Last month, a jury in Prince George's County, Maryland awarded Kimberly Jones $260,000 in a civil rights suit. In 2006, sheriff's deputies from the county had forced their way into Jones' home, blasted her with pepper spray, beat her with batons, punched her in the face, then arrested her for assaulting a police officer. Though the charge resulted in Jones being fired from her job at a shelter for homeless children, it was later dropped. Reason? The cops had the wrong house. In the ensuing civil case, the jury determined that the deputies were well within the protocols of the Prince George's County Sheriff's Department. It was the department's guidelines that the jury found unconstitutional.
Now the man who has overseen and implemented that policy for the last seven years, Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson, wants a promotion to political office. He's running to become the chief executive for Prince George's County.
Police misconduct in Prince George's County has made national headlines for 25 years. The Washington Post reported back in 2006 that from 2000 to 2006 the county of about 800,000 residents paid out $16.3 million in police misconduct settlements and lawsuit awards. Jackson, who took office in 2002, can't be blamed for a legacy that extends back to the 1980s and also includes the troubled history of the county's separate police department. But Jackson hasn't done much to diminish the bad reputation, either.
A year after the wrong-door assault on Jones, Jackson's deputies conducted another botched raid, this time on Accokeek couple Pam and Frank Myers. The two were home watching TV when the deputies came into their home and held them at gunpoint. The police were looking for a man wanted on drugs and weapons charges. They had the wrong house. The correct house was clearly marked, two doors down. During the raid, one of the deputies went out into the Myers' backyard, despite warnings from the couple that their five-year-old boxer Pearl was outside. The raid team shot Pearl dead. According to the Myers', the deputies left without even an apology.
Jackson's department is also facing a lawsuit stemming from a May 2007 warrantless raid on the home of Upper Marlboro resident Amber James. They were looking for James' sister, who didn't live at the house. According to the lawsuit, the deputies told James they'd be back the next day, and when they returned, they'd kill her dog.
In 2008, Jackson's department made international news when deputies raided the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. The police had intercepted a package of marijuana addressed to Calvo's home. When Calvo's mother-in-law brought the package into the house, Sheriff Jackson's SWAT team pounced, sending heavily-armed agents into Calvo's home, where they shot and killed his two black labs, then detained Calvo and his mother in law in handcuffs for several hours. Calvo and his family were later cleared of any wrongdoing. The package was part of a drug distribution scheme that included accomplices working for shipping companies.
As noted above, the mistaken raid on Calvo's home wasn't an isolated mistake. It was also completely avoidable. Jackson's deputies didn't bother contacting the local Berwyn Heights police chief, who would have notified them that they were about to raid the town's mayor--who, by the way, wasn't a drug dealer. They also failed to consult other police agencies in the area, who could have informed them of an ongoing investigation into a drug distribution scheme in which drug dealers' accomplices working for shipping companies intercepted drug packages before they were delivered to addresses picked at random.
In his dogged efforts to determine the extent to which these sorts of tactics are used, Mayor Calvo has since found that aggressive SWAT raids are the preferred method of serving warrants in Prince George's County, not a tactic of last resort. The killing of dogs in the course of these raids is nearly an unspoken policy. As Calvo wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, "In the words of Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson, whose deputies carried out the [raid on Calvo's home], 'the guys did what they were supposed to do'--acknowledging, almost as an afterthought, that terrorizing innocent citizens in Prince George's is standard fare." (Jackson's office did not return calls requesting an interview for this article.)