Police shoot and kill dogs in botched drug raid

The nanny government has added yet another pair of innocent lives to its list of those mistakenly killed in the name of the "war on drugs" (see here for an exciting interactive map from the Cato Institute of botched police raids of all kinds!), in this case a pair of dogs. This story is several days old, and still developing, but here's the short of it: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, in Prince George's County, Maryland (it's a part-time job), was delivered a package of marijuana (32 lbs., apparently) in a (clever) scheme used by drug dealers in which drugs are sent to innocents and intercepted by dealers. Mayor Calvo, upon arriving home, brought the package inside, and shortly thereafter P.G. County police burst into his home (critically, they did not knock and announce their intentions), shot the dogs (the cops felt "threatened"; the dogs were black labs), handcuffed Calvo and his mother-in-law on the floor by the dead, bleeding dogs, and interrogated the two (the people, not the dead dogs) for an extended period of time.

Apparently the cops did not have a no-knock warrant (although a spokeperson initially claimed they did; but such warrants are not issued in Maryland), and did not produce a warrant after entering when Calvo requested to see one. They have been exceptionally unapologetic about their actions. They did not inform the Berwyn Heights police of their intention to raid the Calvo household. Et cetera. They fucked up in many ways, violating not only decency and common sense, but also the law. All because of a 32-pound package of pot. Calvo has since asked the FBI to investigate the P.G. County police's actions, and they will do so.

In addition the Washington Post story linked above, there is additional big-media coverage of this story on CNN, and a very informative blog post on the Nation Builder blog.

This is a tragedy in many ways, but for those who are more moved by animals being killed than by the same happening to humans, maybe this will get your dander up enough for you to be worried about the way the government operates in the name of fighting the use of marijuana.

Via Metafilter, of course.

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