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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control
Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book: The new warrior cop is out of control
SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise
Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game but it wasnt a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.
Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends, a friend of Culosis told me shortly after his death. None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the VirginiaVirginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation. Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And thats when they brought in the SWAT team.
On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadnt slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosis heart.
Sal Culosis last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: Dude, what are you doing?
In March 2006, just two months after its ridiculous gambling investigation resulted in the death of an unarmed man, the Fairfax County Police Department issued a press release warning residents not to participate in office betting pools tied to the NCAA mens basketball tournament. The title: Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk. Given the proximity to Culosis death, residents could be forgiven for thinking the police department believed wagering on sports was a crime punishable by execution.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)Incidentally, there have been other strange incidents of SWAT teams with star power. Matt Damon accompanied SWAT officers on several raids while preparing for the movie The Departed. And after police mistakenly shot and killed immigrant and father Ismael Mena on a raid in Denver in 1999, they revealed that Colorado Rockies first baseman Mike Lansing had gone along for the ride. Denver police added that it was fairly common to take sports stars on drug raids.
ohheckyeah
(9,314 posts)part of a bungled police raid:
http://www.whudat.com/news/pages/1006/news_102506_2.php
NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)"we had to destroy the village to save it" school of thought? How is this crap even legal?
HipChick
(25,485 posts)because hardly anything happens there..
Warpy
(111,338 posts)Robocop in Mayberry would die of boredom. So he dresses up in full regalia and goes out to defend the town against kids drinking beer.
Buns_of_Fire
(17,194 posts)And Earnest T. Bass is just RIPE for a good tazing!
But the final paragraph of the linked article (an excellent one, by the way ) might give everyone something to mull over:
magellan
(13,257 posts)I want to call it entrapment but I'm not sure that's the right word.
Whatever, it's wrong...and this story breaks my heart.
tblue37
(65,483 posts)to convince people to commit crimes they never would have thought of on their own is entrapment.
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)Last edited Sun Jul 7, 2013, 05:08 PM - Edit history (1)
When I was there in NO VA, the cops had a fleet of confiscated luxury cars that they converted into patrol vehicles.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)[img][/img]
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)HipChick
(25,485 posts)Saw a FFX cop write a ticket (and take pics) of a guy that had parked next to disabled parking and was about half an inch on the white line..
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)Mostly due to horror stories like that one.
Iggo
(47,565 posts)They're the best!
eShirl
(18,503 posts)think
(11,641 posts)truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)That is obscene.
Rex
(65,616 posts)nt.
msongs
(67,440 posts)MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I'm not sure how stupidity of this magnitude gets fixed without really, really bad things happening.
And no, Watertown was not anything like this.
AzDar
(14,023 posts)Jesus, what a clusterfuck...
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)And they will actually think that they are doing a good job.
gtar100
(4,192 posts)Seems there are far too many who have lost (or never had) respect for people. It's all a game of power to them, being better than the other guy. There are plenty of criminals out there (hint: follow the money) so it makes no sense to be setting someone up for such a small thing as this.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)If you ruled out all of those ill-fitted to the job, you would have some mighty slim pickings leftover.
The Wizard
(12,547 posts)engaging in reckless gun play is becoming the norm. Kind of like Germany in the 30s.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)frylock
(34,825 posts)fuck. them.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)or at least have more firepower.
tblue37
(65,483 posts)article:
[font color="blue"]There were similar problems at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Police in Denver showed up for the protests decked out in full riot gear. One particularly striking photo from Denver showed a sea of cops in shiny black armor, batons in hand, surrounding a small, vastly outnumbered group of protesters. The most volatile night of the convention featured one incident in which Jefferson County, Colorado, deputies unknowingly clashed with and then pepper-sprayed undercover Denver cops posing as violent protesters. The city later paid out $200,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a Denver SWAT team was making indiscriminate arrests, rounding up protesters and bystanders alike.[/font]
Perhaps the best insight into the mentality the police brought to the DNC protests <emphasis added> could be found on the T-shirts the Denver police union had printed up for the event. The shirts showed a menacing cop holding a baton. The caption: [/font]DNC 2008: WE GET UP EARLY, TO BEAT THE CROWDS. [font color="blue"]Police were spotted wearing similar shirts at the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. At the 1996 DNC convention in Chicago, cops were seen wearing shirts that read: [/font]WE KICKED YOUR FATHERS ASS IN 1968 . . . WAIT TIL YOU SEE WHAT WE DO TO YOU! <emphasis added>.
Yes, the excerpt from the book makes for a very long article, and sure, many people have neither the time nor the inclination to read it to the end. But I think everyone needs to see what sort of T-shirts these cops wear to show off their attitude and their group solidarity--against the citizens they are supposed to protect.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)they up the ante way up, into terrorism. All out of some sick and perverted sense of justice.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)Not that street gambling is the lottery, but almost. How can they encourage gambling with lottery or casino's and then arrest or kill you for it among friends. Maybe it's time to sue the casino's or lottery for their "bad influence" on people.
This is as sad as that kid in Fla who bought weed for the new girl who had a crush on him even though he didn't smoke weed, and then arrest him for dealing. Can't they find "real" criminals. Chicken shit is what they are. Too many armed nuts out there to fuck with, so let's go for the sane ones and set them up.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Last summer, the day after they announced it, I was up at the nearby bar watching the Browns pre-season football game on Friday night.
The barmaid came back to the restaurant room we were in, and told me to watch it going home. Her boyfriend lived a couple of blocks from me, and he had called and said the Sheriff had the whole neighborhood locked down, diverting traffic, and helicopters all over the place. I wasn't worried. I'd had a couple of beers, but mainly drank iced tea all evening.
I left to go home about an hour later, and you'd have thought that Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Ed Snowden were on the rampage. I couldn't get home. They had a SWAT command center set up at the golf course parking lot.
Found out the next day, that they had surrounded a house where a man was allegedly suicidal.
After a couple of hours, the man woke up or whatever, and came to the door and told the police. "No, I don't want to commit suicide, and have no idea what you're talking about".
Everybody packed up and went home. But, I can just imagine how horribly this could have ended with these Barney Fife yay-hoos running loose.
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)Probably not the browns....
dgauss
(883 posts)Totally out of control.
CanonRay
(14,113 posts)Are they importing Florida water?