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I mostly read HN, but my understanding is in some counties of the US, it's a regular occurrence that poker games at home with money involved are considered cont
by tajen 12y ago
I mostly read HN, but my understanding is in some counties of the US, it's a regular occurrence that poker games at home with money involved are considered contraband and a SWAT team comes and kills the dog (Don't make fun of the detail - The dog story is here because it's the only way to get public emotion about it, therefore newspapers report dog stories first). The SWAT team could even mistake the address and there are no reimbursements for damages, even if no illegal activity was carried. Obviously we only hear about the few worst cases.
Therefore would it be a stretch to imagine that any non-high-profile citizen carrying a pad of $2 bills could be suspected of illegal activities? To avoid a "SWAT inspection" don't you have to be either Steve Wozniak or in the right neighborhoods of US?
- fsniper 12y agoInsanity to the extreme. US is really insane on some accounts.
- maxerickson 12y agoIt depends on what you mean by avoid. There probably aren't more than 100,000 SWAT raids a year (statistics are thin, but Balko is a loud voice of opposition to them): http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/s... And there are about 120 million households. So even if you assume that all SWAT raids are illegitimate, that 100,000 is wrong by 10X, and that they spread the SWATs around on the bottom 1/2 of households, you are still looking at 60 years between them. I'm not intending that to be dismissive of the situation, I mean to point out that it gets a lot of attention because many people think it is a significant problem regardless of the frequency, not because it is a pervasive fact of life in the US.
- percept 12y agohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/01/27/fairfax-swat-team-raids-high-stakes-great-falls-poker-game-seizes-cash-terrifies-players/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/01/27/fairf...