Dog Killers w/o Warrants - Waco deja vu

It took a Prince Georges Country police attack on a local mayor's home, killing his two gorgeous black Labrador dogs, to bring attention to the fact that police continue to bust into people's homes, kill their animals (even kill them, as they did a 92 year old woman last year) and not even bother to show a warrant!

That's right. Even though the mayor Cheye Calvo repeatedly asked for a warrant, the police didn't bother to show it to him until three days later. (Read: do we believe they even had one to start out!?!)

This story has generated a number of frequently repeated stories on CNN and other channels. In one video Calvo's wife Trinity Tomsi cries as she tells the story. She especially breaks up when she recalls how a neighborhood girl tells her - and I anticipated her words - "I'll never trust the police again."

Of course, who can, after the 1993 incident near Waco, Texas where almost 100 federal agents went in shooting (including blindly from helicopters) at a home filled with 130 people, mostly women, elderly and children. They killed four church members - after shooting their five dogs, who were fenced in in the yard. Group leader David Koresh claimed ATF shot him at the front door while as he stood unarmed trying to talk to them. (He'd peacefully accepted search warrants in the past.) At the 1995 congressional hearings an ATF agent claimed that ATF DID have a search warrant but it was "all shot up" in the truck! Fifty-one days later, after constantly sabotaging negotiations, the FBI smashed into the home with tanks, causing a fire that killed another 78 Davidians - and destroyed evidence of illegal ATF gunfire contained in the walls of the building.

So the mayor got off lucky. The police didn't kill him and his mother-in-law, who also was at home, and burn down their house to destroy the evidence. They only bound them, threw them to the floor and refused to show him a search warrant.

The charges? Does it matter? Some drug smugglers randomly sent Ms. Tomsi a package and failed to intercept it before it got to her home. ATF thought Koresh might have turned a few of his semi-automatic guns into automatic guns without following federal regulations or paying the federal tax. For a state bent on total control of the populace, that's more than enough excuse to smash into a home, kill dogs and rough up or even kill the inhabitants.