Liberty Maven

AP has released an article with more details in this horrifying case representing the continued failure of the war on drugs.

Here is the background:

BERWYN HEIGHTS, Md. – Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside, putting it on a table. Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple’s two dogs and seizing the unopened package.

In it were 32 pounds of marijuana. But the drugs evidently didn’t belong to the couple.

Police say the couple appeared to be innocent victims of a scheme by two men to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana by having it delivered to about a half-dozen unsuspecting recipients.

The two men under arrest include a FedEx deliveryman; investigators said the deliveryman would drop off a package outside a home, and the other man would come by a short time later and pick it up.

Here are more details:

Police announced Wednesday they had arrested two men suspected in a plot to smuggle 417 pounds of marijuana, and seized a total of $3.6 million in pot. Investigators said the package that arrived on Calvo’s porch had been sent from Los Angeles via FedEx, and they had been tracking it ever since it drew the attention of a drug-sniffing dog in Arizona.

Police intercepted it in Maryland, and an undercover detective posing as a deliveryman took it to the Calvo home.

Calvo’s defenders — including the Berwyn Heights police chief, who said his department should have been alerted ahead of time — said police had no right to enter the home without knocking.

But officials insisted they acted within the law, saying the operation was compromised when Calvo’s mother-in-law saw officers approaching the house and screamed. That could have given someone time to grab a gun or destroy evidence, authorities said.

Is anyone on the side of the Prince George’s County Police Department here? I mean did they really think that they could have destroyed 32 lbs of pot in the minute or two it would have taken to knock on the door? Any woman in their right mind would have screamed if they saw a SWAT team running toward their house when taking delivery of a package. So they bust down the door and shoot the family dogs before even asking questions or assessing the situation? This is completely ridiculous. The AP article ends with this:

His wife spoke through tears as she described an encounter with a girl who used to see the couple walking their dogs.

“She gave me a big hug and she said, `If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?’” Tomsic said. “I don’t want people to feel like that. I just want them to be proud of our police and proud to live in Prince George’s County.”

Mrs. Tomsic, we are way beyond the possibility of being proud of policemen. These kinds of circumstances have been occurring all over the country. There are many innocent people and pets who would still be alive if it weren’t for the war on drugs. It may not be long before we stop calling it the war on drugs and start calling it the state sponsored drug war genocide.

Read the entire AP article here.