POLICE POKER RAIDS

by Bob Ciaffone

Do you play poker in a legal = public cardroom? Consider yourself lucky. Those of us who do not have access to su= ch a place—like me here in Sa= ginaw, Michigan—have the cho= ice between playing in a private game or not at all. That is something like the Hobson's choice between unsafe sex or no sex.

= ; Poker in a home game is legal in some states, those that permit social gambling. = This is about half the states, the last time I looked. But in any state in the union, it is illegal to run a poker game that is raked. If the house charge= s a fee to play, it is running a gambling establishment, and illegal.

= ; Nearly all the home games I have played in over the years have had a rake. There a= re a number of reasons for this.

(1) Running a poker game is work, an inconvenience. Someone who does it needs an incentive to do it. The money they can make provides t= he incentive.

(2) A poker game will not last that long without new blood= . A friendly game will sooner or later need to have someone bring a friend, then you get the friend of the friend…The end result is you have people who are strangers into your home, for which you would like to be compensated.

(3) Too much cash in a place is undesirable, attracting the wrong kind of people. Besides, who knows how much money one will need on a given day? Most people are uncomfortable carrying the amount of their large= st possible loss with them every time they go to a poker game. If someone gets stuck, everyone in the game, in the spirit of looking after one's brother or sister, would not like the person forced to quit because they ran out of mo= ney on a terribly unlucky series of hands. All the players appreciate it when t= he person running the game is willing to extend some credit to the poor unfortunate victim of insufficient karma—and take all the responsibil= ity associated with extending credit to someone suffering an unexpectedly large gambling loss. Hence we have "tab," the loaning of money by the h= ouse to support the game, something that would not occur if there were no rake to offset the losses caused by unrepaid loans.

Now that we understand that t= he law is broken, and why it is broken (without making any judgment as to the righ= t or wrong of the situation), let us look at what all too frequently happens whe= n an illegal poker game is raided by the police. In my opinion, what happens is a national disgrace. The first thing I want to show you is why there is apath= y on the part of the general public on this subject.

Newspaper accounts of an even= t are not written to inflame the passion of the reader. As a result, a newspaper account does not have either the graphic description of what happened nor t= he visual impact to arouse the public. It is the distinction between a newspap= er saying some black man who was resisting arrest was repeatedly struck by pol= ice batons, and actually watching the film footage of the savage beating delive= red to Rodney King. No videotape, no call for reform.

To dramatize the difference b= etween a newspaper account and film footage, I am going to give you an excerpt fro= m a news story that was carried by the wire services, and then tell you what it= was like watching the film footage. These are portions of the story carried by = the Associated Press on October 31, 1997 on an incident between police and anti-logging protesters.

"The federal government = opened a criminal investigation Friday into deputies who used liquid pepper spray = on the eyes of anti-logging demonstrators…Nine anti-logging protesters s= ued the Humboldt County sheriff's office Thursday, = saying they were subjected to excessive force when officers broke up their sit-ins= by putting liquid pepper spray in their eyes with cotton swabs." The writ= ten account ended with the incident defended by the perpetrators as "an appropriate use of force."

When you read this, you make a mental note that the police did something they shouldn't have, and then you turn to the sports section. However, the attorney for the demonstrators was able to get film footage if this incident, which went out on network news. = Here is what I saw.

The demonstrators were linked together by metal sleeves they had fashioned, so nobody could move to run a= way once they had taken the fateful step of participating in the sit-in. To each person, a two-man police team would come up to apply this caustic agent, wh= ose purpose was to cause severe pain. One policeman held the bound person's head and pried the eyelids open, and the other put the chemical directly on the eyeballs. There was audio, so you got to hear the screams of the young men = and women after the pepper spray burned their eyes, and watch them writhe in tortured agony. If you caught this act in the middle, you would think it had happened in some place like Iraq, instead of the country trying to be moral leader of the world.

The emotion aroused by seeing= the video was many times more intense than reading the newspaper account, or ev= en my written version. That is why television has a much greater impact than t= he written word.

Here is a fictionalized newsp= aper account of a police raid. "Police today raided a gambling establishmen= t at 200 S Fifth Street in Podunk= City. Twelve people were arrested = for participating in what police described as "a highstakes illegal poker game." The proprietor, John Doe, was charged with being in the busines= s of gambling. Other participants were booked and released.

Did that make your blood boil= ? No; not even if you were a poker player. Now let me tell you the full story of = what really happened. What follows is a composite compiled from information that= I have acquired from talking to friends of mine that have been caught in raid= s, and to police officers. (I have so far been lucky and never been involved in such a situation, a statement that few people with my extensive poker experience can say.)

