Is it just me, or is the police just getting more and more out of control these days? I know there is always the occasional story here and there of police brutality or somesuch (I’ve posted a few here and there), and somehow you can usually trace it back to the guilty party doing something to tick off the popo. But it seems like lately, they have been going way over the top.
Here’s a link to an article in the Washington Post (thanks for the link Cliff) about the latest. This story really, really, REALLY got to me. They KILLED THE MAN’S DOGS! Here’s the timeline:
- Police dogs in Arizona sniff a package and find that it has thirty-two pounds of marijuana. This packaged is addressed to the afore mentioned Mayor’s wife in Maryland.
- PG County police dressed up as delivery men and delivered the “package”. His mother-in-law (presumably an old lady) said to leave the thirty-two pound package on the doorstep.
- Mayor Cheye Calvo comes home to find the package on his doorstep (clearly, this is a nice neighborhood), brings it inside, puts it on a buffet table, and goes upstairs to change.
- SWAT team enters the house (presumably, they forcefully entered like, um, a SWAT team), and SHOT his two Black Labradors, one of which was running away. Then they handcuffed the Mayor (in only underwear and socks) and the mother-in-law.
Now, I have several problems with this whole thing, and I’ll run all the way through them. Click the link below to follow the rest of the post after the jump…
Numero Uno. WHO sends thirty-two pounds of marijuana in the mail? Seriously? Really? If you could send it by mail, why do drug dealers keep using mules to ingest the stuff and bring like a few ounces across the border if you can just mail it in bulk? Everybody knows bulk is much more efficient.
Number Dos. How did it get all the way to Arizona in the first place? Unless they grew it in Arizona, in which case shouldn’t they be looking for the grower?
Numero Three. Did anybody case the joint? Did anybody do even a little bit of research on this? When you bring in the SWAT team, you know you’re brining in the heavies. What were they expecting, that the Mayor and some old lady were going to throw down with AK-47s and turn it into Heat II? Didn’t anybody question the fact that a thirty-two pound box of weed was shipped to the Mayor’s house? And that didn’t strike anybody as odd? Hello, Google it, at least. I would think if you’re receiving thirty-two pound boxes of weed, you should be on some watchlist somewhere. It isn’t like you all of a sudden “discover” somebody who is processing thirty-two pounds of weed and had no idea they were selling dope. At some point when they’re big enough to start getting… oh I don’t know… maybe, ten pound bags of weed in the mail you would start to notice.
Now the big stuff.
After shooting the two dogs, here’s what one officer had to say about it (quoted from the Post article)
Sgt. Mario Ellis, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said the deputies who entered Calvo’s home “apparently felt threatened” by the dogs.
“We’re not in the habit of going to homes and shooting peoples’ dogs,” Ellis said. “If we were, there would be a lot more dead dogs around the county.”
Nice. Real nice. “If we were, there would be a lot more dead dogs around the county”. What a dickish statement to make. It’s a blanket, I Do Whatever I Want statement, and you should Thank Me for not shooting all of your dogs. And, “apparently felt threatened” by a pair of black labs? Were they threatened they would get licked to death? Or maybe the chew toy it brought to play with was mis-identified as a pistol.
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room.
So a group of dudes with automatic rifles and body armor were “threatened” by a lab running away from them. Riiiiiiigggght.
OK, now here is another exmaple of the cops gone wild, and then I’ll get into my real fear.
[youtube width=”425″ height=”335″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ[/youtube]
(for more, check this link on Glumbert for a few more examples, but I don’t want to stick to bikes too much)
Here is the Smoking Gun info on it. Long story short, the cop said the biker was disrupting traffic and making other vehicles swerve around him, the biker ran into the cop and knocked him to the ground where the cop got “lacerations” on his arm, then the biker resisted arrest. Now, after having read that go back and watch the video and tell me that isn’t a blatant outright lie. The biker got charged with 3 misdemeanors for just riding his bike. I don’t know if you can assume that the Police Dept will remove the charges.
So here is the fear. The police are generally regarded as infallible. I.E. the word of an officer counts for more than the word of a common citizen. And it -Should- in a perfect world. But this world sure ain’t perfect. So let’s say you have a cop on a bad day who feels like bugging you. Or lets say the cops mistakenly think you’re home is the neighborhood crackhouse and raid it. How much damage can they cause before they “sort it out” and give you a pat on the back and send you on your merry way?
And if you try and defend your house from intruders, you’ll end up shot. What’s that you say? Police *never* enter the wrong house! Well…
Remember the family who had their house stormed in Minneapolis? Here’s the link. Police raided a house of a family of six, 2 adults and 4 CHILDREN. The father thought a bunch of crazy kids had entered (apparently, not a great neighborhood) and started shooting. Well the police got into a shootout with the kids in between until finally they were able to get across “Hey its the police”. They then roughed up the adults, you know, for shooting at intruders in their own home.
Remember those Dave Chapelle skits where he would just “sprinkle a little crack on ’em”? Yeah, its like that.
And what do the police do after making an “oops” like that? Well, in the case of the bike incident, the cop is apparently “pending investigation”. Meaning he’ll be back knocking around other bikers in a few months time. For Mayor Chevo, the County “expressed it’s regrets”. For the Mineapolis family, the police officers were given medals.
I’m not feeling a whole lot of confidence right now…