Here’s The Washington Post’s summary of the incident that occurred last July:

Members of the SWAT team killed [Cheye] Calvo’s black Labrador retrievers after deputies broke down his door and raided his home in search of a drug-filled package that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife.

Law enforcement officials have since acknowledged that Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, were victims of a smuggling scheme that used a FedEx driver to ship drugs. They said the couple knew nothing about the box. County police, who were leading the drug investigation, have said they were unaware it was the mayor’s house.

Some drug investigation. PG County cops failed to even Google Calvo to determine whom they might be dealing with. They also neglected to coordinate with the sheriff in Berwyn Heights, the small D.C. suburb where Calvo served as mayor, who said he could have cleared this up with a simple visit to Calvo’s home.

Yet PG County Sheriff Michael Jackson insists his investigation proves “what I’ve felt all along: My deputies did their job to the fullest extent of their abilities.”

Actually, maybe Jackson’s right. I’ve made this point before, but if his deputies did their jobs the best they could, then maybe it’s time to change the policies that shape their jobs.

The need for a clearly articulated policy was highlighted in March when DEA agents raided Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic. The raid, seemingly in conflict with Attorney General Eric Holder’s stated policy on medical marijuana, came just weeks after Holder vowed to end the raids on state-legal collectives. DEA press releases claimed that the raid on Emmalyn’s was not in conflict with Holder’s statements.

Following these events, MPP’s Aaron Houston testified before the House committee charged with overseeing the DOJ. In his testimony, he laid out the need for a clearly articulated policy. Today, the committee adopted portions of the language he recommended.

The language, sponsored by Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), states, “There have been conflicting public reports about the Department’s [DOJ] enforcement of medical marijuana policies. Within 60 days of enactment, the Department shall provide to the Committee clarification of the Department’s policy regarding enforcement of federal laws and use of federal resources against individuals involved in medical marijuana activities.”

In the last four months, the MPP staff and our allies have been working almost nonstop to respond to — and take advantage of — the many opportunities that have been presenting themselves across the country. I’ve never seen so much evidence of positive change in such a short amount of time …

1.  MARIJUANA THE BIGGEST ISSUE:  Two huge surveys of citizen activists across the country — one on Change.gov on December 12 and one on Change.org on January 15 — showed that the number-one issue on people’s minds is ending the government’s war on marijuana users.

2.  BONG HIT SEEN AROUND THE WORLD:  On February 1, the world learned that Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps had used marijuana a few months before, demonstrating yet again that using marijuana is compatible with being wildly successful in our society. When Kellogg’s dropped its endorsement contract with Phelps — and MPP and other organizations responded by calling for a boycott of Kellogg’s — the public’s perception of Kellogg’s took a nose dive.

3.  EL PASO RESPONDS TO MEXICAN VIOLENCE:  Responding to the prohibition-caused violence just over the border in Mexico, on January 6 the El Paso City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics,” which drew the ire of some Texas politicians but also sparked a great deal of positive media coverage nationwide.

4.  NATIONAL POLLING HIGHEST EVER:  Between January 11 and February 14, three different national polls indicated that either 40%, 41%, or 44% of the American people now support ending marijuana prohibition. This is the highest level of support since marijuana was first prohibited in 1937, with support having risen by 1% a year since 1995.

5.  REVOLT IN LATIN AMERICA:  On February 12, a commission led by three former presidents from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico released a long-awaited report that blasted the U.S. drug war and called for the decriminalization of marijuana.

6.  ENDING THE DEA’s RAIDS IN CALIFORNIA:  On February 25, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DEA would no longer be raiding medical marijuana clinics in California and the 12 other states where medical marijuana is legal.

7.  MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILLS MOVING:  MPP’s medical marijuana bills are moving through the Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York legislatures, and the Drug Policy Alliance’s similar legislation is moving in New Jersey. We have a real chance of making medical marijuana legal in four of these six states this year and — in the meantime — it’s very possible that Montana and Rhode Island will expand their existing medical marijuana laws, too.

8.  BROADER MARIJUANA BILLS MOVING:  California shook the nation when a bill to tax and regulate marijuana was introduced on February 23. And even before that happened, the Hawaii, Montana, Vermont, and Washington legislatures had already begun considering bills to decriminalize marijuana.

9.  MPP DOMINATING ON YOUTUBE:  As of today, MPP’s channel on YouTube.com is the 10th most subscribed of all nonprofit channels, and MPP’s videos are consistently in the top 10 most-viewed of all nonprofit videos in any given week. (And our 65,000 friends on MySpace.com place MPP among the top 10 most popular nonprofit organizations there, too.)

10.  ONGOING MEDIA EXPLOSION:  According to the weekly reports we get from Google, MPP has been getting its message into the news in the last month at 10 times the volume of previous months. And four different national TV specials are tentatively scheduled to look at marijuana over just a two-month span: CNBC looked at the marijuana industry in northern California on January 22, NBC’s “Dateline” covered the Rachel Hoffman tragedy in Florida on January 23, ABC’s “20/20″ with John Stossel will be looking at medical marijuana on March 13, and MSNBC with Al Roker will be looking at the multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry on March 15.

Thank you for anything and everything you’ve done to help bring all this attention and success to our movement. If you’d like to help even more, please make a donation today so that we may continue with the onslaught of work that continues to pile up on our plates.

You already know this, but considering that the DEA has conducted hundreds of these stupid raids over the past several years, this is a very big deal for medical marijuana patients and fans of compassion and sanity.

