Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy is heading toward the end of his career. At 58, he said he hopes to retire before he’s 61, which would wrap up 35 years of police work. But in the last month, he’s also found himself in the center of a battle between the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Department and his town’s mayor, Cheye Calvo. Just weeks ago, a sheriffs’ SWAT team burst into Calvo’s home without a proper warrant, shot his two dogs and seized 32 pounds of marijuana from an unopened box. The county has since apologized.
So, the situation between the mayor and the county seems to have put you in a difficult spot.
All of this highlights the fact that law enforcement needs to work in coordination with each other. The citizens pay taxes and they don’t see a difference between agencies. But they expect to get their dollar’s worth and expect the agencies to talk to each other and work with each other. … If anything good comes out of this terrible tragedy, leaders will realize that we have to trust each other as partners. … The Berwyn Heights police force knows more about its community than the county police, who patrol a wide area.
