\”Dallas Attorney\” posts an interesting piece of non-binding legal advice in his comment about the 80-or-so Dallas poker players who now face legal ramifications for playing the game. I totally agree — and encourage all to plea not-guilty and insist on a jury trial — but:
Do what your paid for, protect the citizens of Dallas.
I don\’t think that\’s necessarily fair to the DPD. When the Pinnacle got robbed, Dallas police were alerted to the potential for violence around all the money in a Dallas poker game. So they start nosing around and — shocked at how easy it is to infiltrate — see that it\’s not just a bunch of grizzled thugs playing in a dark room. Instead, you have upwards of 100 people — regular working folks, men and women, all races, fat and thin, parents with children … clearly, not your criminal sort.
And yet day after day, all around town, these nice poker people gather en masse to play this great social game that doesn\’t really cost them much money but gives them a chance to win a relative ton, while catching the occasional adrenaline rush. Fun!
And ripe for an armed robbery … you know how easy it is for a violent crime (particularly one that starts on the internet) to go awry. DPD has raided only one game. And it just so happened to be one of the biggest, most open, easiest to get into … in a terrible part of town, no less …
If the cops didn\’t bust in with their guns a-blazin\’ to scare the piss out of 8 tables of poker players and leave with $40,000 … really, in retrospect, wasn\’t it only a matter of time before someone else did?