Friendly Poker Game Draws SWAT Team

In Roswell, Georgia, a SWAT team aided by regular police officers broke up a peaceful high-stakes poker game in a private residence on Monday night. They arrested 27 people and impounded their cars. Why? Because playing cards for any amount of dough is illegal. Why? Because the state, which licenses casinos and runs a mega-million-dollar lottery, hates competition.

Gambling, then, is clearly not the problem. But gambling when the state can't get a cut, that's when the paramilitary police storm your house.

Of course, that's not a truth the authorities can sell. People would ask questions if that was the official reason. What to do? The local police chief knows when to get creative.

Roswell Police Chief Ed Williams ... said commercial gambling enterprises like this one can attract additional crimes like holdups that can be dangerous to neighborhoods. 

Hey, you know what else attracts crimes such as holdups? Banks and convenience stores. Let's arrest the people who run them!

But Williams isn't done yet. Also, a neighbor filed a complaint, he says, not because of public drinking or excessive noise, but because, on game nights, there was too much traffic on the quiet cul de sac where the 'poker house' is located. That was cause for official alarm.

Think about that. You're free to throw a party as long as your guests arrive on foot. 'Cause if you live in a quiet neighborhood and they have the gall to drive up, the police will investigate and ultimately call out the SWAT team.

And you thought Roswell, New Mexico was weird.

The story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentions in the final paragraph that the cops charged Dan Tyre, the owner of the house, with drug possession. But nowhere does it say that that was the impetus for the raid. Were there multiple kilos of heroin in the house? Or was this another meaningless quantity — a roach butt in a bedroom, some residue blow on a dollar bill? I'd like to know. I'm probably overly cynical, but I also wonder if the drug charge is bogus (either made up or trumped up) — a ruse to get the public's support.

We'll see. I hope Tyre hires the smartest, meanest lawyer in town.