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Editorials

ON THE FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA OZZY POLICE STING

 Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 10:41am by

The Internet chat boards are aflutter with the recent news of a police sting in Fargo, North Dakota that used a phony pre-show party to the Ozzy Osbourne concert at the Fargodome to lure and arrest locals with outstanding warrants. The Fargo police department sent out 500 letters to people with outstanding warrants, inviting them to a phony party which included an offer of two free tickets to the show. More than 30 people showed up and were arrested. They were being sought on charges ranging from delinquent child support payments to traffic and drug fines. Watch a local news recap of the story, below.

Calls of “entrapment” are unfounded; entrapment requires luring the suspect to actually commit a crime, when in this case the suspects had already committed crimes and had warrants out for their arrest. Ozzy is of course outraged, and said in a statement that the sting tarnished his reputation by implying his concerts attract criminals.

The big elephant in the room is obviously that fans of metal aren’t the brightest; we at MetalSucks resent this stereotype and it’s part of the reason we started this website. It’s hard to imagine our commenters falling for this kind of scheme (Korn4Life excluded). But all stereotypes are based on at least a kernel of truth, and in this case couldn’t it be said that anyone stupid enough to fall for such a scam deserves what they had coming to them? I mean let’s be honest, it’s hard to imagine 30 out of 500 fans of, say, Arcade Fire falling for this kind of shenanigan (although if there was a God, 500 out of 500 Arcade Fire fans would fall for it, ridding this earth of their pretentious existence).

What do you think?

-VN

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/mIwVHqMeFcs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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  • Sammy

    Too many years ago I used to not worry about leaving those metal band cassettes in my car in plain sight. Then my friend reminded me that the most likely person to actually break into my car was someone with my taste in music.

  • Sammy

    Gotta love how these blog sites’ automatic advertising bots make links based on headlines. Case in point, this entry is advertising a book by William H. Macy (“Fargo”) and there’s another Amazon advert for a book by Donna Fargo.

  • Karel (Belgium)

    Every (sub)culture will have it’s own amount of complete idiots. I think 6 % is not that bad. And maybe some of the people that turned up weren’t actually big metalheads, as Ozzyshows may attract non-metalfans too. It’s time to set up a little experiment, and find out how many punks or hardcore-kids would show up :).

  • Sammy

    I think the contributors to this site might be the exception to the rule. Just read the comments at Blabbermouth.

  • Seth

    Is it really that unlikely that someone who cant afford, or chooses not to make, his child support payments would be excited at the prospect of FREE anything? Still, I bet if the cops claimed to be trojan and offered free condoms they wouldnt show–It’s all about knowing your market, and these cops clearly saw lots of Ozzy shirts when they arrested this grand group of goons. Next up, clear the streets of sex offenders by offering a free “Hannah Montana” meet and greet.

  • http://www.thedeciblog.com nick

    I don’t support any legal action that could put more money into Sharon’s pockets

  • http://dragonlady474.wordpress.com dragonlady474

    I think it’s awesome. They rounded them up in a way that saved time, manpower, and taxpayers the cost of having the police drive around looking for them. The people had warrants for a reason. And as for Ozzy, I love his music and everything, but the more I learn about him, the less I like him (and his gold digger wife) as a person.