A quick search of the internet reveals hundreds upon hundreds of similar cases--from assault victims strip-searched and bloodied by power-mad deputies (Stark County, OH) to a man beaten to death and set afire by cop-thrown grenades. An interesting resource appears here: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/index.php?type=1 The sheer numbers here are astounding, and don't include the countless traffic stops gone bad. Invariably, these cases result in dismissed charges, probably for a variety of reasons, such as the respect many of us are taught to have for police as well as the very reasonable fear of reprisal. Making a police officer angry or vengeful is a very, very bad thing. Yes, mistakes happen, occasionally to good cops; but most of these incidents are rooted in arrogance, ignorance, or plain half-assed performance. This isn't surprising, since police face virtually no reppercussions for their actions. Invariably, all but the most egregious errors, the most heinous misbehavior, are dismissed. Until police are held accountable and face serious castigation events like these will happen again and again.
America’s Troubled House
A botched police raid that terrorized an innocent family says a lot about the state of mind in the U.S.A. today.
- Share:
-
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
It sounds like something out of a police state in another part of the world. Or perhaps, if you pay close attention to the plight of the poor, a poverty-riddled neighborhood somewhere in America where drugs and violence define everyday life. A police raid on a house, doors smashed in, guns fired, lives lost … and then the admission that it was all an unfortunate mistake.
But this time it happened in the quaint, small town of Berwyn Heights, Md., and it happened to the mayor.
Mayor Cheye Calvo came home late in the afternoon of July 29 and discovered a package addressed to his wife that had been left at the front door. He brought it inside, didn't open it and set it aside for his wife. Calvo said hello to his mother-in-law, Georgia, who lives with them, and took the family's two black Labrador retrievers, Chase and Payton, out for a walk. He waved to several people who were sitting in cars near his home, never suspecting that a nightmare was about to unfold.
When he came back, Calvo went upstairs to change clothes for an evening event. His mother-in-law was in the kitchen when she saw masked men with guns running toward the house. Not surprisingly, she screamed as they kicked in the door. They shot Payton who was standing beside her. They then turned their weapons on the other black lab, Chase, who was running away from them. They killed him, too.
Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights since 2004, heard the shots just before he was grabbed and forced to walk down the stairs backward in his boxer shorts and socks into the waiting bloodbath. His mother-in-law was handcuffed on the bloody kitchen floor next to the body of one of their dogs.
Mayor Calvo came downstairs into a new time in America, in which no one is presumed innocent and guilt is only an assumption away.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next Page »
- Share:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
