Atlantic City and the Abrams
Report
Robert Abrams favored legalized casino gambling when he became Attorney General of the State of New York in January 1979. Casinos already had come to Atlantic City, and he was favorably impressed. Controversial as the casinos might be, they were generating significant tax revenue for the state and municipality that had sanctioned them. They were responsible for the apparent rejuvenation of a once-popular tourist haven that enjoyed a glorious past and faced a dubious future.
New York State needs additional revenue as much as other states, and Abrams was well aware of the heavy political responsibility he and other incumbents bore to find a solution. The entire nation knew of the financial roller coaster traditionally ridden by New York City, and many Big Apple citizens felt legalizing casinos, even in a limited area somewhere in Manhattan, could provide a bailout source capable of solving the city's fiscal problems for years to come. Some Christians were adopting a hands-off attitude, rationalizing that gamblers
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would gamble whether the rest of society liked it or not, and why not get all that tax money for the state and relieve the overburdened taxpayer?
But Abrams reasoned that revenue for the city and the state must not be the only consideration. He knew other factors must be weighed and other areas explored before the Empire State could consider whether or not casinos would be in its best interest. So he began asking questions and listening to a mind-boggling mixture of answers.
Enthusiasm Wanes with a Closer Look
"I must admit that my enthusiasm began to diminish with closer scrutiny of the issue from the unique perspective of my new office," the Attorney General wrote.1 To assemble information that would assist the State Legislature in reaching a decision about casinos, Abrams assigned staff members to conduct an intensive study of the advantages and disadvantages of casino operations in both Nevada and New Jersey. Meanwhile, Governor Hugh Carey had appointed a Casino Gambling Panel to conduct an inquiry for the state, and Mayor Edward Koch had commissioned John F. Keenan to submit to the city a report on casino gambling. Information from both these studies also was made available to the Attorney General.
For six months, Abrams and his staff searched myriads of records and files for facts and statistics. They conducted lengthy interviews with those who favored casinos and with those who opposed them. They were looking for facts, not opinions or passions. Out of this investigation Abrams experienced a growing concern.
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He invited Attorneys General from several northeastern states to visit Atlantic City casinos with him and to interview law enforcement officials in this newly created arena.
"As a result," the New York Attorney General writes in a landmark anticasino document known as the Report in Opposition to Legalized Casino Gambling in New York State (Abrams Report), "I became increasingly well acquainted with the numerous facets of this complicated issue."2
One Man's Bonanza; Another Man's Agony
And complicated it is, because what is perceived as one man's bonanza can just as easily emerge as another man's agony. Strong opinions are encountered on both sides, and the emotional issues involved make it difficult for some opinion holders to be objective. The huge sums of money at stake for the gambling industry suggest that the rational basis for its claims, ethically and pragmatically, at best should be viewed as shifting sand.
Abrams' disenchantment with casinos as a solution to the state's financial dilemma appears to have been slow, cautious and, in a sense, reluctant. He wanted to find a workable solution to New York's budgetary problems as much as anyone. Yet, having gone to considerable pains to search out available facts and implications, he was unable to deny the reality of his findings.
Crime, Criminals and Corruption
Revelations in 1980 of a myriad of problems associated
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with New Jersey's casino gambling industry — in particular, the soaring rate of casino-related crimes in Atlantic City and recurring allegations of organized crime infiltration and influence peddling at federal, state and local levels — were, for me, the final straw," Abrams' report explains. Then he summarizes his conclusions with this categorical statement: "I am now persuaded that casino gambling in New York State would not be in the public interest."
"Specifically," Abrams writes, "I believe that the financial and economic benefits to be derived from passage of any of the eight resolutions to legalize casino gambling now before the Legislature are outweighed by the added crime and the corrosive and disruptive effects that legalized casino gambling is likely to have on communities where casinos are located and on the people and institutions of our state."3
The Abrams Report lists three major factors the Attorney General credits with reversing his opinion about the acceptability of casino gambling:
1. The evidence from Nevada and Atlantic City that conclusively indicates, according to investigators, legalized casino gambling will be accompanied by a debilitating upsurge of crime in the areas where the casinos will be located.
