The police departments of Polk County, Auburndale, Lakeland, and Winter Haven in Florida spent nearly a year trying to bust convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco. When the bust went down on March 6 of this year, Difalco was caught with crystal meth, marijuana, illegal weapons, and over $30,000 worth of stolen property. Unfortunately for embarrassed police officials, Difalco also had a Nintendo Wii and Wii Sports, and the raiding officers just couldn’t resist sneaking in an hour or two of Wii Bowling while supposedly on the job. Now because of their love of video games, thousands of hours of investigative work might have been compromised as the Wii gaming session might constitute an illegal seizure of property.
Screwing around on the job is one thing. Cops have a hard job, especially the sort of officers that raid drug dealer mansions and put themselves at risk on a daily basis in those sort of pressure-packed situations. But giving a career criminal a potential way to squeak out of some serious felony convictions because you wanted to play some Nintendo is something else entirely. And to get caught on video doing it is just sloppy!
You’re in his house, you have a search warrant for drug-related stuff; how is packing up the computer and security system tapes not job #1? That should’ve been one of the first things they packed up! The order should be: drugs, guns, video evidence of guy breaking the law, and then everything else. You can play Wii in the station afterwards.
Tags: Auburndale, Polk County, Michael Difalco, Florida, police, drug busts, cops play Wii during drug bust, Nintendo Wii, Wii Sports, unusual videos, unusual crimes
