NICK OLIVERI ON HIS FOUR HOUR STAND-OFF WITH A SWAT TEAM: “I DIDN’T THINK YOU HAVE TO OPEN THE DOOR.”
Nick Oliveri has quit Kyuss Lives!, which explains why he wasn’t named in the recent lawsuit filed by ex-Kyuss members Josh Homme and Scott Reeder. But I don’t really give a shit and I suspect that neither do you because the entire concept of having Kyuss without Homme was idiotic in the first place.
What I do give a shit about are Oliveri’s ongoing legal woes: following a four hour stand-off with an LAPD SWAT team last year, for at least half of which time he allegedly held his girlfriend hostage, Oliveri has pleaded not guilty to charges including possession of a controlled substance with a firearm resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer. Which really does not make a lot of sense. Because only in terrible action comedies do dudes with giant guns and body armor show up at your house due to some big misunderstanding.
So now Oliveri has given an interview to Antiquiet in which he attempts to explain his side of the story:
“The thing is that I screwed up because I didn’t… When the police came to my house, which nobody in my house called, a friend of ours came over and we didn’t open the door for her. And she called the police — which is absurd.
“So it’s a bad scene right now, it’s a bad scene, and I don’t even know how I’m supposed to say that… But basically at the end of the day I screwed up cause I didn’t open the door. I was like ‘I’m not going to open, I don’t have to open the door.’ I didn’t think you have to open the door… [laughs] You have to open the door. A robot came and knocked down my door. [laughs]
“And I don’t mean to laugh because it was a bad scene but uhh, I just look at it like I pay a lot of rent. I want to be the king of my castle man, I want to be the king of my castle. I want to have the final say like when I come in and when I can go and who comes in and who doesn’t.”
Oliveri then admits he keeps a loaded gun at his pad for protection, and that he had a little bit of drugs in one of the bags he’d brought home from tour.
Sooo… this all sounds re-god-damn-diculous to me. Some friend called the cops and a fucking SWAT team showed up and neither Oliveri nor his lady friend were like “Hey, we don’t have to let them in but maybe we should try to go outside and explain what’s happening, or at least call a lawyer or something?” And when his girlfriend finally did get out of the apartment two hours into this whole affair, why didn’t she attempt to explain to the cops what was going on? I mean it’s entirely possible that Oliveri and his woman are just really, really dumb, but that’s the only explanation for this story that I would possibly believe. And even then, I’d imagine that dumb people would handle having men with machine guns outside their door in a different manner.
Whatever the case may be, I imagine what will happen is that Oliveri’s lawyer will try to get the jury to believe that the police can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the gun and the drugs had anything to do with anything, so that, worst case scenario, Oliveri is found guilty of one of his lesser charges and acquitted of everything else. And since that jury will be made of people from Los Angeles, he may actually succeed! After all, they’ve bought into even crappier alibis in the past.
-AR
[via Metal Injection]
