Michael Craig's Journal

News reports out of San Antonio say that, after keeping him under surveillance for several months, San Antonio police executed a search warrant on the home of Richard Lee, the sixth place finisher at the World Series of Poker just three weeks ago.

Apparently, Lee was involved in … gasp … gambling.

The shame of it.

The glee of the San Antonio Police Department that their months of picking through one of their citizens’ trash to prove he was betting was unrestrained. An SAPD spokesman named Joe Rios treated his moment in the spotlight as if it was an audition for the next Untouchables movie.

According to WOAI.com, Rios said, “Our vice detectives have been conducting a comprehensive investigation where they believe the proceeds from illegal gambling have bought a lot of items in this house. Any time we have that type of investigation that leads us to believe there’s illegal property in the house, we have the authority to seize it. We’re taking all the vehicles and all the property inside the house.”

Mind you, Richard Lee has not only not been convicted of anything, he hasn’t been accused of anything. Yet a bunch of people came into his house without his consent and took his cars, his money, and his TV.

I thought the police were supposed to prevent that kind of abuse, not perpetrate it, and then have the nerve to brag about it.

I don’t know how tall Joe Rios is, or whether his nose looks like a nipple, but he came off sounding like a gigantic boob. “Now that we have the evidence, we can move forward.”

Don’t you need evidence before you move forward? Especially when you are going to steamroll into someone’s house at night and steal their property. It sounds like the search was a fishing expedition to build a case.

Rios on the protection of the public interest and what Lee - unaccused at the time this happened - did: “It’s basically what we refer to as a bookie, taking bets online and then placing those bets. He was doing that illegally here in San Antonio - not in Las Vegas.”

So all this was done to save the Bellagio and Caesars Palace from the scourge of competition? Are the citizens of San Antonio supposed to sleep better tonight for that?

And thank you, Joe, for that definition of “bookie.” It reminds me of the old Mike Royko column about the deputy coroners of bygone days, who specialized in getting their pictures in the paper, doing things like holding up an aspirin bottle found in a gunshot victim’s pockets. “He died of a headache.” (Of course, they were searching the deceased’s pockets to find some identification, and hopefully some cash in the wallet bearing that identification.)

Rios obviously doesn’t make much money, nor does he understand bookmaking. “We’re not talking $20 or $30 here. We’re talking payments well over $500,000. It was a pretty well-oiled machine they were running out here.”

Not well-oiled enough, apparently, because someone forgot to “take care of” San Antonio’s finest. If Lee paid out $500,000 in bets, I assume there was roughly the same number of losing bets during that period. If he was charging the standard vig of 5% - someone please explain to Mr. Rios that the bookie charges 5% commission on all bets, keeping it from the losers and refunding it to the winners, so the bookie’s cut would be just 2 1/2% of the million dollars in bets (that were made to create payouts of $500,000), or $25,000.

I would BET this is less than Joe Rios makes for bragging about living in a country where the government can take its citizens’ property without proof of any wrongdoing (i.e., depriving Harrah’s of that right to make $25,000, which, frankly, it doesn’t even want but feels it has to act like it is trying to pursue).

I don’t know whether to blame Richard Lee, the San Antonio media, or the police department’s spokesman - let’s blame Rios, okay? - but Richard Lee is being made into Tony Montana here. The media knew and reported, for instance, that the police seized 5 Lexus automobiles and a money-counting machine. The San Antonio Express-News intervieweed Lee “sitting outside his home, beside a gurgling stone fountain.”

Did he have a couple of tigers chained up in back? Or a foxy old lady like Michelle Pfeiffer?

The Express-News interviewed a friend of Lee’s, John “Trophy” Bradley, who was outraged, as every citizen should be, that the San Antonio Police spent months of their precious time on this case.

“‘They might want to put a little more attention on watching that guy who murdered his wife,’ Bradley said, referring to a local man who shot and killed his ex-wife after she notified the police NUMEROUS TIMES - my emphasis - that he violated a protective order. ‘Meanwhile, they’ve got surveillance on someone’s house to see if he’s taking bets.’”

DISPATCHER: I’ve got a 911 call from a woman saying her ex-husband is violating a protective order.

JOE RIOS: Who is she to decide that? Only the police can decide if somebody violated a protective order. And I haven’t decided anything. Except maybe that we should carry out Italian for lunch today. We haven’t done that for awhile, have we?

DISPATCHER: She’s been calling repeatedly.

JOE RIOS: Repeatedly, huh? Tell her that those repeated calls constitute police harassment and a waste of our resources. I, for one, have more important things to do than hear her complain. Does anyone know if “bookie” ends in “Y or “E-Y”?

DISPATCHER: The line went dead. Should I trace the call?

JOE RIOS: If she can’t be bothered to stay on the phone when we’re obviously busy, then the San Antonio Police Department has better things to do. Hey, hey, don’t throw that garbage in the garbage. Those are exhibits in Bookiegate. You just contaminated the chain of custo - never mind. No problem. Forget about the whole matter. And erase this recording.

I want to take a moment to reflect on the victim of this crime, Richard Lee. I don’t know anything about Richard, other than that he overvalues pocket jacks. (THAT, by the way, is more criminal than anything they are accusing him of.)

But he doesn’t deserve this or what I know is going to follow. The police have to circle the wagons and use their power to make him into a Very Bad Man. They are going to paint this in the most lurid way possible. If he had a subscription to Playboy and some copies lying around his bedroom, we’ll hear that they also found a large volume of pornographic material. If a local doctor gave him Vicodin after his backache should have gotten better, they will tell you about the cache of drugs they found hidden away (in the medicine cabinet).

He and his family will be disgraced. Friends will abandon him (especially if they are betting men). I hope he doesn’t have school-aged children, because their lives will be ruined.

I’m not exaggerating this part. I know people who have been arrested for gambling, convicted of gambling, and gone to jail for gambling. The prosecution acts like they put Saddam Hussein away. You watch.

Richard Lee has been nothing but a credit to San Antonio, a mostly harmless yet periodically crooked little shitbox of an operation. According to news stories published before Lee went bad (which was on Tuesday) and the police decided to make him into Public Menace No. 1, he donated some of his World Series winnings to an organization for abused children. He turned down endorsement deals from online gambling sites - dot-nets, not dot-coms, so it wouldn’t be part of any illegal gambling - on Final Table Day so he could wear a “San Antonio” shirt.

I hope he has the sense to burn that shirt and urinate on the ashes. Assuming the police haven’t seized it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 7:33 am and is filed under My favourites:.