Some pigs are more equal than others...

I'm guessing by now that the majority of our readers (yes both of you) have heard about the mayor in Maryland that had his home raided by the Prince George's County Sheriff's Department. If you haven't I'll summarize the story, while picking out the points I think are odd or important.

It starts in Arizona where a pot-smuggling ring had hatched a scheme to smuggle some 400lbs of pot over state lines. The idea was that in AZ the smuggler would address large quantities of pot to someone not involved in the plot and then on the other end another smuggler would intercept the shipment.

So the Prince George's County Police Department (PG County has a PD and a Sheriff's Department) gets intel that a shipment of 32 lbs of pot is on its way to an address in PG County. These geniuses don't bother to investigate and track the shipment from afar. No that might make sense. Instead they intercept the shipment and deliver it to the third party not involved with the scheme. They also got a knock and announce warrant to go into the home after the pot had been delivered. (Interestingly, Maryland didn't have no-knock warrants until 2005 and the PGPD has said that they don't believe the state has no-knock warrants. Makes you wonder why these people are still employed if they deny the existence of a law passed by the Maryland legislature.)

The big day comes. The undercover officer posing as the delivery man attempts to make the delivery. The Mayor's mother-in-law refuses the shipment, so the undercover officer leaves it on the porch. Let me repeat that, the person at home refused the shipment, so the officer left 32lbs of pot on a doorstep.  The Mayor was apparently out for a walk. He says that he walks by the police officers and even waves to them. It is important to note that the police were all in plain clothes and probably unmarked cars as well. This comes into play later. It also is unclear whether or not the Mayor recognized them as police officers, but he did no there were people sitting outside of his house. My guess is that the Mayor isn't an idiot. He probably knew they were cops. You don't have carloads of people just sitting along the road in parked cars ordinarily. 

The Mayor gets home from his walk, notices the package on the porch, picks it up and goes inside. He then goes upstairs to change for an appearance later in the day. That's when the SWAT team goes in. Remember they're in plain clothes and armed. The Mayor's mother-in-law sees them and screams. Hey, wouldn't you? Armed men, not in any discernible uniform, running towards your home? Yeah, I'd probably scream.

The police say that scream ruined their element of surprise, so they had to go in "hard." That is to say they had to go in without knocking and "take down" everyone in the house. Let's review this shall we? They had a knock and announce warrant, but they were concerned about the element of surprise being lost. What surprise is there when you knock on the door and say "police we have a search warrant"? At least, if you knock and announce the people inside may hear you say that you're the police. In this case armed men were storming the house, void of uniforms and identification. 

(Sure, they probably had a badge displayed, but when someone has a gun out where are your eyes going to go? Are you looking at the threat, i.e. the gun, or searching for a badge? You're looking at the threat. This has been shown in police shootings where the police shoot a gunman's hand, not trying to shoot the gun out of their hand, but because their eyes are focused on the gun.)

The SWAT team went into the house, one of the Mayor's two Labrador Retrievers barked at the officers and was shot and killed on the spot. The other Lab ran into a back room and was chased down and shot by the SWAT team. The reasoning was that the dogs posed a threat to the officers going in. A full team of men with guns and concealable body armor, yet they were threatened by a dog that was running away from them, sure they were. (It seems that anytime there is a raid these days the dogs get it, even though the Supreme Court has said the police need to use a lesser levels of force to allay the threat posed by dogs, and that shooting dogs with no cause is an unnecessary deprivation of property.)

The Mayor and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and questioned. Eventually, they were released when it became obvious they weren't part of this nefarious plot.

The story gets weirder from there. The PG Police and Sheriff's Deputies say that they didn't know who was in the home. They didn't notify the city's police department that they were about to conduct a narcotics raid in their city. They do claim that the knew the layout of the house and that there were two dogs in the house. 

This brings to mind some serious questions. Like, why didn't they know whose house it was? How did they get the layout of the house? If they looked through city or county records wouldn't the owner's name be available? Wouldn't a simple check of the phone book revealed a name?

