Feds investigating drug raid on small-town mayor's home
Aug 8, 2008

Federal officials have opened a civil rights investigation into a police narcotics raid on the home of a Maryland mayor in which police burst in without knocking and shot the mayor's two dogs to death.

Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and forced to kneel on the floor during the July 29 raid, which police said was part of an investigation into a scheme in which drugs apparently were sent to unsuspecting people.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland are investigating the incident, FBI spokesman Richard Wolf said Friday.

Calvo had asked for the federal probe.

"We lost our family dogs," he said Thursday. "We did it at the hands of sheriff's deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing."

According to The Associated Press, two men, including a FedEx deliveryman, have been arrested in the case.

Police said the scheme involved shipping drugs to unsuspecting people's homes and intercepting the packages. About $3.6 million in marijuana had been seized, police told the AP.

In this instance, investigators told the AP, a package containing 32 pounds of marijuana was sent from Los Angeles, California, to Calvo's house in Berwyn Heights, a town of 3,000 residents 10 miles from Washington.

The package was addressed to his Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic.

In transit, a drug-sniffing dog in Arizona brought attention to the package, investigators told the AP. Police intercepted it when it arrived in Maryland, and it was delivered to the Calvo home by an undercover officer, according to the AP report.

The Prince George's County Police Department, stopped short of apologizing but expressed sympathy for the loss of Calvo's pets. The police department was in charge of the raid, and the sheriff's special operations team was assisting.

"This was not a failed operation, as part of our continuing investigation into drug trafficking," said department spokeswoman Sharon Taylor. "The community is damaged by the continuous drug trafficking. But of course we understand the pain and suffering by the loss of our beloved pets. We don't want any of our operations to result in the injury or loss of anybody and certainly not animals. ... We understand and we wish that this situation would not have occurred."

She said the team on the ground make the decisions on how to enter a home before a raid.

Calvo said he set the package aside after it arrived at his home and didn't open it. He said he was changing clothes and preparing to attend a community meeting when "the door flew open. I heard gunfire shoot off. There was a brief pause and more gunfire."

He said he was brought downstairs at gunpoint while in his boxer shorts, handcuffed and forced to kneel on the floor along with his mother-in-law. Then, he said, "I noticed my two dead dogs lying in pools of their own blood."

While he was being held, Calvo said, he told the police he is the town's mayor, but they didn't believe him. "They told a detective I was crazy," he said.

Berwyn Heights has a police force, he said, but Prince George's County police did not notify the municipal authorities of their interest in his home or in the package. "It was that lack of communication that really led to what has really been the most traumatic experience of our lives," he said.

Calvo added, "They've arrested the real criminals involved. We're pleased to have that and get our name back as well. But really, this doesn't excuse what they did."