My mom asked me today if I had heard about the SWAT raid in Berwyn Heights. No, I said, because I tend to ignore local and national news when I can. As I prepare mentally for my expatriation, I’m shedding the American impulse to dwell on scandal, the media’s obsession with pain and suffering, and Americans’ disgusting but keenly developed rubbernecking instinct.
So, I listened as she explained what happened. Let’s consider the cast: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, which is located in Prince George’s County, Maryland, not far from the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. His wife, Trinity Tomsic, a human resources bureaucrat. Her mother, who the couple had invited to live with them. Two black labradors, Payton and Chase.
Now consider the scene: Mayor Calvo arrives home, takes his dogs out for a walk. During his walk, he waves to people sitting in black SUVs, thinking they have parked for a nearby party. He returns home, where he finds a large package that had been delivered earlier. His mother-in-law asked the deliverer to leave the heavy package on the porch. Mayor Calvo brought it inside. He then went upstairs and began to undress.
The mother-in-law sees armed masked men on the property and begins to scream. Immediately, the front door is busted open, armed men enter. They shoot and kill one of the dogs without hesitation. The other dog runs up the stairs. The men shoot him in the back, killing him. Mayor Calvo comes down the stairs in his socks and underwear. He and his mother-in-law are wrested to the ground and handcuffed, where they remain for approximately two hours.
I grew up in Montgomery County, which abuts Prince George’s County. For as long as I can remember, PG County had a terrible reputation for overzealous cop action, most of it — at least in the 70s and 80s — racially related. My dad was a D.C. cop, and he spoke of the PG police force as if they were to be feared or at least widely avoided. Even he, a black man, would not drive through the county if he could avoid it.
PG County’s police force, for a time, had one of the worst reputations in the country for police violence and heavy-handedness. Every time I think of the place, I think of drug problems, wicked cops, bad roads, poverty, and white trash. It was a stinking pit when I was a kid.
Today, it’s a place where your civil rights still mean shit. Even if you’re the apparently unassailable mayor of a bedroom community.
The police made a mistake. That, they do not deny. But they have done what misguided law officials who make colossal mistakes often do — we’ve seen it here in San Francisco: they refuse to lower their heads in shame and expose themselves to the public humiliation they deserve.
I will admit that the shocking murder of two dogs beloved in the neighborhood by kids and families first got me hot and bothered. Once I cooled my jets, I realized that even if the dogs had not been so carelessly slaughtered, this would still be a horrible violation of personal rights. It turns out that Maryland does not have a law supporting no-knock entry, as the joint siege squad (Country Sheriff and County Police) claimed they had.
More surprising is that the Chief of Berwyn Heights Police had not been informed of the simmering raid. That would be the same Chief of Police who knows the Mayor and who since has publicly stated that he could have walked up to the Mayor’s house and asked to come in and talk about the package. Without cuffing an old lady and her near-naked son-in-law. Without shooting two beautiful pets.
But it gets better. The package contained 30+ pounds of weed, which an undercover cop had delivered after it had been siezed in Arizona with the Mayor’s wife’s name and address on it. So, now we have a pretty clear violation of Constitutional rights. Clever criminals, having borrowed Trinity Tomsic’s identity, planned to use the Mayor’s front porch as a drop-off and pick-up for a large quantity of pot. They had done the same thing for other victims of borrowed identity.
In the end, this all boils down to pot. This is your brain. This is your brain on the war on drugs.
Are you feeling good about that? Are you feeling safe in your own home? If not, think about moving to a country that values individual rights over the misguided impulses of zealous fucktards chartered with serving and protecting you.