Mayor wants federal probe after SWAT raids house, kills dogs

Mayor wants federal probe after SWAT raids house, kills dogs
Story Highlights
Raid carried out after marijuana package mailed to home of Cheye Calvo

Deputies said they shot Calvo's dogs because they felt threatened by them

Calvo says he and his mother-in-law were handcuffed next to dog's carcass

Sheriff's Department expresses sympathy, doesn't apologize


(CNN) -- A Maryland mayor is asking the federal government to investigate why SWAT team members burst into his home without knocking and shot his two dogs to death in an investigation into a drug smuggling scheme.

This has been a difficult week and a half for us," Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, said Thursday. "We lost our family dogs. We did it at the hands of sheriff's deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing."
The raid last week was led by the Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, after a package of marijuana was sent to Calvo's home.
Authorities say the package was part of a scheme in which drugs are mailed to unknowing recipients and then intercepted.
Calvo said he had just returned home from walking his two Labrador retrievers, Chase and Payton, when his mother-in-law told him a package had arrived for his wife, Trinity Tomsic.
Moments later, Calvo was in his room changing for a meeting when he heard commotion downstairs.
"The door flew open," he said. "I heard gunfire shoot off. There was a brief pause and more gunfire."
Calvo said he was brought downstairs at gunpoint in his boxer shorts, handcuffed and forced onto the floor with his mother-in-law near his dead dog's carcass. Watch Calvo describe the raid »
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