Our View: Police Scandal Proved Costly

One day, Baltimore police Sgt. Robert L. Smith is accused of supervising a rogue investigative squad whose members are charged with rape, and the next, he's the recipient of a six-figure apology from the department, complete with a statement of his dedication that he can hang on his living room wall. This is not a Back to the Future moment. It took 2 1/2 years for Sergeant Smith to clear his name, and the Police Department's decision this week to settle the officer's lawsuit should put an end to the embarrassing saga of the defunct Southwest District "flex squad."

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Cheye Calvo and His Wife Appear to Be Innocent Victims of a Marijuana Smuggling Scheme. Their Two Dogs Were Shot Dead by Officers.

BERWYN HEIGHTS, MD. -- Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside.

Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple's two dogs and seizing the unopened package. Inside was 32 pounds of marijuana that evidently didn't belong to the couple.

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Dog lovers of the world unite. Our federal government's zero-tolerance anti-drug crusade reached a new low in Prince George's County, Maryland, when police killed two innocent pet Labrador retrievers while improperly conducting a SWAT-style drug raid on the mayor's house.

On July 29, police burst into the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and immediately shot to death his two Labrador retrievers. They were there to conduct a search for drugs. The raid was conducted by county police narcotics officers and a sheriff's office SWAT Team.

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The FBI has launched a review of the violent law enforcement raid of the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo in Prince George's County last week that resulted in the deaths of the family's two dogs.

The agency has begun "reviewing the events that occurred at Mr. Calvo's residence," said Richard J. Wolf, spokesman for the FBI in Baltimore, which has jurisdiction over federal civil rights investigations in Maryland.

The FBI announcement came in response to a call yesterday by Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, for such a probe. Calvo and Tomsic suggested a systemic problem might exist in county law enforcement.

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One Package Went to Mayor's Wife

Prince George's County police announced yesterday that they have arrested a deliveryman and another man who they say are involved in a scheme to smuggle marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients, including a delivery last week to the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights.

The county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics officers raided the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, after intercepting a package addressed to her that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana. During the raid, officers broke down Calvo's door and fatally shot the family's two black Labrador retrievers.

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A police SWAT team raided the home of the mayor in the Prince George's County town of Berwyn Heights on Tuesday, shooting and killing his two dogs, after he brought in a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been delivered to his doorstep, police said.

Mayor Cheye Calvo was not arrested in the raid, which was carried out about 7 p.m. by the Sheriff's Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers. Prince George's police spokesman Henry Tippett said yesterday that all the residents of the house -- Calvo, his wife and his mother-in-law -- are "persons of interest" in the case.

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OCEAN CITY – From the mountains of Mexico to the Boardwalk shops of Ocean City, salvia divinorum has taken hold, promising everything from visions and divine intervention to a few minutes of fun. While opinions and the ultimate effects of the legal drug remain debatable, resort officials remained clear on their position last Thursday; ban salvia in Ocean City.

Salvia divinorum, which literally means diviner’s sage and is also known as ska pastora, diviner’s mint, Sally-D and Lady Salvia, has existed for centuries, but only recently came to the forefront in Ocean City. Found in numerous stores up and down the Boardwalk, town officials hope to ban the sale of the legal drug by summer’s end, in hopes of curbing its ever-growing popularity.

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Schoolchildren Introduced to Drug Program

Yes, the popular drug education program DARE was one of the major issues in the 2006 campaign for St. Mary's County sheriff. And yes, Sheriff Timothy Cameron's promise to restore the program, even though some studies have found it to be ineffective, might have helped him get elected.

But politics didn't seem to matter to the nearly 60 Camp DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) kids running around the field Thursday outside the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center in Leonardtown. They said they learned a lot about the reasons not to use drugs during the week-long drug education camp. And they got to play some pretty cool games.

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State Lawmakers Have An Eye On Salvia, The Hallucinogenic Herb Sold On The Boardwalk

OCEAN CITY -- Huddled at the counter of a Boardwalk T-shirt shop, three teenage boys pulled crumpled $10 and $20 bills from their pockets on the first Friday night of Senior Week, pooling their cash to buy a few ounces of the only legal hallucinogenic herb available in Maryland. "Dude, how much you wanna get?" one asked impatiently.

The scene repeated itself along the Boardwalk in many other stores that sold the product, advertised by neon displays and hand-drawn signs: We have Salvia.

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The effects of substance abuse on the developing brain will be the main topic at this year's Risky Business Prevention Conference.

The conference, which will be held Tuesday at the St. John's Portico in Westminster, was started in 1997 as a way to educate the community about dangerous teenage behavior such as drug and alcohol abuse, unprotected sex and depression.

According to Kim Spangler, director of health education at the Carroll County Health Department, the event offers education on trends and statistics, and also provides information on prevention.

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Police Say More Arrests to Come in High School Dealing Scheme

Police arrested and charged two high school students from Bethesda and Potomac in a drug bust on Friday. Police expect to make more arrests in what they believe was a drug-dealing plan involving several high school students.

