Cheye Calvo Speaks at the Cato Institute 9/11/08

For those of you that have visited before, you are aware of the Cheye Calvo story.  If not, please take some time to familiarize yourself with it here, here, and here.

The video below is from his appearance on a panel at the Cato Institute on 9/11/08.  The panel was entitled “Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine?” that also included Radley Balko.

More information on the event, including a podcast and video of the entire event in RealPlayer here.

No Wrongdoing? Really?

A few weeks back, Berwyn Heights mayor, Cheye Calvo, was the subject of a no-knock warrant served on his home after a package addressed to his wife was delivered to his home. During shipping, drug dogs searched for and discovered 32 pounds of marijuana in that package. Police delivered the package dressed as FedEx deliverymen and were instructed to leave the package on the porch by Calvo’s mother-in-law. The Washington Post gives a full account of the ensuing happenings here. For those of you following this incident as closely as I did, you will already know those events, as well as subsequent updates to the story here, here, and here. Yesterday, an internal investigation by the Prince Georges County, Maryland Sheriff’s Department concluded that the officers that raided Cheye Clavo’s home were responsible for no wrongdoing in the execution of a drug raid on July 29^th.

The most interesting aspects of this investigation are that neither Cheye Calvo nor his mother-in-law were interviewed, the necropsy showing that neither dog was threatening officers as they burst into the home, and the fact that an ordinary search warrant was executed as a “no-knock” warrant were considered as the Sheriff’s Department cleared itself of any wrongful conduct. The good news is that Calvo’s efforts to have the violations of his civil rights investigated have not fallen on deaf ears.  His high-profile position has afforded him quite a network of officials in the county and state governments.

As expected, the Calvo family was cleared of any illegalities, since they were near the bottom of a long list of victims of a drug smuggling ring that shipped marijuana to the Washington D.C. suburb.  Once delivered, the FedEx deliveryman would call a contact who would pick up the package and complete its delivery to the actual intended recipients.  Area police were aware of this tactic, as they have seized 417 pounds of marijuana in subsequent arrests of the FedEx employee and his partner in the delivery scheme.

So, if I have this straight, the police and sheriff’s department did nothing wrong when they intruded on the home of the mayor without a proper warrant to do so, fatally shot two dogs who were not presenting an immediate threat to officers, and detained two individuals who were obviously the victims of a scheme to deliver marijuana to the Washington D.C. area.  An internal investigation will almost always show bias toward the body it represents, and the utter disregard for the facts and interviews that have been ignored will certainly be used by the FBI when their investigation concludes.  It is certainly helpful that Cheye Calvo is a well-connected individual in a position of authority and not the usual victims of an overzealous police force trampling the rights of the citizens they have sworn to protect, like Cory Maye.

Cross-post: United Liberty

Liberty Papers Shows Double Standard

Stephen Littau has written quite a piece contrasting the different consequences for two men on different sides of the situation in a no-knock warrant situation where they both shot and killed someone.  He compares the prosecution of Cory Maye, a citizen who shot and killed a police officer who invaded his home on a no-knock warrant due to his proximity to a known drug dealer and an informant’s word, and Joseph Chavalia, a police officerwho shot and killed an unarmed woman in the course of serving an arrest warrrant.  As I am sure you guessed, Cory Maye and Joseph Chavalia got very different verdicts.  Cory Maye was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death, while Joseph Chavalia was acquitted of negligient homicide and negligient assault.  Cory’s sentence was later overturned in favor of life imprisonment upon appeal, and Chavalia’s acquittal brought about cheers from the local police community.  The exclusion of information in Chavalia’s case would have kept Cory Maye’s name as unfamous as it ws before the intrusion into his home.  Talk about a double standard.

I hope Berwyn Heights mayor, Cheye Calvo, keeps his word about spreading the word about other atrocities committed by the police in their unmonitored, unaccountable actions in fighting an unwinnable war.  His prominence and network makes him the most powerful man to ever face down the police and their “tactics” in the war on drugs.

