Shaq attack: SWAT teams with star power.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: NBA star Shaquille O'Neal assisted police in a raid, Special weapons and tactics units

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2006, a SWAT team stormed the rural Virginia home of A.J. Nuckols, his wife, and their two children. As if the shock of having his house invaded by a SWAT team weren't enough, Nuckols had a second surprise: a celebrity sighting. One of the SWAT officers who assisted in the raid was none other than NBA all-star Shaquille O'Neal.

The raid was no rehearsal: Nuckols was the innocent target of a very real "wrong door" paramilitary police raid. The police believed, inaccurately, that Nuckols was a child pornographer. In a letter to the editor of the Chatham Star Review, he described the raid: "Men ran at me, dropped into shooting position, double-handed semiautomatic pistols pointed at me, and made me put my hands against my truck. I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description."

An "honorary deputy" with the Bedford County Sheriff's Department but untrained as a SWAT officer, Shaq apparently has gone on several such raids across the country. The presence of an untrained celebrity on this type of activity is especially strange, given that the most popular police excuse for...