Two adults, as well as the two teens, had been arrested as of Tuesday, and more than 2 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of $12,000 had been seized, police said. The investigation is ongoing.

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Is 94 percent not enough? Last week, the student body expressed its overwhelming support for the adoption of a Good Samaritan policy through the results of two referenda questions on the Student Government Association ballot. What does the student vote really mean? Is it merely "symbolic" as some administrators have suggested, or are we going to demand that our democratic will be implemented? In my three years here at the university, we have yet to see student-governed bodies who will truly walk the walk and choose the latter. Ninety-four percent of voters supported "the adoption of a Good Samaritan Policy which would shield students from university-based punishments if they called emergency services to receive help as a result of drug and/or alcohol use." So what happens now? It's the perfect opportunity for the newly elected SGA members to prove wrong those who suggest that our student democracy is superficial or lacking.

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As a retired police detective, I heartily support Dan Rodricks' call for peace instead of more of the war on drugs. This modern form of prohibition generates massive amounts of crime victims as drug addicts steal and rob to support their habit.

Meanwhile, my law enforcement colleagues spend less time than they could stopping drunken drivers and child predators because we are forced to spend time arresting nonviolent drug users.

Prohibition is chaos.

Drug legalization would mean regulation and control.

Howard J. Wooldridge Frederick

The writer is an education specialist for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

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Mandatory minimum prison sentences have done little other than turn what is supposed to be the "land of the free" into the world's biggest jailer ("Declare peace in war on drugs," April 6). If harsh penalties deterred drug use, the goal of a "drug-free" America would have been achieved decades ago. Instead of adding to the highest incarceration rate in the world, we should be funding drug treatment.

The drug war is a cure worse than the disease. Drug prohibition helps finance organized crime at home and terrorism abroad, which is then used to justify increased spending on the drug war. It's time to end this madness and instead treat all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public health problem it is. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

Robert Sharpe

Washington

The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.

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Officers Were Investigating Suspected Drug Activity In Jessup, Police Say

Howard County police today named the two teens who were shot and wounded by a police officer yesterday. The teens were injured by a shot apparently fired accidentally by a Howard County police officer during an investigation of suspected drug activity in a Jessup neighborhood, police said.

Dwain Usery, 14, of Jessup, was shot in the abdomen and was taken to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center where he is in fair condition. Garcia Wilson, 15, also of Jessup, was shot in the arm and was treated at Howard County General Hospital, police said. He was released last night. Both teens are freshmen at Hammond High School, according to the county school system.

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Given the nature and cost of the war on drugs - to the state, to the counties and the cities, to families, to businesses, to neighborhoods, to property values and insurance rates - nothing in the realm of criminal justice screams for more reform than our approach to drug addiction and related criminality.

In some way - directly, or through taxation, or in the costs of insurance for homes and motor vehicles - drug addiction touches the lives of every man, woman and child in Maryland. The same is true on a national scale. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain should all have plans for changing the country's current policies in two wars: the one in Iraq and the one on drugs. Both were launched on bad information, both have gone on longer than anticipated, and both have proved far too costly.

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Since several incidents in 2005, Salvia divinorum hasn't been prominent in Carroll County, according to drug professionals.

In October 2005, a store on Bond Street in Westminster called Heads N Threads was raided and the owner and an employee were arrested on charges of selling and possessing drug paraphernalia.

The raid was prompted by publicity surrounding Salvia and after several suspects in drug cases were reported to have bought drug paraphernalia at the store.

Salvia divinorum was banned in county schools in May 2005.

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What case doesn't have to do with drugs?" a District Court judge said, suggesting that all crimes alleged on his daily docket are in some way related to heroin or cocaine addiction. "So much money is wasted because it's not [politically correct] to advocate for drug treatment instead of prison time," said another jurist. "Politicians want to look tough. But almost everyone we see needs treatment - almost every prostitution, possession and trespassing case."

No one in the room dismissed either statement as exaggeration.

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One of the University Senate's most outspoken student members, Stacia Cosner, lambasted university officials late last week after they said a nearly two-year-old drug violation prohibits her from running for reelection.

Students who have academic or judicial violations are not allowed to run for the senate, according to the senate's plan of organization. But Cosner, who doubles as president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, was allowed to run last year despite the judicial violation on her record.

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Directors Say Outpatient Facilities Having Positive Effect On Community

CUMBERLAND --- Nearly three years after opening its methadone clinic, the Allegany County Health Department treats 70 to 75 patients.

"Sixty-nine percent of our patients are in the 20-to-39 age bracket. Our population tends to come from lower-income population, including employed, unemployed, disabled. We have quite a mix, with half of them female and half male," said Jim Brenneman, director of outpatient addiction services.

The clinic operates six days each week for dosing, and patients can earn take-home doses by being free of illicit drugs and attending treatment counseling appointments.

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