, it seems, the police concluded that something was seriously wrong and that there was at least a strong possibility that the Calvos — whose home contained not the slightest evidence of involvement in the drug trade — were unsuspecting victims.

Unfortunately, these drug busts run amok are not an uncommon occurrence.  Drug War Victims tells many stories of people not as lucky as the Calvos – people shot to death during drug raids, many of whom either weren’t the intended suspect or just happened to be home when SWAT teams served a warrant at the wrong address.

The purpose of a no-knock warrant (which these police didn’t have) is so police can have the element of surprise when busting violent bad guys with guns, before they can destroy the evidence of their crime.  Think of a cocaine dealer with a handgun and the ability to easily flush powder down the toilet.

Did the police think that 32 pounds of marijuana could easily be flushed down a toilet?  Did the home have a fireplace where it could be easily burned?  And why does any of that matter when you’ve already tracked a 32 pound package with the man’s address on it and it’s tested positive for weed?  And did they really think that the mayor of this suburban bedroom community was a thug-4-life brandishing a TEC-9 in his home to protect his weed dealing?