Lack Of State Oversight Of Domestic Law Enforcement Use Of Military Weapons

"There is almost no oversight of SWAT at the state or local level. Maryland is the exception — in 2009, Maryland enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies that maintain a SWAT team to report, semi-annually, specific activation and deployment information.⁷⁷ The law required the Police Training Commission, in consultation with the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, to develop a standardized format for each agency to use in reporting data.⁷⁸ It also provided that if a law enforcement agency failed to comply with the reporting provisions, the fact of noncompliance by that particular agency would be reported to the state legislature.⁷⁹ Utah enacted a similar bill this year.⁸⁰
"The Maryland law did not come out of nowhere. The year before, the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s SWAT team had raided the home of Cheye Calvo, the mayor of a small Prince George’s County municipality. The county police department then held Calvo and his family at gunpoint for hours and killed his two dogs, on the basis of a misguided investigation in which Calvo and his wife were wrongly suspected of being involved in a marijuana transaction.⁸¹"