I wouldn't have expected any different from ol' PG County

The Prince George's County, Maryland Sheriff's Department has concluded their investigation into the little matter of their barging into Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo's home and killing his two family dogs in what is now generally acknowledged to be a huge mistake on the part of the department, and strangely enough they've found absolutely no culpability on their part whatsoever. I know, it's shocking, isn't it?

The sheriff, Michael Jackson, apparently reached this conclusion without interviewing a single non-cop witness present at the scene, namely Mayor Calvo, his wife, and his mother-in-law. I guess their testimony as to what happened that day just wasn't necessary to complete the whitewash inquiry.

"'The fact that they've done an internal review without contacting the victims of their raid, the people whose house they stormed through, shows they're not very interested in the actual facts,' [Calvo] said."

That about sums up my view, as well.

The department also determined that the officers were totally justified in shooting the family's two dogs, even though an independent necropsy (Paid for by Calvo himself, and not the department. Boy, they really wanted to get to the bottom of things, didn't they?) clearly showed that one of the dogs had been shot from behind while fleeing, a result that confirms Calvo's earlier statements.

The sheriff unwittingly also confirmed in his statement that his SWAT team failed to use elementary safe-gun handling practices when conducting their fun little exercise:

"The second [dog] was shot, he said, as it ran away from the deputy who fired and toward an officer standing in an adjacent hallway with his back turned." (Emphasis mine)

What's more dangerous, a dog allegedly running toward an officer (Calvo vehemently denies that the first officer could have seen the second officer anyway, based on the layout of the house) or a chucklehead shooting directly at another officer to "protect" him from the so-called menacing animal? Don't do him any more "favors", please. He'd probably appreciate that.

There's also the lingering question of why the officers kicked down the door in the first place, which was supposedly because they possessed a "no-knock" warrant, which was later found to be quite untrue:

"and why Prince George's police said at first that they had been given a "no knock" warrant to enter the home without announcing their presence but then said they had not."

Well, probably because they lied through their teeth in a pathetic attempt to cover up their abuse of this poor family, is my guess.

Hopefully the FBI's parallel inquiry into what happened that day will expose PG's "investigation" for the sham that it is.



Again, full disclosure: Mayor Calvo and I attended the same high school, graduating one or two years apart. I was acquainted with Calvo, but was never close friends with him, and have not seen or talked with him since I graduated from high school some twenty years ago.