The Mobile Press Register issued a scathing rebuke against Governor Riley and Mobile DA (and anti-illegal gambling task force commander) John Tyson over the failed raids last week of Country Crossing and Victoryland. I especially liked this line;
If they had been hunting down bomb-toting terrorists instead of trying to shut down electronic bingo machines, the show of force might have made sense. As it was, the attempted raids of Country Crossing near Dothan and VictoryLand in Shorter looked like an abuse of power more suited to a police state than the state of Alabama.
And this one;
Their justification for the massive raids is that electronic bingo gambling is illegal. So is entering and trying to confiscate property without a search warrant.
I've never seen the Press Register say anything negative about Riley. Nor have I ever seen them use the words Police State.
I can't help but be reminded of the failed drug war and the parallels with this issue of bingo/gambling. The 'crime' of gambling is victimless. In the drug war the police show up at 3 am with a hundred armed men in balaclavas, break in doors, throw flash bang grenades and do not identify themselves.....all over a joint or two. The money being wasted on that failed policy is in the hundreds of millions a year just for Alabama. Talk about police state........
