Drug WarRant

Video including the press conference by Mayor Calvo

The FBI is now monitoring the investigation of the raid, and the mayor has also asked the DOJ for an investigation.
The news coverage is also getting pretty big. There’s now international coverage and hundreds of papers around the country are covering it.
Cheye Calvo understands full well the fact that media coverage isn’t always equal for everyone as he addressed the press, talking about the need for changes in how things are done:

“I happen to be a Mayor, and so you all are all here right now. But Trinity and I deeply feel the pain of the people who don’t have that opportunity to tell their story, and often are just presumed guilty.”

Classy guy.

So the cops intercept a package full of marijuana addressed to Mayor Cheye Calvo’s wife, deliver it, and when nobody opens it, they go in, kill the dogs and terrorize the family. Just routine police business.
In bizarro-land.
Of course, this is horrible policing. Even if you discount the fact that they entered illegally. And then, this

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.

Of course.
Even if busting people for marijuana was defensible (which it isn’t) and even if was defensible to use violent home invasion techniques for marijuana busts (which it isn’t), there’s no excuse for going in with such horrendously poor information.
An address on a box? I can write any address on a box that I want. It’s really easy. I use a pen. And the person at that address won’t even know that I wrote it! It’s basic literacy, which apparently eludes the police of Prince George County.
So are the police ashamed? Have they turned in their badges? Have they wept for the loss of two loving dogs?

Neither [Police Chief Melvin C. High] nor Sheriff Michael A. Jackson apologized for the raid, which they said was conducted responsibly, given what deputies and officers knew at the time.

Translation: “we were so f-in’ stupid, we didn’t know what we were doing, which makes it OK.”
So what did the deputies and officers know at the time?

• The address on the box.

What didn’t they know at the time?

• Who lived there — they didn’t know it was the Mayor, or that there were dogs, etc., etc. — things that are apparently only impenetrable secrets to illiterate county police, who apparently also don’t know how to do… police work.
• Whether the addressee had any knowledge of the contents — something else that would have required actual police work.
• Whether there was any possibility that someone might have purposely misaddressed the package.

Now about the last one — maybe this was a brand new trick — something that nobody had ever done before — so diabolically clever that nobody could have anticipated it.
Except that… the idea of a purposeful wrong address was, in fact, the very first thought I had when I first heard the story. And let’s see, could it have actually happened exactly this way before? (like in March of this year)

Shortly after that, Halperin was sitting on his couch next to the unopened package when a special police enforcement team rushed in with guns raised. […]
“He was handcuffed at gunpoint, strip-searched, taken to jail and placed under a $25,000 secured bond for a crime he did not commit,” Thomas said.
The incident was the third of its kind in the past 11 months in which a Duke student was accused of trafficking drugs contained in a package intercepted from DHL, an express shipper with offices around the world. […]
“The power to arrest someone is a tremendous power,” Thomas said Wednesday. “But with that power goes a tremendous responsibility to conduct a full and complete investigation. You investigate first, and you arrest after the investigation.”

Investigate first, then arrest.
Oh, and yes, this can happen anywhere…
In my own town, a judge last week reversed his ruling and freed a woman who had received, but not opened a package of marijuana. Prosecutors claimed that she should have been able to smell the marijuana in the hour it was in her home (despite the fact that none of the officers testified smelling it). The judge realized that there was no reason to assume this. (I wonder if he heard about the Mayor Cheye Calvo case).
There’s no excuse for these officers in Prince George’s County, MD to continue to have jobs. The Police Chief and Sheriff should be gone. They are an embarrassment to law enforcement everywhere, and a danger to their communities.

It’s a little early to give out details right now, but I’ve been invited to participate in a prestigious debate overseas in a couple of months, which will focus on one aspect of drug policy.
I’m glad I’ve spent so much time on my Elevator Arguments (pdf). After having to get a point across in 30 seconds, the seven minutes I’ll be allotted should be a luxury.
I’ll let you know more when I have more details to share, and I’ll probably be running some ideas past you.

The Drug Czar visited a pot growing site.

John Walters, who holds the Cabinet-level position as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, came to California to bring attention to a new locally coordinated, but partly federally funded, marijuana eradication program to raid marijuana gardens planted on public lands by Mexican drug cartels.
“We intend to shoot these down,” Walters said.

Shoot down gardens? Huh?
What else did he have to say?

Mandatory minimum sentences “make criminals talk,” Walters said approvingly.
“Talking criminals is what you need to go after the higher-ups.”

Every professional out there with a shred of respectability is saying that mandatory minimums don’t do us any good. So naturally, our drug czar loves ’em.
And does he have something to say about marijuana?

