What if THIS homeowner had a loaded gun handy?

Following on the case where a Laval, QC man was acquitted of murder for killing a police officer whom he mistook for a home invader, we have this from Maryland:


Without bothering to alert Berwyn Heights police, sheriff's deputies moved into position. Posing as a deliveryman, a deputy took the package to the family's door. After Mr. Calvo's mother-in-law initially refused to sign for it, the package was finally taken into the home, where it sat, unopened, on the living room floor. Whereupon the deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos' two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor [Mr. Calvo] -- in his briefs -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.

Within an hour, it seems, the police concluded that something was seriously wrong and that there was at least a strong possibility that the Calvos -- whose home contained not the slightest evidence of involvement in the drug trade -- were unsuspecting victims. The deputies left without making arrests.

For exactly why the (county, not local) police were doing this, read the article (it's short). In brief, it was about a package of marijuiana addressed to Mr. Calvo's wife, hardly the kind of threat to world peace that should accompany this sort of action. The man is the Mayor of his small town, and as a public figure, the cops should have been able to walk up to the door and serve a warrant in a civilized fashion without assuming Mr. Clavo is Scarface or something. And they were Labradors, not fucking Rotweillers or even Alsatians; arguably the least threatening (non-puntable) dogs I know of.

The most alarming thing about this (it's a later development than this article) is that nobody in any authority is doing anything about it as of this writing. The State Attorney General should be kicking some ass, but not a peep.

Some of you will remember Waco from a few years ago, and although it's yet more heavy-handed, trigger-happy US law-enforcement action, at least the Branch Dividians were armed. Still, I haven't seen anything that makes me think they were a threat to anyone else, which brings it in line with the current story.

If these tactical squad guys want so badly to shoot at people, join the US Army and ask to go to Afghanistan. There isn't a lot of this in Canada because neither the public nor (more importantly) the government would stand for it. In fact, in that incident in Laval, the cops didn't shoot even when tactically, at least, they should have.

Time will tell on this one, but I might expect this sort of thing (and more to the point, the lack of legal redress) in China or Russia, not "the land of the free".