I HOPE NICK OLIVERI HAS A GOOD LAWYER

Last summer, former Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss bassist Nick Oliveri had his own personal Dog Day Afternoon and got into a four-hour long standoff with an LAPD SWAT team after he took his girlfriend hostage, and when the cops finally managed to get him to surrender, they found coke, meth, and a loaded rifle in his apartment. Needless to say, he was charged with two counts of possession of a controlled substance with a firearm, two counts of possession of a controlled substance, and one misdemeanor count of resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer.

So you’ll probably be pretty surprised to hear that, according to TMZ, Oliveri pleaded “not guilty” to all charges, claiming he had neither drugs nor a gun at his pad.

So, look, I obviously wasn’t there, and I have no idea what really happened, but you hear a dude got into a four-hour standoff with a SWAT team, and your mind doesn’t go right to “I bet it was all just a big misunderstanding.” Like, if Oliveri didn’t have a gun in his apartment, what would have been keeping his hostage girlfriend from walking right out the front door? Why wouldn’t the SWAT team have just broken in and arrested him? The answer can’t be “Well, he had no gun but he had a knife” or whatever, ’cause he actually let his lady leave halfway through the ordeal — in other words, without a gun or a hostage, he would have been an easy target for a fully-armed SWAT team. The fact that the standoff continued for another two hours even when he was all alone in the apartment suggests that there was SOME reason the cops couldn’t just take him down.

And assuming he did have a gun, why would the cops claim there were drugs on the premises? Is it all just a conspiracy by police officers who are bummed that Kyuss is trying to go on without Josh Homme or something? The assertion that he’s innocent just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it?

But I guess now we’ll get to see how the trial plays out. Maybe Oliveri really is innocent. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. He’s gonna be tried in Los Angeles, where no celebrity ever seems to be held accountable for any of his or her actions. I wouldn’t be shocked if Oliveri had to go spend an afternoon in rehab or something and then basically walked after that.

-AR

[via The PRP]