2. Gambling casinos are considered a magnet for organized crime.
3. Legalized casino gambling poses a danger to the integrity and credibility of government institutions and public officials
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The single-spaced, 24-page Abrams Report carefully documents these three caveats. In public records readily accessible in Atlantic City and Trenton, as well as in the casino oases in Nevada, considerable justification for Abrams' concerns can be found. His pessimistic prognosis seems confirmed by what he terms "irrefutable evidence of the enormous crime problems in the two areas of the United States where casino gambling has been legalized: Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey."4
Nevada: Undisputed Leader in Crime
Nevada has had more than half a century to learn to derive all available benefits from casino gambling. That historically adventuresome frontier state legalized all forms of gambling in 1931. But the gains have been offset by significant losses. During those 50-plus years, according to the Abrams Report, Nevada has become undisputed leader in crime statistics in the United States. In Las Vegas alone, 36,000 serious crimes are recorded each year, and the figure continues to rise. With approximately 100 murders annually, Las Vegas has the highest per capita crime rate of any city in our nation.
"There are 10,000 prostitutes active (in Las Vegas)," U.S. News and World Report noted in 1981.5 That number equals one out of every nine women in Las Vegas between the ages of 15 and 39 — though those age limits for inclusion in "the world's oldest profession" are admittedly arbitrary! Law enforcement officials generally agree that the correlation between prostitution and casinos is easily recognizable.
Nevada, by the way, is the only state in the nation that has
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de-criminalized prostitution. "People are going to do it anyway," the electorate has reasoned. A bumper sticker in keeping with current trends and uniquely appropriate to that avant-garde state might read, "Nevadans do it legally!"
A Staggering Crime Wave
The most convincing statistics suggesting a direct cause-and-effect link between casinos and local crime come from Atlantic City. The first casino, Resorts International, opened there in May 1978. Shortly after that historic event, the city began to experience what the Atlantic City Press described as "a staggering crime wave in the wake of casino gambling."6 During 1977, before the opening of Resorts International, Atlantic City's total crime index stood at 4,391. In 1978 it rose to 5,738, and by 1980, with six casinos in operation, the crime rate had skyrocketed to 11,899.
That's a 170 percent increase.
In contrast, during the same three-year period the overall crime rate in all of New Jersey increased by only 26 percent — with the Atlantic City statistics factored in as the chief cause of the increase.
Across the Spectrum from Muggings to Murder
According to the official Uniform Crime Reports of the New Jersey State Police, these figures reflect increases in murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft. That provides
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a well-rounded picture of violent acts against the lives, safety and well-being of New Jersey's citizens and the city's guests. A 1986 study by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded that the introduction of casinos into Atlantic City "was paralleled by a significant increase in criminal activity."7
The skyrocketing of pickpocket complaints is a good example of problems created by the sheer mass of humanity crowding Atlantic City. During the new gambling mecca's formative years from 1977 to 1980, such complaints soared from 15 to 544!
Given the unique circumstances, that particular statistic should be no surprise. When the vulnerable citizen presumably is on his way to the casino to lose it all anyway — or, is homeward bound with easy money gained by merely picking a lucky number or drawing the right card — an unscrupulous individual with sticky fingers would experience few, if any, scruples against relieving him of his poke. "Street thugs — drawn to the people and the money — saturate the avenues leading to the casinos and the public parking areas," reported the Atlantic City Press in 1980. "Visitors unfamiliar with the city wander a block or two off the beaten path and are attacked."8
In another report, the newspaper warned, "People are getting mugged almost as soon as they get off the bus at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal. Many of those who get safely through the terminal become victims of crime on their way to the casinos."9 These are statements of newspapers intent upon the propagating of objective truth, not of religious or moralistic alliances desperate for arguments against a foe predetermined to be culpable.
