Prince George County officers cleared in death of dogs

Officers who shot two dogs to death during a botched no-knock raid have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Neither dog had been aggressive toward the officers - one dog was shot as he ran away in fear.

You can read more about the raid here. The victims, the mayor of Berwyn Heights (and his wife and mother in law), were cleared of any wrongdoing due to the fact that they hadn't done anything wrong. As part of a drug trafficking scheme, a package of drugs (that SWAT knew about) was left on the stoop of the mayor's home and, when she went to pick it up, moments later her home was raided and life changed.

I don't want to go over more details, except to make a comment on what Sheriff Jackson has to say:

"I'm sorry for the loss of their family pets," Jackson said. "But this is the unfortunate result of the scourge of drugs in our community. Lost in this whole incident was the criminal element. . . . In the sense that we kept these drugs from reaching our streets, this operation was a success."

Sheriff Jackson seems to be forgetting that the package containing drugs had already been intercepted by authorities. That is, police already knew about the package and what it contained. Already, the drugs were safe from public dispersal. The entire raid could have been prevented by confiscating the package and, I don't know, doing a bit of legwork in investigating the mayor...which would have shown he wasn't a drug trafficker.

Instead, police intercepted the package, allowed it to be put on the doorstep of this house, then allowed SWAT (a paramilitary group, people) to raid the home w/ a no-knock warrant. I mean, it's absolutely disingenuous to argue this case is a shining example of preventing the "criminal element" from distributing drugs. It's a shining example of what is wrong with the "drug war" and a disturbing story of how our rights to due process and privacy can so easily be trampled upon.