A Maryland Mayor is demanding a federal probe after SWAT raided his house and shot his dogs. Evidently drug smugglers are sending drugs to unsuspecting victims in order to smuggle them into the country.
The FBI have opened up an investigation into a July 29, 2008 raid upon the a Maryland Mayor's house, Cheye Calvo, after SWAT burst in, without knocking, and shot the family dogs, killing them.
The Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, had been investigating the drug smuggling operation and after arriving home from walking the family dogs, Chase and Payton, his mother-in-law told him that a package had arrived for his wife.
He was upstairs changing when he heard the commotion downstairs from the authorities kicking in the door and he was brought downstairs in boxer shorts, handcuffed and then was forced to the floor next to his mother-in-law, near the bodies of his dead dogs lying in their own blood.
Calvo asserts that when he asked to see the warrant for the raid, he was refused and according to the CNN report, Maryland does not offer "no-knock" warrants and the authorities did not knock before entering.
Calvo wants an independent investigation start because he claims the departments cannot be trusted to do an internal investigation.
While he was being held, Calvo said, he told police he is the town's mayor, but they didn't believe him.
Berwyn Heights has its own police force, he said, but Prince George's County police did not notify the municipal authorities of their interest in his home or the package.
"They didn't know my name. All they knew was my wife's name. They matched that to the registration of the car," Calvo said. "It was that lack of communication that really led to what has really been the most traumatic experience of our lives."
After the raid, arrests were made in the package interception scheme.
The incident has prompted the couple to call for a federal investigation because, they say, they don't believe police are capable of conducting an internal investigation.
Calvo's states, "They've said they've done nothing wrong. I didn't sign up for this fight, but I think what we have to do now is make changes to how Prince George's County police and Prince George's County sheriff's department operate."
The police, via spokeswoman Sharon Taylor, expressed sympathy for the animal's deaths, but stopped short of apologizing and stated "We've done these similar kinds of operations over and over again, to the tune of removing billions of dollars of drugs from the community and without people or animals being harmed. We don't want any of our operations to result in the injury or loss of anybody, and certainly not animals."
The police say they shot the dogs because they felt threatened.
According to the Washington Post story about this incident, Police Chief Melvin C. High said that Calvo and his wife were probably innocent victims of the conspiracy yet he defended the actions of the policemen who conducted the raid.
In a press conference, Calvo, surrounded by county elected leaders and friends, states "We have witnessed a frightening law enforcement culture in which the law is disregarded, the rights of innocent occupants are ignored and the rights of innocent animals mean nothing. A shadow was cast over our good names. We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."
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