At this point, I'm forced to conclude someone in the PGPD was out to make a name for him or herself. He or she has a 32 lbs shipment of pot going to a local politician. Making that bust would make someone's career. I believe they didn't tell the city PD about the raid because they didn't want to alert the Mayor.  They got buck fever and blew the investigation trying to get the politician.  After all, they had to outsource the raid to the PGSD in order to execute it on that day. The PGPD SWAT team was busy with other enforcement actions.

Oh and the PGPD Chief has refused to apologize for his department's actions. He has said that the Mayor has been "victimized" by the drug dealers. Funny. If the police had not intervened the shipment of drugs would have never made it to his door and his dogs would still be alive. 

As it stands now the Feds are looking into the case. They'll try to determine if the Mayor's rights were violated under US Code Title 42 Section 1983. That's how they got conviction of the officers who beat Rodney King.

Now to the pigs part. It seems that police can shoot our dogs with little or no consequences. However, if you so much as shout an obscenity at a police dog or make a face at a police dog you may be charged with animal cruelty. Yeah, I'm not kidding, sadly. 

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/feb/25/28-year-old-man-charged-cruelty-animals/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,278701,00.html

Resources:

http://www.examiner.com/a-1525303~Mayor_exonerated_in_plot_to_smuggle_pot__police_say.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/05/AR2008080502664.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-mayor0807,0,4563211.story
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/07/mayor.warrant/index.html
http://cfc.wjla.com/external.cfm?p=calvo080708
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080702161.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,399882,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080802690.html

Heller

Michelle wanted me to post about this. I'm hesitant. I used to be a very political creature, but now I'd rather not discuss politics. 

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that owning a firearm is an individual right. Gun control advocates have often said that the Second Amendment is about state militias and not about individuals. The nine judges opposed that view 5-4. If you get a chance read the majority opinion written by Justice Scalia. He makes reading the decision entertaining. Especially, when he takes his fellow justices to task over their views. You can read it here.

I never understood the position of gun control advocates. Why would a government grant itself the right to arm its own military? 

Some would say that they are granting that right to the states. If that's the case why didn't they say "states" in the Second Amendment and not "people." In the Bill of Rights, the term "people" is used in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments in addition to the Second Amendment. People will argue that in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments people meant...well people, but in the same breath they'll say that "people" in the Second Amendment means the state organized militia. There is a disconnect there I simply cannot understand. This is especially true when you read the Tenth Amendment where they specify the states.  Justice Scalia doesn't seem to understand that line of thinking either.

The reaction from big city mayors was unsurprising. They warned of dire consequences if this ruling, which thus far only applies to the Federal Government, is "incorporated" to apply to the states. They warned of old west style shootouts. News flash mayors. Only law abiding citizens obey the law. The criminals? They carry guns anyway. Even if guns were somehow banned and collected in the US how long do you think it would take until more guns showed up?

We are living in the same country that can't keep illegal immigrants from crossing our southern border and can't keep obvious illegal copies of all sorts of trademarks, patents and copyrights out of our ports. Guns might be a bit more expensive, but the bad guys will still get them. 

Worse, the good guys won't have them to defend themselves. Worse yet, the Supreme Court has ruled that public safety institutions, like the police, have no obligation to protect an individual. Their obligation is to the community, not the individual. (They ruled this way so that when you're killed while on the phone with 911, your family can't sue the government for failing to protect you. It's harsh. It's sad. But it's true.)

In 1976 Washington DC had 188 murders. 1976 was the year the DC handgun was enacted. Murders in DC spiked during the ban in 1991 with 482 murders. Last year was one of four years where the number of murders were less than the number in 1976 with 169 murders. The other three years were 1983, 1984 and 1985. Given the number of murders it is unsurprising to find DC's population has seen a steady decrease since 1968.  That means the murder rate has actually increased since the handgun ban! Yet, Mayor Fenty is arguing that this ruling will make DC's streets unsafe! See here.  

Chicago has similar numbers. Murders did fall both in sheer number and in rate following the 1981 handgun ban. But then the number of murders and the murder rate spiked again in the early 90s.  That is about the same time we see a spike in DC murders. Both bans had been in effect for a decade or more at the time of the early 90s spike. Both cities had another spike in murders in the late 70s and the early 80s. Only one city had a ban, but both cities spiked. Perhaps there was a reason, other than guns, accounting for the increase in crime? Hmm?