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Casinos Create a Poisoned Atmosphere
Most of Atlantic City's street crime appears to be imported. It is brought into the city along with the games. As one police official explained it, "Crime just sort of goes with the territory — it's part of the atmosphere casinos create." Atlantic City police say 95 percent of those arrested for crimes against persons or charged with car theft are out-of-towners.
Narcotics deals reportedly are made routinely on the busiest of Atlantic City street corners in broad daylight. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, anything can be purchased along certain streets near the Boardwalk, "from heroin to cocaine, methamphetamine to stolen cars and television sets."10 One local police official described the social impact on the citizens of Atlantic City as "devastating."
A Stockton State College study of casino-related problems of Atlantic City's senior citizens disclosed that elderly residents of the area are prime targets for criminal attacks in their homes as well as on the streets. In the South Inlet section, Jewish senior citizens have been attacked on Friday evenings while on their way to their synagogues — indeed, even robbed inside their place of worship.
"Alienated from the Life of God"
That kind of environment may be acceptable to worldlings, but it is foreign and unacceptable to Christians. The redeemed are to "walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God
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through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart . . . past feeling . . . given . . . over unto lasciviousness . . . uncleanness with greediness" (Eph. 4:17-19).
The erstwhile thief is admonished to "steal no more . . . working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have something to give to him that needeth" (v.28). We are warned that no "covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God" (Eph. 5:5). Gambling casinos tend to create their own environment, with covetousness, greed and worship of the Goddess of Chance as the central theme.
A Desert of Urban Blight
Robert Alsop, respected Wall Street Journal writer, visited Atlantic City and wrote that the casinos are "lush oases in a desert of urban blight." He concluded his story with the statement, "The deterioration is like a cancer."11 That cancer is metastasizing rapidly, reaching deeper and deeper into the political body of America.
The Casino Control Commission reports that more than 50,000 juveniles attempt to get into Atlantic City casinos during summer vacation months, and that at least 10,000 of them succeed in reaching the gaming tables. A student counselor at Atlantic City High School told the State Assembly's Institutions Committee that an increasing number of students play hooky to gamble at the city's casinos. He claims students as young as 14 manage to gain admittance — in spite of required ID checks — and many leave their lunch money in the slot machines.
In early years arson figured prominently in Atlantic City's
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casino-related proliferation of criminal activity. Presumably because the now-valuable land was coveted by speculators for casino development, several once-proud residential districts of the city were ravaged by fires of suspicious origin — peaking at nearly 50 alarms each month until most of the choice property was gone. Finally the incidence of arson returned to normal, since there is little more that can profitably be burned.
If these horror stories have the ring of overkill on the part of forces hostile to casino gambling, remember that most of these facts surfaced through a study authorized and supervised by the chief law enforcement executive of the State of New York, a man with no axe to grind. Other allegations are gleaned from reports by responsible journalists seeking to inform their readers of the facts.
The Greed Money Generates
Proponents of legalized casinos almost invariably seek to focus our attention on mind-boggling sums of money and on the greed money generates. Yet the fact is that few, if any, benefits are produced by the casino industry beyond the dazzling megabucks potential they claim to represent: jobs, tax money, better schools, better health care and a prosperity shared by all. At best, these alleged benefits are the broken promises of a deceptive crystal ball; at worst, they are deliberately and feloniously designed to mislead a greedy and gullible public into providing unscrupulous entrepeneurs with an incredible financial bonanza.
Results from Atlantic City's all-or-nothing fling with gambling still are inconclusive, but one side of the issue is
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shockingly clear: a staggering amount of money can be siphoned from the pockets of America's gamblers via proven formulas developed by the casino industry. "What remains unclear," cautions an editorial in the Asbury Park Press, "is how the unprecedented casino revenues . . . can be used to fuel redevelopment of a dreary city that still looks a lot like someone forgot to tell it what's going on."12
Faced with a 2,000 percent increase in demand for its services because of the increase in crime since the legalization of casino gambling, Atlantic City's police department, according to the Abrams Report, has been unable to cope with the problem. State officials and newspaper editorial writers alike have leveled charges of poor police administration and departmental turmoil. Hints of bribery and other corruption surface frequently. Abrams' investigators brought to light reports of reluctance on the part of state police to share with city police sensitive information regarding gambling and drugs. State law enforcement people blamed that on what they termed suspicious relationships between local police officials and Atlantic City numbers rackets kingpins.
