And the people saying the Brazilian authorities have no reason to try to make the story look fake, if it wasn’t, can’t be serious. This isn’t another mugging in Rio. It’a mugging of Olympic athletes during the national show case of the Olympics, and potentially by the police. They have a very clear motive. Doesn’t prove they did though.
‘Such and such would have no reason to do X’ is a weak form of argument in general. The athletes don’t have a clear, rational reason to have made up this particular story from whole cloth either. But that doesn’t prove they didn’t. Even apparently normal people do weird stuff sometimes.
But I don’t see much if any positive evidence the athletes made up the story. The video isn’t, nor is not having a lot of details or everything straight among them. They admit they’d been drinking.
Do you have an actual link to an actual story instead of a tweet just copy and pasted? And even if there is video of them fighting with security at a gas station, I don’t see how that means that they made up their story about being robbed.
If they did make up the story, I would be surprised if they were charged or received any punishment. Considering all the crime that happens, I wouldn’t think that reporting a false crime would rank very high usually, and I’m sure someone on the IOC or the USA team will get them out. And Ryan Lochte is already back in the US.
I don’t have an opinion on whether the story is made up or not. I was just agreeing with what others said, that if you are going to make up a fake robbery, it seems counterproductive to add a detail like that, which is sure to spark more interest on the part of the police. The “random masked guy” angle seems like a safer and simpler story, if you’re lying.
Well, there’s a way it makes sense – you get to tell it like you totally would’ve kicked the guy’s ass if he’d just started trouble, because even if you’ve been drinking you’re a fit Olympian; but when a man with a badge asks for your ID, you slowly hand him your wallet to show that you’re not fooling around, and then he rushes off and you still have your cellphone and Hey I Don’t Think That Guy Was A Cop.
Hmm, if the security guards demanded the swimmers pay for damage done to the gas station, that would explain a) why only their money was gone b) why they might want to lie and c) why the first lie to come to mind might be “fake cops robbed us”.
That would make some sense. Did they report that just their money was taken or their whole wallets? And depending on how much money was taken, I would have thought they just wouldn’t say anything, or would say that they spent too much money on drinks or food or something.
They could be lying, or the Rio officials could be lying, or some combination, I don’t know.
[QUOTE=NYTimes]
“This incident has caused so much damage to Rio’s brand abroad that I think Brazilians deserve a clear, consistent account of what happened,” said Brian Winter, vice president for policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas.
The entire episode, Winter said, “has tapped into one of Brazilians’ biggest pet peeves — gringos who treat their country like a third-rate spring break destination where you can lie to the cops and get away with it.”
If they did lie and drunkenly attack property at a gas station, then that is obviously wrong and bad, but it is strange to me that the police are evidently investigating this much harder than other crimes going on.
The extradition treaty between the US and Brazil [link — WARNING: PDF] has a clause for perjury. I’m not sure if lying to the police in an official investigation qualifies (see Item 22 under Article II). I didn’t see anything else on the list that would come close.
ETA: Actually, reading further, it sounds like even the crime of perjury would be eligible for extradition ONLY if the crime would be illegible for a year or more of imprisonment in BOTH the US and Brazil. So it seems incredibly unlikely.
