GUNG-HO TO A FAULT

Overzealous Police Action In Prince George's County, MD., Crosses The Line

IT COULD HAPPEN anywhere, real-ly--a drug-smuggling operation that
catches innocent, law-abiding citizens in its web. But pity one such
unwitting family that happens to live in Prince George's County, Md.

Perhaps you've heard the story. A large carton is delivered to the
home of the part-time mayor in Berwyn Heights, Md., addressed to his
wife. His mother-in-law tells the delivery man to leave it on the
porch. The mayor comes home and hauls it inside, not knowing or
caring at that point what it was.

What it was was 32 pounds of pot.

Minutes later the county SWAT team busts down his door, shoots two
pet black Labrador retrievers to death, orders the mother-in-law to
the floor and trusses her up, handcuffs the mayor and ties him to a
chair--all this initiating an hours-long interrogation while the cops
ransack his house and belongings.

This was a real head-scratcher, because the mayor and his family had
always been upstanding folks with no record of drug dealing. The
whole shocking episode terrified the living daylights out of them.

A week or so later, the real alleged culprits were arrested on drug
charges. The investigation had begun when a drug-sniffing dog hit on
the 32-pound package in Arizona, and police posed as delivery men to
take it the rest of the way. Turns out the smugglers had done this
repeatedly, using other random addresses but successfully
intercepting the packages en route to the tune of 417 pounds of pot
worth $3.6 million.

Prince George's is a dangerous place; a police officer recently lost
his life there. But that must not afford the police the assumption of
wrongdoing. Incidents involving questionable police conduct are not
uncommon in Prince George's, and police officials always trot out
their we're-just-trying-to-do-our-job excuses.

Given that history you might think they would investigate a little
first--like checking with the local police chief to learn that this
was the mayor's house, for example--before unleashing a nuclear
attack on a fly.

The police overreaction in this case should serve as a heads-up to
law-enforcement agencies everywhere. The public expects a level of
zeal and self-preservation in police officers, but also expects them
to think, and acknowledge the rights of the innocent.