It Would Be Funnier If It Weren’t So Close to True

I came across this cartoon this morning, and I had to share.  You can read the article it was a part of here.  If you have been following the Cheye Calvo story, this will certainly be familiar.

"You'll never make it in this county, if you can't hit the target, son. It gets harder when they are running away."

Cheye Calvo Letter Requesting Civil Rights Investigation

Berwyn Heights mayor, Cheye Calvo, whose story has been carried and followed here for a little over a week, has requested an investigation of the Prince Georges County Sheriff’s Office and Police Department for their role in last month’s raid of his home.  This raid resulted in the deaths of his two labrador retrievers, the treatment of the mayor and his mother-in-law as criminals, and an interrogation that produced no arrests.  In the opening of his letter, he details the events of the afternoon of July 29th after his arrival home from his job.  His elected position is part-time, as Berwyn Heights is a small town.  You can read the letter in its entirety here.  I am quoting some highlights of the letter below:

[I] took our two dogs, Payton (age 7) and Chase (age 4), both black Labradors, for a walk. While on the walk, I noticed SUVs parked on nearby roads, but thought little of it other than to wave to the drivers. I returned home and then began changing my clothes to get ready for a quarterly meeting of municipal officials from nearby towns that I was hosting at Berwyn Heights Town Center, down the street. Before going back inside the house; however, I retrieved the package and placed it unopened on a living room table.

While in my bedroom upstairs, while changing and only in boxer shorts, I heard my mother-in-law scream and then heard our front door being broken open and gunshots being fired. I thought our home was being invaded. I feared for my life and fell to the floor. No one announced themselves as law enforcement.

Downstairs, the officers shot Payton immediately upon entering the house. Payton’s body was located on the floor near the entry to the kitchen where he was hot some distance from the front door. Chase, our four-year-old Lab, was shot in the back by the officers in the rear of the house while running away. Neither dog attacked or “engaged” law enforcement, as claimed by the county sheriff.

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 and I then were interrogated by police. 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. Finally, after nearly two hours, the officers released the restraints on my mother-in-law and me after I complained about losing feeling in my right hand. The officers ultimately decided not to arrest me or any member of my family and indeed found no evidence linking any of us to the box’s contents.

[...]

The law enforcement officers who entered our home did so without knocking and broke through the door. Since 2005, Maryland law has required a no-knock warrant. Last Saturday, the spokesperson for the county police stated that the court had issued a no-knock warrant. This is untrue. Law enforcement neither sought nor obtained a no-knock warrant. Indeed, no warrant was ever presented to us during the evening of the police raid.

Yesterday, the county sheriff justified the killing of our dogs because they had engaged the deputies. This is false. The officers were aware of  the presence of dogs in our house before they entered. They had seen me walking the dogs, both black Labs, moments earlier. They opened fire on our dogs as soon as they broke our door down. One dog, Payton, was shot near where he was found near the entrance to our kitchen some distance from the front door. The second dog, Chase was shot in the back while running away and was found in the rear of the house, where he had been shot.

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. There are also significant questions as to why our county’s sheriff’s department, whose statutory mission does not involve drug enforcement, should be executing drug raids.

I am glad to see that Mayor Calvo has realized that his situation is not uncommon in his community, but his position affords him a platform upon which he can stand up to the bullying by a sheriff’s department and county police that seems to operate on a “If We Raid Enough Homes, We Will Stop the Drug Problem in Our Community” policy.  There is an obvious drug ring operating in Prince Georges County, as they have arrested two individuals involved in the scheme that created the situation in question, as well as seized 417 pounds of marijuana in the last week or so.  In my opinion, Cheye Calvo’s position and network will actually bring about change in the tactics and operations of Prince Georges County, and his story will alert others about their civil liberties, and maybe they will voice the misdeeds of the police that happen to them.