Who carries out the police ra= id on a home poker game? Naturally, it's done by the people on the force that have the most experience with conducting a raid. This is the drug enforcement br= anch of the department. They sometimes have a different psychological makeup than Roy, the sweet cop who aided us schoolchildren across Foxhurst Avenue when I was a child.=

Experience has taught people = in drug enforcement that it is better to keep one's identity concealed when involved in a bust. Standard equipment is the ski mask, although sometimes = gas masks are used. (But not the gas itself, fortunately.) What could be more American than being masked when make a house call? Of course, sheets are now passé, but the tradition goes on.

The raid will be carried out = using what is known as the "doctrine of overwhelming force," which means that it is safer for both the raiders and the raided if there are so many police officers involved that resistance is obviously hopeless.<= /span>

Busting poker games does not = bring accolades to the police department. In addition to the illegal gambling, th= ere will need to be an accusation that drugs were rumored or alleged to be used= at the game. This makes it more socially acceptable to launch a raid, even if = no drugs are found. I may have led a more sheltered life than I thought, but I have never been to a place that offered illegal gambling that also doubled = as a place for selling drugs, nor have I ever heard of such a place. The most I = know about drugs being involved with poker was when "The Rookie" would= go out the door for a walk after a bad beat, he was rumored to have lit up a j= oint on occasion. Why would anyone making money hand-over-fist selling drugs ever mess around with poker?

Now to the raid itself. The f= irst you know of the raid, someone is battering down the door and announcing "police." They want to give you as little time as possible to rat= hole any evidence, which includes the money they want to seize. This is the poin= t at which you have an important guess to make; is this the police or hijackers?= In a well-known incident in Detro= it, the players—a group of off-duty deputy sheriffs––guessed wrong and thought they were being robbed. The result was one dead and three hospitalized for gunshot wounds. In a Florida incident, the proprietor fired a warning shot through the ceiling to let the "robbers" know that the people inside were armed. This was met by= a hail of gunfire through the closed door. Miraculously, there were no injuri= es. In Tennessee, it turned out to be a robbery. The robbers were known to the players, so the robbers covered their tracks—unsuccessfully—by tying everyone u= p, soaking them in tar and turpentine, and setting the building on fire. There were no survivors. In a game up in the Northwest, the score was fourteen pe= ople shot dead. Like they say, if you are going to be a poker player, it helps t= o be a good guesser.

Once the police get through t= he door without injuring anyone, the psychological part seems to be the main problem. I had a friend who was unlucky enough to be at a game that was rob= bed one week and another that was raided the following week (and you thought you were running bad). He told me, "Bob, there was no comparison; = The police raid was far more terrifying. I knew the robbers were only after our money."

In some places, money in your wallet is safe; money wrapped in a rubber band is "gambling paraphernalia." Other places the raiders just take it all. Sometimes t= hey take your automobile. It was used in the commission of a crime, wasn't it? I heard about one guy who lost his brand new Lincoln Continental in a Florida poker ra= id. He managed to get it back half a year later, the lucky devil. I wonder how muc= h he lost in depreciation.

After you are booked, it is t= ime to make a deal. The usual in some places is you are given an unpleasant choice= . If you let the cops keep the money that was confiscated, they will drop the charges against you. Naturally, you can fight for the money in a court of l= aw, but few players elect this option, unless their brother is a lawyer who wil= l work without charge, or some such arrangement. I have also heard of the money be= ing returned, but doubt if it is the norm.

I think if someone videotaped= a police raid of a poker game, and caught all the conversation during and aft= er the affair, we could get the weight of public opinion on our side. People w= ould see that such a raid should only be a last resort, instead of such a freque= nt event. As I said, only film has the ability to raise sufficient passion for= a cause.

You may ask, how are police supposed to deal with such a violation of the law? Here is my answer. When = the Cajun Cup was shut down in 1988 (after running smoothly for three years), t= here was a debate between law enforcement officials as to how this alleged gambl= ing violation should be handled. The Feds, according to my source, wanted to si= mply raid the place, arrest all the players, and confiscate the money, including that which was put into lock boxes. The local law enforcement was strongly against this. In the end, the tournament was shut down by the tournament organizer being informed that his operation was now thought to be in violat= ion of the law, and that he could either shut down or be shut down. Unsurprisin= gly, he took the first option.

I know that raked poker games= are illegal. So does every other player. How many people would try to continue running a game if law enforcement notified them that they would be raided if they did not close up shop? This is how illegal gambling would be handled if the public was aware of how dangerous—and unnecessary—these rai= ds on home poker games really are.