My personal opinion is that these guys probably got drunk and damaged the bathroom the the police were called and the police asked for payment to make them go away. Call it being held up call it extortion call it what ever you want but if you believe the official Brazil side of the story I have a bridge to sell you.
One of them even paid the Brazilian authorities $11,000 to drop the charges. It was a bribe no matter how you look at it.
The Rio Police screwed-up
Once the swimmers were suspected of destroying that bathroom, the police should have arrested the American swimmers and thrown them in the Rio Jail.
The two stories are actually quite similar. Whether the restroom was already damaged (VERY likely, even if the swimmers made it worse) or not, and whether the swimmers did more damage either intentionally or because things just fell down when touched, it sounds like the same incident described from very different perspectives of self-interest.
Whether a uniformed cop held a gun to their heads and demanded money in a robbery or a uniformed security guard drew his gun and demanded payment for the damage from vandalism is really a subtle point. I’d like to see the video, but it’s easy to see how a drunken athlete could experience the Brazilian version of events and report the other version. It’s also easy to see how the classic South American robbery presented to the victim as a fine/fee could then be presented to the public under the same pretense.
We all know that no matter what actually happened, Obama’s government would side with anyone blaming Americans. Unless I see a video with the athletes doing significant damage, I will file this along with many other stories where I have no idea what really happened. However, I have no intention of visiting Brazil or any other country where a private security guard can demand money after claiming vandalism, or where a uniformed cop commits armed robbery and gets away with it. Either way, Brazil looks as bad as we already knew it was.
That's my take too, though the Brazilians admitted to pulling on gun on them when they became belligerent.
Paying off police is the norm throughout Latin America, if you're pulled over for a traffic violation in Mexico, you're more or less expected to bribe the police officer. Crooked and corrupt? Sure. That doesn't mean that the Olympian's side of the story about an unprovoked hold-up is true either or that I'm in any hurry to defend our people when they act like British soccer hooligans.