SWAT Raid at North Carolina Poker Game

Attacking with full body armor, assault weapons, and masks to conceal their identities, the Fayetteville, North Carolina Police Department behaved like their Dallas, TX counterparts (see blog entries from November 22, 2006 and October 8, 2007) when they raided a recent poker game.

According to the Fayetteville Observer newspaper, city police, with the assistance of North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement agents, conducted a SWAT-style operation that rounded up forty people at a poker tournament in a building that held three poker tables, a few pool tables, and some big-screen TVs. Law enforcement officials shut the tournament down, issued gambling citations to players, and confiscated almost $12,000 in cash—including money taken from people in attendance that wasn’t being wagered. “… looked to be large scale, casino-type operations.”

Chris Lusardi of Fayetteville, the alleged operator of the game, also had his home raided, where police seized another $3,000. Lusardi was arrested and charged with alcohol violations in addition to running a gaming operation.

I guess if you’re in Fayetteville you can sleep soundly tonight, knowing that public safety is improved whenever the local SWAT team raids a poker game that only offends some archaic laws—laws that otherwise serve to provide the police with an opportunity to play cops-and-robbers with all that cool, hi-tech SWAT equipment paid for by you, me, and the rest of this country’s taxpayers.

With money scarce in this economy, and public resources stretched to the breaking point, the cops ought to be out fighting crime, not busting poker games.