Gangsters in Blue

Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week. If California is like most states (and I believe it is), a poker game is only illegal if the house is taking a rake off the top. In this case, it looks like that "rake" was the $5 the extra the hosts asked from each buy-in to pay for pizza and beer.

Police also took a 13-year-old girl out of the home, away from her parents, and turned her over to child protective services. In addition to the charge of running an illegal gambling operation, the hosts are also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Good thing the poor girl was saved before slouching toward an inevitable life of crime.

I’m not quite sure I understand this part, either:

A background check on the house’s residents led officers to a Web site advertising weekly poker games. The Web site was used to lure "unwitting" participants to the tournaments, which required a $25 to $55 buy-in with an extra $5 "refreshment" fee, according to the report.

How does an advertisement for a small-stakes poker game "unwittingly lure" someone? Did they think the game was free? If they did, was there something preventing them from simply leaving if they didn’t want to pay the buy-in?

This account suggests the police hinted to individual players that the hosts may have been cheating or defrauding them, though that’s not apparent in the news accounts. Firsthand accounts on poker sites have only good things to say about the hosts. Of course, even if the hosts were cheating, it wouldn’t justify a full-on raid, particularly in mid-tournament. The SWAT tactics seem more like intimidation. Raiding in mid-tournament also ensures there’s a $1,300 pot to seize for the sheriff department’s general fund.

Finally, the San Mateo Daily Journal includes this helpful note:

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office encourages citizens to report instances of heavy foot traffic, frequent visitors and illegal parking in residential areas by calling its anonymous tip line…

Mustn’t be much crime in San Mateo.

Here’s another firsthand account of one of those Dallas SWAT poker raids. Highlights:

There was a tournament and two cash games in process at the time of the raid. I was at a table with two grandmothers and a school teacher.

The SWAT team busted out the window with a sledge hammer and came charging in the room with MP5 machine pistols shouldered.

When I heard the window being pounded, I thought it was a shotgun in the parking lot. Everyone inside dove to the floor and scrambled away from the window. About 20 police officers came in and told everyone to sit down. Two undercover officers identified the dealers and the sweep, who were taken away, charged with running a gambling room (a potential felony in Texas) and questioned by the IRS. The rest of us got gambling citations, which is a class C misdemeanor in Texas - the same as a speeding ticket.

[…]

None of the people accused of operating any of the rooms have been prosecuted and all of the contested gambling citations have been dismissed.

[…]

In my case the state announced [they had insufficient evidence to go to trial] and my case was dismissed.

Now, my larger point. The foregoing means that the city attorney could get the arresting officer to trial, but there was still insufficient evidence to go to trial. So the Dallas PD managed to bring a camera crew, have perhaps twenty officers on the scene, have the SWAT team bust through the window, destroy thousands of dollars in property, and risk injury to officers and everyone in the room, but they could not gather enough evidence to prosecute the offense which was the ostensible reason for the raid. They risked the lives of the officers and the people in the room, but did not even try to gather evidence to be used in a trial.

So the stated reasons for the raid are an obvious sham and some bureaucrat was willing to risk lives and destroy property when no one had any intention of actually going to trial. Who is the degenerate gambler in this story?

Excellent question.

Another firsthand account of a Dallas SWAT poker raid here.

Here’s the Drew Carey video. It’s on the Dallas police department’s dumb decision to raid a VFW hall that was hosting poker games. This one was one of my suggestions. I think it came out very well.