• English
• Español
• Deutsch
• Français
• Svenska
• Suomi
• Norsk
• Nederlands
• Italiano
• Português
• Dansk
• Polski
• Čeština
• 日本語
• 汉语语言

Why Politics Are Important

I've written a few posts in the past few weeks about efforts to legalize poker in the great state of Texas. Since then, law enforcement in various Texas localities have responded by launching massive raids on poker rooms. Such dens of iniquity such as the Audie Murphy VFW were raided by police wearing black hoods to hide their faces. Players in other rooms had the pleasure of meeting SWAT teams members toting automatic weapons.

One of those players sent an email to writer Radley Balko, who blogs at TheAgitator.com. I strongly recommend you read the whole thing, but allow me to pull a few bits out to give you an idea of how outrageous this persecution of poker really is:

The raid occurred around 7:40 p.m. I was in the kitchen area which was just inside the front door when suddenly there was loud banging from the door. Within seconds, the room was full of Dallas SWAT officers yelling for everyone to put their hands in the air. Behind the Dallas SWAT team came many more law enforcement officers and several camera crews for the A&E reality show, Dallas SWAT. The camera crew's chests were clearly marked as "A&E Film Crew."

Bear in mind that, prior to police entering, the place was virtually quiet. There was the sound of poker chips in the air, but not much else. The players were essentially professionals and working stiffs having fun�there were doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals. There was hardly anything "dangerous" about the place at all. In fact, the cops found no weapons in the facility or on anyone there. The show of force and weaponry brought by the cops was simply outrageous and unjustified, given the circumstances, but, then again, are they enforcing the law or making a TV show?

And the result of this raid?

By the way, that night the police issued something like 87 Class C Misdemeanor gambling tickets, 2 Class B of some sort, and a Class A.

What's baffling is that with 15 SWAT guys, Dallas police, Dallas Code Enforcement, etc., there were probably 30-40 officers at the raid on a Saturday night, probably being paid overtime.

That's a hell of a lot of overtime to pay to nab misdemeanors with very small maximum fines, most of which were never collected as, according to my attorney, each and every person who requested a jury trial had their charges dismissed.

I don't think I can sum up the "success" of the raid any better than Balko did: "I'll bet it would've made great TV, though."