Guns drawn, cops busted down the door of a suspected south Florida drug dealer, then proceeded to kick some ass - on Wii bowling. A security cam captured some playing video games while others searched for drugs and weapons.
As you can imagine, Michael Difalco's lawyer-mans is probably looking for a way to invalidate the search on account of the game-playing. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd scoffed at that, but he's not too happy about the game playing.
That is not appropriate conduct at a search warrant. But I am less pleased with the supervision that didn't walk in and say, turn that off. That's what supervision should have done.
Instead, a sheriff's detective assigned to catalog the goods repeatedly bowled frames - and when she nailed strikes on two in a row, she raised her arms triumphantly, jumping and kicking.
Chiefs of police in three other jurisdictions forming the task force that performed the raid likewise bemoaned the bad publicity. But it could get much worse than that.
A Tampa-area defense attorney, not the one representing the alleged dealer, offers this argument for chucking out the cops' search.
The real question here is have they seized property that wasn't described in the search warrant? Clearly if they're using it, they've seized it and for totally improper purposes, because it's for entertainment. Investigations are not for entertainment.
Tampa's WFLA-TV has the raw video. I haven't viewed it all yet, but someone please tell me that they took time to make some Miis.
Polk Undercover Drug Investigators Play Wii During Raid [Tampa Bay Online, thanks Jon A.]