The mayor of the Berwyn Heights community in Maryland, Cheye Calvo, found himself last Tuesday evening on the floor of his house with his hands behind his back, wearing nothing but boxers and socks, with his two beloved dogs’ bloody carcasses lying lifeless next to him for hours. The first question that pops into my mind after hearing a description like this is what kind of an evil criminally minded lunatic would go to such disgustingly brutal lengths to torture someone? And what could have Mayor Calvo possibly done that inspired such an attack?
The answer, surprisingly enough, is that it was no criminal at all, at least not according to the government. In fact, it was the Prince George’s County Police Department who broke into Mayor Calvo’s house during a no-knock raid, shot his two Labrador Retrievers, and interrogated Mayor Calvo and his mother-in-law for hours about a package that had been intercepted in Arizona addressed to the mayor’s wife containing 32 pounds of marijuana. After raiding the house with a SWAT team, and finding absolutely nothing, police released the Calvos, coming out with no arrests.
After receiving support and permission from Mayor Calvo, University of MD- College Park’s SSDP chapter held a memorial service in memory of the two innocent lives lost to the War on Drugs last Sunday. Thirty-six people showed up, received ribbons, joined each other in a moment of silence, and listened to a quick speech from Stacia Cosner, former UMD SSDP President, about other tragic cases in which dogs have been killed by police.
While the memorial service was held to mourn for the loss of Chase and Payton Calvo, a more politically focused demonstration highlighting how often the War on Drugs takes innocent victims’ lives is soon to come.
Thanks to everyone who helped out with and came to the memorial service.
Chase and Payton Calvo, you will never be forgotten.
4 comments:
Haha Dare Generation Diary? Stop using our names in the war on drugs? Are you serious??? As a retired police officer who maintains strong ties to my community, I am constantly approached by adults I knew as children who not only speak fondly of their D.A.R.E. experiences but also thank me for enlightening them to the dangers of drugs. If that program kept one kid from living the nightmare of drug addiction, it was worth it. But it's not just one kid, its thousands who stayed away from the escapist's poison b/c of adults and authority figures in their lives who cared enough about them to provide the education. If you want to abuse drugs, knock yourself out, after all, you are most likely at least young adults by now. After having been duly informed by that evil and repressive DARE program about the dangers of drugs, if you choose that lifestyle, then so be it. But for God's sake, be adult enough not to play such a weak victim's card! DARE Generation Diary??? Seriously??? Funny stuff!
Hmmm. Another person who misses the point, assumes opinions and motives, and makes up their mind about SSDP and D.A.R.E. without giving it much thought.
We are not drug abusers nor do we seek to increase drug abuse. We are young people that are concerned about drug abuse and KNOW that prohibition and programs like D.A.R.E. have done very little to curb drug availability or abuse.
Like it or not, we grew up going through DARE and for many of us this was during the programs early implementation which means that we are the DARE Generation and we are not playing a victim card but rather making a statement that we went through this program, know it does not work, and didn't leave elementary school with an inability to think critically about drugs and drug policies.
As far as helping young people goes, I also work as an adolescent substance abuse counselor in a residential treatment program. This has only made me see more clearly that we need realistic drug education for youth, not scare tactics and propaganda. We also need to decriminalize or legalize marijuana because the policies which punish the young people you claim to care about do so much more harm than marijuana will ever do.
This blog post is a perfect example of that. Marijuana does not kick in your door and kill your family pets and is then unwilling to even admit a mistake was made. Luckily for the Mayor it was his pets and not his wife or children that were killed. These people were not so lucky: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html
As a retired police officer you need to visit www.leap.cc immediately.
I have a feeling the person who posted the first (very ignorant) comment took absolutely no time to even glimpse over the blogs on DARE Generation Diary. Tell me, how are any of these blogs in any way encouraging drug use?
You know, its not the first time I've heard the "if it only helps ONE kid..." line. Well, if it only helps one kid, than thats a failed policy and a waste of tax dollars.
Some people judge programs and policies just on the intentions and not on their effectiveness--I'm confused as to why this is. To "DARE" to resist drugs and violence is not a bad intention and I'd like to make that clear. However, the program has too many flaws and studies on DARE have for years proved its ineffectiveness and common sense tends to expose its hypocrisy.
For example, here are the google search results of "DARE officer arrested".
http://www.google.com/search?q=DARE+officer+arrested&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
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