Ex-cop to Cheye Calvo: shut up, ingrate!

  Comic from xkcd.  Click to enlarge.
  (And how sick is it that this particular strip continues to be appropriate so often?)
 

Radley Balko at The Agitator posts an excellent dissection of the recent letter to the Baltimore Sun which complains that Cheye Calvo is being unreasonable in criticizing the use of SWAT teams.

You may remember Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, who got his own lesson in the application of SWAT raids when his own home and family was terrorized and his dogs murdered.  Why did this have to happen? 

Good question.  The only thing illegal found at the Calvo home that day was the box of weed that the raiders placed on the doorstep in the first place, in an entrapment attempt modeled on a tactic that (we are told) is becoming common among The Bad Guys.

Thing is, from the sound of it, Calvo has been an almost unbelievable model of restraint in his questioning of how SWAT resources are applied against the constituency.

Calvo has said no such thing, and in fact has said numerous times that there is a proper role for SWAT teams. His criticism is their increasing use to serve warrants for nonviolent crimes, and the fact that they’re too often the first option for warrant service instead of the last.

This is apparently too much for the letter-writer, who would really rather Calvo just shut up and stop criticizing the people who violently assaulted him in his home, terrorized his family and shot his dogs for no valid reason.

Oh, did I mention it also appears that the letter writer is an ex-cop himself?

To begin, as commenters at this site first discovered, Schweinsburg is a former police officer. Not only that, he spent the bulk of his career at the Prince George’s County Police Department, the same department that put up the gaudy SWAT numbers criticized in the article Schweinsberg is responding to. He later worked as the police chief for Crofton, Maryland. These are details you’d think Schweinsburg would have disclosed to the Sun or, if he did, that the Sun would have disclosed to its readers. They certainly provide some context for his opinions.

Uh, yeah, sorry, forgot to mention that.  No matter...

Balko does a great job at patiently pointing out what is so poisonously wrong about apologizing for, or even tolerating, unaccountable impunity among the enforcement class.  As just one example:

If Mr. Schweinsburg had read much at all on Calvo’s story before firing off his letter, he’d know that the most aggravating thing about the raid is that Prince George’s Officials—from County Executive Jack Johnson to Sheriff Michael Jackson—have stubbornly and shamelessly refused to admit that the police made a single mistake. The horrifying lesson to draw from that: It’s perfectly acceptable for the police to barge into a home of an innocent family without first doing any corroborating investigation, shoot and kill the family’s dogs, handcuff the home’s occupants for hours on end, lie about the circumstances leading up to, during, and after the raid, then refuse to turn over any information about the investigation and raid when the wrongly raided family requests to see it. No mistakes were identified because Jackson has determined none were made. No training and policy modifications will be put in place because Jackson doesn’t feel any are appropriate. This is why “micro-managing” SWAT teams is necessary. Because police and public officials have come to the mind-numbing conclusion that something as atrocious as the Calvo raid can occur . . . and yet still believe that no one made any mistakes.

and

I’ve seen no empirical data showing this to be true. I’ve documented dozens of cases in which innocent people have been killed or wounded in these raids due to police error. And once again, from throwing occupants to the floor, to pointing guns at them, to the use of flashbang grenades, these raids are violent by their very nature.. Schwiensburg’s wording in the passage above would also include people who’ve committed no crime, or had no intention of causing violence, but understandably mistook the police for criminal intruders and acted in home or self defense. The blame for the violence in those cases lies with the police tactics, not with the suspects. When you’re using tactics designed to confuse and disorient the people in the house you’re raiding, you can’t then turn around and blame them when, disoriented and confused, they mistake the police for invading criminals.

There's a lot more there.  It's worth reading in its entirety, and worth spreading to others who need to read it too.  We are constantly barraged with sanctimonious defenses of what would be war crimes if perpetrated by anyone other than state agents acting under color of law, and told, in essence, that we should just shut up and ask if we can have another.  "No charges filed".  "No mistakes were made".  "Well, they have a dangerous job" (and it's not the place of the little people to question it). 

No empathy whatsoever. You get the feeling they believe Calvo ought to thank the Prince George’s deputies for having the courtesy not to kill him.

Yeah, that's about the flavor of it.  Then again, in the end, isn't that Master's way in all things?