2

8/9/2008 4:54:27 AM

^^he should have taught you how to spell.

Is my dog's life worth more than some scum of the earth criminal? IMO yes, and I'm sure a lot of dog/pet owners would agree.

8/10/2008 12:46:09 AM

Quote :

"it was concluded that Ms. Tomsic and the Calvo family were innocent victims of drug traffickers."

Seems more like they're innocent victims of the police. I don't think drug traffickers broke into their home, killed their pets, and held them handcuffed, half naked, and at gun point.

8/10/2008 1:42:16 AM

Quote :

"I'd like to think human lives are worth more than animals. "

Michael Vick agrees with you

8/10/2008 4:27:12 AM

Quote :

"the love of an animal makes us better humans"

8/10/2008 1:12:54 PM

Quote :

"I don't think drug traffickers broke into their home, killed their pets, and held them handcuffed, half naked, and at gun point."

When you lay it out like that, Jesus Christ...we need to ship those cops to Guantanamo to find out if they've planned other terrorist attacks.

[Edited on August 17, 2008 at 8:10 PM. Reason : Sorry, I forgot this thread was old.]

8/17/2008 8:04:11 PM

The continued militarization of the police is most definitely a threat to the public. The line between military tactics and police tactics are already pretty blurred, the addition of things like no knock warrants only leads to more potential abuses of the public. I would really like to see an outside agency representing the public that oversees the police, in many cases IA and the DA's office won't really do the job because they're a - the police themselves so it's not really much oversight and b - They work with and are dependent on the police. You really need an independent oversight board to hear complaints and concerns.

8/17/2008 8:17:14 PM

^^ lol

8/17/2008 10:11:31 PM

Quote :

"^^he should have taught you how to spell. Is my dog's life worth more than some scum of the earth criminal? IMO yes, and I'm sure a lot of dog/pet owners would agree."

I'd save my dog before some random stranger.

Disclaimer: I love my dog more than almost anything. I don't like people, especially ones I don't even know.
And what screwed up situation is going to make me choose between my dog and a stranger? A human should be able to save themselves. I'm definitely going for my dog.

8/17/2008 11:55:58 PM

i'm pretty sure i'd save alee over a dog

8/17/2008 11:57:05 PM

im pretty sure i'd nudge DNL off a cliff if it meant another biscuit for my dog.

8/18/2008 3:27:00 AM

no knock warrants are simply a means to maximize DA case win ratios. You can prove that a substance was dissolved in a bottle of acid or base. You can get charges for any illegal items int he home, and any other items found while there. Hell, Nash county SWAT spent time practicing going under houses to bag the drain lines so as to catch the evidence flushes.

That said, no knock searches, and searches done WITHOUT verifying if somebody is still at a residence are a good way for good cops who are overeager to get killed. That, and I know quite a few folks for whom shooting their dogs, esp claiming you felt 'threatened' by them would result in a homeowner and an entire swat team in the morgue being pieced together. Animal control can contain animals without shooting them, and officers can be trained to deal with dogs via tranq guns and the like. Wilson county now has a sheriffs dept rep run the animal control department due to issues with animal control and police/law enforcement interaction.

That said, law enforcement often forgets in far to many places that they are their as an EMPLOYEE of the CITIZENS serving someone in an ELECTED office to enforce the LAWS set up by the POPULACE. I have family in law enforcement and the military, and grew up around a judge. The minority of LEO's who think it is good to pass over the individual; freedoms of many in order to catch a few end up poisoning the public against the rest of the LEO's

8/21/2008 7:55:26 PM

another win for the 'war on dogs'

8/21/2008 9:29:12 PM

Quote :

