Correction

Radley Balko | January 16, 2008

A reason reader shared with me a correspondence he had with Sam Mateo, California Sheriff Greg Munks. Munks says the raid on the San Mateo poker game was not done by the SWAT team. I assumed it had been due to firsthand accounts that described police in "full riot gear" with their "guns drawn." Also via email I learned that the child seized in the raid was a boy, not a girl.

I apologize for the errors. The other points about the appropriateness of the raid, seizing the kid from his parents, etc. still stand. One more thing: Several regular players at this game have emailed to assure me that the hosts were not cheating or defrauding participants, which police seemed to hint was the real reason behind the raid. If the players are right, the only real justification for the raid would then be the $5 charge on top of the buy-in for refreshments.

Comments

|1.16.08 @ 8:24AM|#

You civilians are too stupid to tell the difference between police in "full riot gear" with their "guns drawn" and a real SWAT team.

What a bunch of maroons. Fucking civilians.

CB

lunchstealer|1.16.08 @ 8:56AM|#

Munks says the raid on the San Mateo poker game was not done by the SWAT team. I assumed it had been due to firsthand accounts that described police in "full riot gear" with their "guns drawn."

This is very simple. SWAT teams are defined by two things. One is the so-called full-riot-gear, and the other is a significantly increased training schedule to make sure that those special weapons are used effectively.

Now, for a poker game, all the training would be overkill. They should just be able to figure out how to go running in with guns drawn and so forth, without having to waste taxpayer money on training for safety and so forth. That would just be extravagant.

Russ 2000|1.16.08 @ 9:17AM|#

Duh! If it was a SWAT team, it would say SWAT on their windbreakers.

|1.16.08 @ 9:26AM|#

Somehow I doubt that the people who were victims of this get too much comfort from knowing that the armed lunatics who kicked down there door and drug away their child were ordinary police rather than a SWAT team. Good for you Radley for making a necessary if irrelevant correction.

|1.16.08 @ 9:28AM|#

So, it was done by a different set of pricks?

lunchstealer|1.16.08 @ 9:35AM|#

So, it was done by a different set of pricks?

Yeah, a SWAT team is a highly-trained, over-armed, very expensive unit which would be innappropriately armed for a poker game. This unit is exactly the same, except it wasn't trained for this sort of raid, it just did it without training.

BakedPenguin|1.16.08 @ 10:02AM|#

This unit is exactly the same, except it wasn't trained for this sort of raid...

Is that why no one was shot?

R C Dean|1.16.08 @ 10:37AM|#

|1.16.08 @ 10:38AM|#

These errors don't affect the salient points about the story. So no harm no foul. Only thing, is that they are basic facts that I would think would be easy to verify. Maybe not, I don't know. Radley is our Paladin against excessive force by the state. It's necessary that he remains untarnished.

R C Dean|1.16.08 @ 10:39AM|#

Odd.

One more thing: Several regular players at this game have emailed to assure me that the hosts were not cheating or defrauding participants, which police seemed to hint was the real reason behind the raid.

I always assumed because there could be no other possible explanation why the undercover cops playing there kept losing so much taxpayer money.

|1.16.08 @ 10:54AM|#

At least they don't shoot them like they do 'round these parts.

|1.16.08 @ 1:16PM|#

Mr. Balko,
While this revision doesn't change the vile premise of your original post, kudos for posting a very obvious correction. Keep up the good work!

LarryA|1.16.08 @ 7:31PM|#

Munks says the raid on the San Mateo poker game was not done by the SWAT team. I assumed it had been due to firsthand accounts that described police in "full riot gear" with their "guns drawn."

So all the cops are going ninja? And I thought the original post was depressing.

Jason|1.17.08 @ 1:14AM|#

Correction: the child seized in the raid was a girl.

|1.17.08 @ 4:36PM|#

These were 2 seperate incidents. The 13 year old was taken from her house on Lexington Ave in San Jose, CA on the same night. The internet case was in San Jose, the 2nd raid in San Mateo was where the officers were playing in the game 2 weeks prior to the raid. Good attempt at running the 2 together though!