Walters said public perception that marijuana is harmless is out of date. Marijuana addiction is a major problem for young people today.
“For those of the baby boomer generation who started this stupidity, I want you to know this is not the marijuana of the 1980s,” he said. The marijuana being eradicated in national parks “is not something raised by some retired hippie.”

Actually, the baby boomer generation didn’t start this stupidity. The stupidity was started, fueled and expanded by people like these.

In Time Magazine: Bolivia’s Surprising Anti-Drug Success

Morales has proven to be a skilled switch- hitter: Coca cultivation is under control and drug trafficking interdiction is up. The U.S. acknowledges the achievements, even as it remains skeptical of Morales’ policies on the industrialization of non-narcotic coca products. Still, Morales has managed to meet at least some of the goals of the U.S. on his own terms, without turning into an enemy of his own people.

Now, obviously, Morales could do a lot better if there wasn’t a U.S. drug war to begin with, or if he didn’t feel the need to prove himself a drug warrior in order to continue to collect U.S. coin and avoid U.S. sanctions.
Even still, he’s managed to shut up the entire U.S. and U.N. drug war machine that has tried to claim that nothing short of total eradication of the coca plant is an option. They don’t like to admit that illicit plants can have beneficial uses.
And here’s the really embarrassing part …

Bolivia’s coca cultivation increased 5% in 2007, but that’s minimal compared to Colombia’s 26% increase over the same period

So while the killer of Tarika Wilson has been acquitted of any wrong-doing in a criminal court, he still faces civil proceedings. Additionally, now apparently, the Justice Department is taking a look at it.

The U.S. Justice Department will review the FBI’s findings in the case to determine if federal prosecutors should bring civil rights charges against the officer.

and

A separate internal investigation also is under way by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Dayton. That will help determine whether Chavalia will face any discipline by the police department. He remains suspended with pay.

Fine, so they’re having investigations. Peachy.
But where are the investigations of the higher-ups who green-lighted a domestic military incursion to prevent flushing? Where are the Justice Department investigations into, frankly, the Justice Department?
After all, they supply the kerosene that fuels the conflagration.

Charlie Lynch found guilty.
What a stupid world this is.

Officers cheer police shooting verdict in Lima

Lima, Ohio — A jury verdict that cleared a police officer in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed woman will allow other officers to do their job without hesitation, police union officials said.

Ah, yes. It would certainly be unreasonable to expect police officers to hesitate before shooting an unarmed black woman cowering on the floor of her home holding her baby. Particularly if fellow officers were busy shooting dogs downstairs at the time.
And it certainly would be unreasonable to find a different way to protect and serve other than home invasion.
But we don’t have to worry about that now, so Cheers!
Some commenters at that article know how to celebrate as well…

Bottom line = good guys win, bad guys lose. […] Why should a police officer have to put his life in danger when some idiot crackhouse mama acts aggressively? […] Miss Wilson (note NOT MRS. Wilson) was a train wreck waiting to happen. She got killed for poor life choices. Pure and simple. […] I agree with radfordstree. This woman’s life choices placed her and her children in mortal danger. These choices finally caught up with her. […] The real victim here is the police officer, for being persecuted for doing his job and putting his life at risk to do so

…
If any of these are residents of Lima, Ohio, they may be less excited, if the bill comes due…

A family member of the woman who was fatally shot during a police raid at her home seven months ago filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Toledo against the City of Lima and police Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, claiming a violation of civil rights.
Darla Kaye Jennings filed the lawsuit on behalf of Sincere Wilson, her 1-year-old grandson who was injured when his mother, Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot. The lawsuit asks for compensation for Sincere‰s injuries as well as seeking an end to “police abuse by requiring that high risk search warrant executions be limited to situations where they are truly needed and where the least amount of force necessary to the situation is employed.”

Grandma — apparently the first person in Lima, Ohio, who really understands.

Ohio jurors acquit cop linked to death of mom holding baby

The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault.

Here’s the real tragedy:

Outside the courthouse, Wilson’s brother, Ivory Austin said he wasn’t surprised by the verdict.
“Now he (Chavalia) gets to get back on with his life,” he said. “He took my sister’s life.”
He said he was hoping someone from the police department would at least admit a mistake was made. […]
“I’m hurting deeply,” [pastor Arnold Manley] said. “The message I got out of all this is that it’s OK for police to go and kill in a drug raid,” he said.

It sure is. As long as they’re conducting a drug raid, they can kill anybody.

I’m enjoying hanging out in Chicago. What’s new in the world?
“bullet” Some Doubt Mayor’s Tie to Drugs — authorities are finally getting a clue as to what might have happened — too late for the dogs and the psychological health of the Mayor’s family. [Thanks, bogoman]