Friday, August 08, 2008

Prince George's County Police Handle Another Case "Properly"

This one is all over the news (and now on Drudge), but in case you haven't heard, Prince George's County (Maryland) Police basically broke into a town mayor's house, shot his dogs, cuffed his wife and mother-in-law, and then realized they made a mistake. Apparently the 'mistake' was doing this to the mayor and not doing this to some poor inner-city minority. I say that because as the details are coming out, it appears the Police knew the mayor had done nothing wrong (and was a hapless pawn in a drug distribution scheme), but still insisted on bursting through his door, ninja-style just for kicks. Oh, and the warrant they had was not a no-knock warrant, but that's what they did anyway. "Warrant? We don't need no stinkin' warrant"

Don't hold your breath for something like justice to happen either. PG County is notorious for this sort of thing. Apparently killing family pets is part of their Standard Operating Procedures. That's done little to stem the abuse.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget about the masks! Remember the drug raid years back (I think it was called the Sunflower Raid) where people were wrongly held at gunpoint during a drug raid gone bad? I think, the victims sued but the case was dismissed because the victims could not identify the specific officers who held them at gunpoint since they were wearing masks!!

Check out a CATO paper on the topic:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf