The AP just picked up a week-old story in which Prince George's Country police raided the home of a local mayor in a bizarre case of identity theft, and shot his dogs dead:
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.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...
This was by no means the first time the PG police have violated its citizens.
Cops and law and order apologists are already in lock step defending the PG officers' actions, as we find in the comments on SayUncle's blog:
"OK, lets forgive him, he lost his dogs."
http://www.saysuncle.com/...
So what was he guilty of? Well it turns out, nothing at all.
"Trinity was an innocent and random victim of identity theft. Apparently, so were four or five other county residents whose names and addresses were stolen and used as addresses on drug packages," Calvo said at a news conference outside his house, near a garden of tomatoes and strawberries.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/...
This is neither Prince George's County's first attack on American's civil rights, nor the first time a police raid ended in innocent bloodshed in this country.
Prince George's County, Maryland has one of the most notorious police departments in the United States. Few other departments have so brazenly trampled upon civil rights or so egregiously violated human rights in our nation's modern history. Anyone who lives in the beltway area or for that matter Virginia or Maryland has read about their violations and affronts to human dignity for years.
In July 2008, a suspect in the killing of a PG police officer, being held in solitary confinement was found strangled to death in his cell:
A jail employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said any officer can enter the unit where White was held. "If you want to go and get in there, you can get in there," said the employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "If you want to get to somebody, you can."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In 2006, a jury awarded $3.7 million dollars in a 2000 PG police shooting incident, for the fatal shooting of an innocent Harvard University student:
Jones, 25, was shot eight times in the back, shoulder and arm on a Fairfax County neighborhood street by Cpl. Carlton Jones, who is not related to the victim, during a confrontation Sept. 1, 2000. Corporal Jones had followed Prince Jones on the mistaken belief he was involved in a gun investigation.
The case, along with other alleged incidents of brutality by Prince George's police, prompted the Justice Department to review the county department. In a settlement reached in January 2004, the county police pledged to reduce the use of excessive force by officers.
However, probes by Fairfax County, the Justice Department and the Prince George's police internal affairs division did not lead to charges against Corporal Jones.
http://www.wtopnews.com/...
But PG County police affronts to civilized society go back decades. In 1998 the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a district court's ruling that a police dog's mauling and disfigurement of an innocent victim sleeping in her own bed was not a violation of her civil rights:
Esther Vathekan was mauled and disfigured by a police dog when a canine unit searched her house as she slept. She sued Corporal Jeffrey Simms, the officer conducting the search, and Prince George's County (Maryland) under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, contending that the dog's attack constituted excessive force in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The district court held that Vathekan was not seized under the Fourth Amendment, concluding instead that Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process standards governed the case. The court then granted summary judgment to the defendants after finding that the force used against Vathekan did not "shock the conscience" as required for a violation of substantive due process. The judgment for Simms was based on qualified immunity.
After considering Vathekan's appeal, we conclude that she properly identified the Fourth Amendment as the source of the right she alleges Simms violated. We hold that it was clearly established in 1995 that it is objectively unreasonable for a police officer to fail to give a verbal warning before releasing a police dog to seize someone. We conclude that there is a factual dispute about whether Simms failed to give a warning before sending his dog into the house where Vathekan lived. This unresolved factual issue makes it impossible to grant summary judgment to Simms on qualified immunity grounds. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment to Simms. Because the district court granted summary judgment to Prince George's County on the mistaken determination that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to this case, we also reverse the summary judgment for the county. The case will be remanded for further proceedings.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/...
PG County's use of highly-strung, overly aggressive dogs and handlers goes back at least as far back as the mid 1990's, during which there were several incidents of unprovoked, unnecessary attacks on innocent civilians. In 2001, a Prince George's County Police Officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison in an incident involving an attack on an innocent citizen:
U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced former Prince George's County Police Officer to ten years in federal prison for intentionally violating the civil rights of a homeless man by releasing her police dog to attack him after he had surrendered, had his hands up, and offered no resistance. The ten-year sentence is the maximum term of imprisonment allowed by law for such a violation. Parole has been abolished in the federal system. In August of this year, a federal jury convicted Stephanie Mohr of violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 242; that is, the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law. The evidence presented at trial, including the testimony of a Takoma Park Police Sergeant who previously pleaded guilty in connection with the same incident, showed that before Mohr released her police dog on two non-resisting suspects, Corporal Anthony Delozier, who was acquitted at trial, asked the Takoma Park Sergeant if the dog could "take a bite" out of the victims. The Takoma Park Sergeant responded "Yes." Mohr then released her dog on the victim and another unidentified Prince George's County Officer beat the second homeless man for no reason.
While calculating the sentence in the case, Judge Chasanow ruled that Mohr had twice committed perjury when she testified at the trials in the case. She also enhanced the sentence because she found that Mohr took advantage of the fact that the victim was physically restrained at the time of the offense.
http://www.geocities.com/...
Prince George's County is not alone. Here in Washington state where I live, several years ago there was an infamous case where, acting on faulty information police raided the home of a family wrongly accused by a known felon of an armored car robbery. During the raid, an innocent woman was shot down by officers for running to protect her children:
A federal appeals court has rejected a motion to release Lynnwood's police chief and two detectives from a civil-rights lawsuit filed by the family of a woman killed during a 1992 SWAT team raid.
Robin Marie Pratt was fatally shot when police raided her apartment seeking evidence against her husband and five other men considered suspects in a Loomis armored-car robbery at Lynnwood's Fred Meyer store. One guard was killed and another was wounded during the robbery.
Charges against the men were dropped after the raid and the men were released when authorities learned that Pratt's husband, Larry Pratt, was at work during the robbery and the others had alibis.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/...
Society has a responsibility to protect and police itself, but in the process has engendered a mercenary culture of thugs who masquerade as protectors but act as executioners. What is to be done?
Postscript: Popular Mechanics, of all venues, has the most interesting article on the topic. I hope you'll read and enjoy:
... nowadays, police are looking, and acting, more like soldiers than cops, with bad consequences. And those who suffer the consequences are usually innocent civilians.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/...