" When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes. After the raid, Prince George's County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights' mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered an hour earlier. What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo's home in this small bedroom community near College Park. This week Prince George's police arrested two men for orchestrating a plot to deliver marijuana to the addresses of unsuspecting recipients -- among them, Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic. Yet neither county Police Chief Melvin C. High nor Sheriff Michael A. Jackson have apologized to him, his wife or her mother, Georgia Porter, for the raid that traumatized the family and killed their black Labrador retrievers, Payton and Chase. Thursday, Calvo called on the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division to investigate the raid and other similar actions by Prince George's law enforcement. He said officers burst into his house without knocking or announcing themselves, in violation of the warrant they had. "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. "However, Trinity and our family have not been treated as victims of a crime. Instead, our home was invaded. Our two beloved Labrador retrievers are dead. My mother-in-law and I were tied up for nearly two hours," he said. "We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us." Berwyn Heights police Chief Patrick A. Murphy appeared with the mayor Thursday and said his agency was never informed of the investigation, despite an existing memorandum of understanding to work together on such operations. He said not knowing about the raid could have led his officers to fire upon the sheriff's SWAT team because its members were wearing street clothes, masks and carrying weapons as they approached the mayor's house. "What about the safety of my officers?" Murphy said. If consulted, he added, "We could have gotten the mayor to put the dogs away and consent to a search." Police officials in Arizona first intercepted the package when a drug-sniffing dog alerted them to the presence of marijuana. It was addressed to Tomsic. An undercover officer in Prince George's delivered the package near 6 p.m. and was told by Calvo's mother-in-law to leave it on the porch, according to Calvo's attorney, Timothy Maloney. Prince George's County police arrested two men involved in a scheme to transport marijuana. Once packages were dropped off by a deliveryman, a suspect would pick them up -- with the addressee oblivious to the plot. Police seized a half-dozen packages that contained about 417 pounds of marijuana, including the 32 pounds delivered to Tomsic, the Associated Press reported. Last Tuesday, the mayor arrived home from his full-time job as an executive with SEED Foundation, which establishes urban public charter schools. He took the unopened package inside and placed it on a table near the door. He changed clothes and walked the dogs, waving to the men and women sitting in cars near his home. He did not know they were police. He returned and went upstairs to get dressed for an event. As he changed clothes, SWAT team members darted across the fenced-in lot. Porter, 50, was cooking artichokes in the kitchen and screamed when she saw the approaching masked men with guns. The door was kicked in and gunshots rang out, Calvo said. Police killed one dog, Payton -- named for football running back Walter Payton -- even though Porter was standing next to him. Police have said the dogs "engaged" officers. Calvo confirmed that Payton probably moved toward the door but would have ultimately done nothing more than lick them. "He was an aggressive licker," said Calvo. Cheryl Compton, a neighbor, said her two sons, 5-year-old Cody and 7-year-old Ty, played with the mayor's dogs all the time, and that everyone but the Prince George's County police knew where Calvo lived. "I would have let them stay in a yard by themselves with those dogs," Compton said. "It really upsets me to think that I don't feel safe in my home. If they were to shoot our dog, Amber, I would be outraged.""

8/23/2008 2:08:19 PM

Quote :

" Chase was shot while running away from sheriff's deputies, Calvo said. "He was hunted down and shot in the back while he fled," he said. "They didn't deserve to die. They don't deserve to be blamed for their deaths." Calvo, 37, who has been mayor since 2004, was told to walk backward down the stairs with his hands in the air. He was wearing only boxers and socks. Police handcuffed him and placed him in the living room. His mother-in-law was also cuffed and made to lie on the kitchen floor next to Payton's body. Police said they were allowed to enter the house without announcing their presence because Porter screamed and because they had a "no-knock" warrant. Calvo and his attorney, Maloney, say that is not true. Related links * Cheye Calvo, Trinity Tomsic Cheye Calvo, Trinity Tomsic Photo * In this undated photo provided by Cheye Calvo, he and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, walk their Labradors * Today's Sun photos Photos When Tomsic arrived home, she said, she thought the house had been robbed and that police had responded with an impressive show of force. But when she saw the blood and learned what had happened to her dogs, she was in shock. "They were my kids," said Tomsic, 33, an employee with Maryland's Department of Human Resources. "All I could see was the blood and the tissue of the dogs." Cleaning the blood, which police tracked throughout the house, was the top priority after the police left four hours after the raid, Calvo said. "The blood was horrendous," Calvo said. "They had tracked it everywhere." The couple bought the corner lot home nearly three years ago and asked Porter to move from Utah to live with them about 13 months ago. On the front fence, supporters have draped an American flag banner that reads, "Cheye & Trinity We Support You." Dozens of people have written personal messages to the family on the banner. Robert Kovalchik, a neighbor and Calvo's high school history teacher at Parkdale High School, said he was shocked that county officials had not apologized. "This smacks of something from Nazi Germany," Kovalchik said. Calvo said he wants federal officials to examine policies that he said have led Prince George's police officials to serve warrants on wrong addresses and kill family pets before. In once such case, Prince George's sheriff's deputies executed a warrant on the home of Frank and Pamela Myers of Accokeek in November. The Myers told sheriffs that they had the wrong address as their dog began barking from the yard. The couple asked if they could retrieve their dog, but deputies refused. Minutes later, two shots were fired and the dog was killed, according to a notice of a tort claims filed by attorney Michael J. Winkelman. The Myers were never charged and nothing was seized from their house. "This has happened before, and without oversight, it will happen again," Calvo said."

8/23/2008 2:08:44 PM

Hopefully, something will happen in this case. Though I am not holding out hope.

8/23/2008 2:33:11 PM

those dogs were probably trying to hump the officers' legs. they had it coming

8/23/2008 6:29:55 PM

Quote :

"Who-ever was in charge of this raid should be fired. The cops who shot the dogs should be fired. The Sheriff should immediately clear the couple'sr names and publicly apologize...and then lose his next re-election bid."

+

The cops and the person in-charge should be fined/jailed/punished, not just fired.

+

The couple should be awarded a million.

8/23/2008 7:56:21 PM

Yeah I have never understood why law enforcement is above criminal prosecution or financial liability. I theory they are not, but in practice they might as well be.

I mean if anyone else accidentally broke in to your house, shackled you, slaughtered your dogs, and tracked blood all over your house they would be in deep shit. These guys do not even have to apologize......

8/23/2008 9:12:00 PM