Right in my backyard:

An undercover police investigation led to the shooting and killing of a Fairfax County resident — and now the officer who pulled the trigger is under investigation.

Thirty-seven-year-old Salvatore Culosi died Tuesday night after being inadvertently struck in the upper body by a Fairfax County police officer. Police are offering condolences to the family.

Police say the officer’s gun went off while detectives were attempting to serve a warrant at a home on Cavalier Landing Court as part of an investigation into an illegal gambling operation.

The imporant questions:

1) Why do Fairfax police have their guns drawn while serving a gambling warrant?

2) Is there no other crime in the area that we need to spend taxpayer resources, officer labor, and bullets on efforts to prevent people from spending their own money on games of chance?

3) What’s William Bennett’s take on this? Mixed feelings, I’ll bet. You’ve got your militarized moralism on the one hand, which Bennett adores (Bennett has called for both the suspension of habeas coprus for, and the public beheading of, drug dealers). But you’ve got that whole gambling jones on the other.

This isn’t the first time this has happened in Virginia. A few years ago, the Virginia Beach police department sent a SWAT team to break up a suspected gambling operation at a country club. The sting ended with the death of a security guard, who by all indications thought the place was being robbed (it had been robbed just a few months earlier). The SWAT team knocked on the window to the car where he was stationed, then shot him when they thought he was reaching for a gun. His last words were, “I was reading a book. Why did you shoot me?”

There were also temporary charges against the owner of the club for firing a gun at the raiding SWAT team. The charges were dropped, after prosecutors determined that the guy had justifiably believed his property was under attack.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Lottery would like you to know that the Lotto South is up to $2.5 million. And the Mega Millions is over $50 million. Get your tickets today!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 8:29 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling and Poker, Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.