Thursday, August 07, 2008

Here's why you might want a few intelligent police officers

In Prince George's County, Maryland, a SWAT team was apparently dispatched to the mayor's home and killed the family dogs en route to intercepting a drug package the family evidently didn't know about. One would figure that people might run an "address check", or figure out that hiding 32 lbs of marijuana would take a little bit of time (and thus no SWAT raid was necessary), but....

....if they're actively discouraging highly intelligent people from applying, maybe those working the case were not in fact capable of figuring this out. At any rate, I bet it's going to be really rough at City Council meetings for a while.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I happened to be vacationing in Maryland when this went down, and saw the Washington Post article the next day.

Apparently, the local police chief is boiling mad because this was a state operation, and they didn't even bother to clue in the local authorities that this was going down. AND, it apparently isn't the first time the Maryland Staties have pulled this kind of stunt without notifying the locals in PG County.

So maybe the City Council meetings aren't going to be so bad, but cooperation between the PG County police and the Maryland State Police may leave something to be desired in future.

Major boneheadedness, this was.

Gino said...

sounds like a plan.
take back the republic by cleaning out the politicians one home at a time.

your mission: send a parcel of weed to a congressman. notify the staties of its delivery.

Bike Bubba said...

I can actually understand not letting the local police know if it was the mayor's house--what warning might be given to a "Tammany Hall" crony, so to speak. I just can't understand using a SWAT team when the sheer volume of evidence prevents it from being flushed down a toilet. There was no urgent need to get the arrests made 15 seconds quicker.

And Gino: :^). I think I'll try using my vote, though.

Anonymous said...

Maybe. But I think it's police protocol to trust other police agencies enough to give them a heads up if you're coming into their area of responsibility with a SWAT team, barring definite reason to suspect otherwise.

But of course you're right -- the SWAT team was ridiculous overkill in such a situation. If they knew the amount, they knew it wasn't going to disappear. If they didn't know the amount, there was no justification for treating a simple case of receipt like a kingpin bust, when it concerned someone for whose prior drug involvement there could have been no evidence, and who had no record of criminal activity.

Bike Bubba said...

Bingo. And since the authorities were tipped off by the delivery carrier, I dare suggest that they knew exactly how difficult it would be to hide.

Seems that they also knew that Hizzoner was NOT involved, so you're correct that they probably should have brought in the locals on the deal. Maybe at the last minute, just in case, but bring them in on it.