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.
What crime trends have you been dealing with recently?
In Prince George’s County over the past decade, there’s been a very high vehicle theft rate. People live in D.C. and steal cars in Prince George’s and then quickly get over the state line. The court system is not coming down hard on those caught, and the county police are prohibited from pursuing them. … We’ve been encouraging citizens in Berwyn Heights to Club their cars. They can buy the Clubs through the department for $10.
How did you get into police work?
My father was a D.C. policemen. I remember hiding behind the couch late at night listening to him and his friends decamp after the had a rough day on the street. I thought their stories were the most fabulous thing in the world. I wanted to do something good for the world. I went into the Marine Corps and started off as a University of Maryland police officer in 1973.
