woot! Gambling wins again!
I always get a kick out of reading stuff like this. First, growing up and living most of my life in Los Angeles, I’m just amazed that people bother even reporting such trivial crime stats. I mean, on a Saturday night the LAPD probably gets more domestic disturbance and noise complaints than all the crime that happens in a small town in a month. The LA Times would double in size if they had a crime blotter.
Second, I always get a chuckle thinking about how police choose to spend their time enforcing the law. I mean, Thailand is a country where the cops openly take bribes to selectively enforce the law. One club has to obey the 1am curfew while right next door is another club still going strong at 2am with cops sipping Singhas at the bar. No kidding, I posted a message about online poker on a message board for expats in Thailand (asking if there were any people playing as their main source of income) and the moderator deleted the post and PM’d me to tell me they didn’t want hassled by the Thai government for having gambling related conversations on their website. Luckily the moderator was a reader so I got off with a slap on the wrist. But another guy did PM me and told me he was in a high stakes 20 baht a hand game (that’s a whopping fifty cents) and a “platoon” of police crashed his hotel room and everyone was hauled off to jail where they spent two days eating their daily rations of a bag of watery rice and “a small mouthful of preserved cabbage.” Everyone in the room (approx. 14 people) was fined 4000 baht (about $100 USD) and the cops gave the informant of cut of the fines.
Third, I needed an excuse to post the picture. 🙂
PHUKET: Statistics released by the Phuket Provincial Police again reveal gambling as the crime category with the highest number of arrests out of all made from February 1 to 21, with 249 people busted for gambling-related offenses; twenty-four of these cases involved the sale of illegal lottery tickets.
There were nine cases of attempted murder, with five arrests made. Two murders were reported during the period, with one case solved.
There were 54 reports of theft, with three people charged with snatch and run crimes. Three cars and one motorcycle were reported stolen.
Fifty-nine people were arrested on drug related charges; 28 of these for offenses related to ya bah (methamphetamine), with 1,058 pills seized. There were 20 people arrested for sniffing glue or paint thinners; eight for possession of marijuana possession; an d three for possession of krathom, an indigenous plant that acts as a stimulant.
Eighty-three people were arrested for working illegally and 29 were arrested for offenses related to prostitution.
Five people were arrested for possession of unlicensed firearms.
Brought to you by:
The Phuket Gazette
17:36 local time (GMT +7)