Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Shaq, feds jackboot innocent family
From Chatham Star Tribune and MetaFilter via The Agitator October 23, 2006: "Extremely weird botched raid in Bedford County, Virginia, in which a family was terrorized at gunpoint by a raiding SWAT team on an Internet child porn raid. As it turns out, the special anti-child porn police unit, called the"Blue Ridge Thunder," made a mistake while tracing the IP address, and sent the raid team to the wrong home. Here's the raid victim's letter to the editor.
That all would be strange enough. But it gets weirder. If you read through this MetaFilter thread, it appears that of all people, NBA star Shaquille O'Neal participated in this raid -- as a police officer. One MeFi poster who lives in the area claims to have seen O'Neal. Another says O'Neal's presence on the raid was confirmed in the local newspaper -- which unfortunately doesn't make its articles available online. This press release from the Roanoke district of the U.S. Marshals Service --which assists the Blue Ridge Thunder task force in executing raids -- seems to confirm that Shaq is indeed a reserve member of the force.
[...] ----- .....---
.....| Posted at 11:59 | PERMA-LINK |
|