It appears likely the investigation report will fault shortcuts taken by Atlanta narcotics officers to secure illegal search warrants, which, if you’ll read our summary of the incident, you’ll see is a grotesque understatement in Ms. Johnston’s case. These officers arbitrarily targeted the woman’s home as a crack house, lied to secure a no-knock warrant, shot her five or six times, and then attempted to plant a small amount of marijuana in order to justify their rampage.

Vile abuses of authority are a terrible, inevitable part of human nature. Accountability and harsh justice for the men involved in Ms. Johnston’s death are necessary and appropriate. But until we look at the policies that embolden such men, expect more abuse.

After all, these drug enforcement professionals believed they might get away with the senseless slaying of a 92-year-old woman if she were found possessing marijuana. What does that say about the attitudes that underlie our marijuana policies?

First is the hypocrisy of a situation in which some people use marijuana and get arrested while others use marijuana but go on to lead productive lives – as police officers for heavens sake. Who decides which fate befalls a particular marijuana user? If marijuana use isn’t terrible enough to disqualify a person from the responsibilities of law enforcement, including the responsibility to arrest marijuana users, then how much sense does it make to arrest marijuana users in the first place?

The second is that these candidates are apparently making the cut because the city, desperate to increase the size of its force, has lowered its standards – at least in the minds of city officials. But what if the responsible, adult use of marijuana weren’t a crime? What if its manufacture and sale were regulated like alcohol rather than controlled by often-violent criminals? Atlanta’s need for law enforcement would almost certainly decrease, and they could recruit fewer, higher-quality officers to pursue violent crimes.

Actually, that reminds me of a third, terrible thought: Does lowered standards mean more bad cops on the street? The job is too important, and the consequences of making mistakes are too dire. Atlantans ought to recall the shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston two years ago next month by narcotics officers who mistakenly raided her house and then planted marijuana on her to try to cover their tracks.

We don’t need more bad cops, and we don’t need to waste good cops’ time chasing marijuana users – especially if they’re marijuana users themselves.

Scott and his wife Summer were raided in February and charged with possession, manufacturing, and distributing marijuana. Summer believes the stress of prosecution had a great deal to do with the deterioration of Scott’s health this year.

Legally, prosecutors may have been justified in pursuing the couple under state law. The two were not registered medical marijuana patients at the time of their arrest, although Montana law allowed them to present an affirmative defense that their marijuana use was medically necessary and therefore justified under the law.

Morally, however, there is absolutely no excuse for the nightmare state law enforcement inflicted on Scott and Summer. It’s too late for Scott now, but Beaverhead County Attorney Jed Fitch has a moral imperative to use his prosecutorial discretion to drop Summer’s charges and allow her to tend to her health and her grief.

If you agree, please let Mr. Fitch know.

Federal prosecutors won their case against Morro Bay medical marijuana dispensary owner Charles Lynch. Having successfully argued that evidence establishing him as a responsible, law-abiding business owner was irrelevant under federal law and therefore inadmissible, painting him to a jury as a common drug dealer was a piece of cake.

At the very same time in San Diego, however, feds conveniently applied the exact opposite logic to justify raids on four dispensaries, citing evidence that the establishments weren’t complying with state medical marijuana laws – the same laws that were irrelevant to Lynch’s defense.

Meanwhile, it looks like cops in Tallahassee lied to a grand jury investigating local law enforcement’s role in the death of Rachel Hoffman, a recent college graduate murdered in a sting operation after being pressured into acting as an informant. Not content to accept responsibility for the death of a young girl who by all accounts sold just enough marijuana to pay for her personal use, cops tried to smear her as a major drug kingpin making nearly $2 million a year. Considering that she was busted with 5 ounces of marijuana and that her dad still paid the rent on her apartment, nobody’s buying it.

Finally, after local police insisted that a raid on a Prince George’s County mayor that resulted in the death of the man’s two black Labs was executed by the book, it now appears not only that the man is probably completely innocent, but that cops had lied when they said they had a warrant authorizing the no-knock raid.

From his perch in a combat helicopter high over the Sequoia National Forest, it’s easy for Mr. Walters to portray this war on marijuana as a success. But from the ground, it’s an unconscionable mess.

I’m sure it was. Does anybody else see anything wrong with our policies?

“We’ll know soon whether the operation has any connection to actual, bad crimes — violent crimes. Perhaps it does; more likely it does not. In which case, what will it accomplish? Well, the price of dope has fallen steadily over the last few years, and the regular Mom ‘n’ Pop marijuana farmers populating the hills around Humboldt County have had to plant more and more to keep their income up. The reason? Oversupply. Everyone and their uncle is a dope grower, at least in Arcata. As always, the net effect of prohibition-style federal operations will be to reestablish a decent, inflated price for the product. Growers who don’t end up in jail might end up sitting pretty this time next year.”

The idea that we can simply “eradicate” all the marijuana growing in our parks, forests, backyards, attics, and bedrooms and wipe it off the face of the earth forever is pure fantasy. This is America’s largest cash crop after all. In California alone, we’re talking about more than $12 billion that’s up for grabs to anyone willing to assume the risk.

Still, it obviously comforts some to have a small army running around town brandishing uprooted plants as though they were war trophies. Despite the fact that the feds are only just packing out of town today, and no arrests have even been made yet, the Eureka Reporter editorial board has already declared the operation a “success,” gushing about how “impressive” the whole spectacle was.

Less impressive, but far more effective, would be to stop playing cops and robbers and bring the whole marijuana industry out of the shadows and into the legitimate market. Until we do, count on more law enforcement-induced windfalls for drug dealers.