An Atmosphere of Suspicion
This atmosphere of suspicion could be at least a contributing reason many of the city's most experienced police officers have resigned their positions to accept more lucrative security posts with the casinos. That attrition, too, is a troublesome factor that helps multiply law enforcement budget and efficiency problems in Atlantic City.
"The actual Atlantic City and Nevada experiences have
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conclusively demonstrated to me," Attorney General Abrams writes, "that legalized casino gambling, by its very nature, creates an environment in which crimes of all types will flourish . . . I believe it is too high a price [for New York State] to pay for the economic and financial benefits of casino gambling."13
Particularly unsettling are the Abrams Report's statements concerning the inevitability of organized crime's involvement in the cash-producing and cash-laundering potential of casinos.
"There has existed and continues to exist an incestuous relationship between the casino gambling industry and organized crime," Abrams writes. "It is an historic and deep-seated union, nurtured by the vast amounts of money involved in casino gambling and by the extraordinary opportunities which casinos, and the environments in which they flourish, offer for organized groups to engage in a wide range of illegal and lucrative activities."14
Al Capone Never Had It So Good
The almost unbelievable amounts of money generated by casinos today exceed by far anything Al Capone could have dreamed of in the heyday of his Chicago booze monopoly. The annual "gross win" of Atlantic City casinos already had reached $623 million in 1980. By the next year, the amount exceeded $1 billion.
While "gross win" is a term accepted in the industry, it is just as accurate — and a trifle more sobering — to refer to those megabucks as only part of the "gross gambler loss." Casinos are not allowed to print money or import it from outer space to be handed over to occasional
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jubilant winners, though it may appear that way occasionally on the gaming floor. Whatever the house awards in prizes — overshadowed by the staggering amounts it posts as profits — must come from the pockets of disappointed players who lose more than they win.
The "gross gambler loss" in 1985 was more than $2 billion. That means patrons of Atlantic City's casinos leave behind an average of $5.5 million each day — and that's in addition to what they spend for lodging, meals, travel and whatever personal indulgences may seem desirable.
"The size, nature and amounts of money generated and spent by the casinos draws the criminal toward the industry," says G. Michael Brown, director of New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement. "It also makes the casinos more vulnerable to illicit schemes and more susceptible to extortion plots."15 Casinos are not just faceless, soulless fun-and-game machines; they are business enterprises owned by corruptible human investors who emphatically are in it for the money.
The Pressures and Tensions of the Industry
As the man primarily responsible for law enforcement and policy implementation when casinos first came to Atlantic City, Brown understands the enormous economic pressures imposed upon these businessmen who must — according to a Resorts International vice president — gross half a million dollars each day from all casino-related sources in order to break even. Brown knows the intimidating power that unions can wield over such an industry through threats of strikes by a broad
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spectrum of hotel and casino workers. These sources of possible tension range from croupiers to bellboys to bartenders to garbage collectors.
Brown also is aware of Atlantic City's unsavory past during mobster Angelo Bruno's almost undisputed reign for a decade or more over the area's lucrative vice enterprises. He witnessed the deterioration of the gang's control during the underworld violence of 1980 and 1981, when competing hoodlums murdered five members of the Bruno family in an effort to muscle into their territory.
All That Goes with the High-rolling Life
Visitors to gaming cities like Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City are not searching exclusively for recreational gambling opportunities. Many are looking also for the goods and services that are identified historically with the high-rolling life: drugs, bookmaking, loan-sharking and prostitution. Who is better qualified or more pleased to furnish these lucrative services than the unscrupulous organized crime figures homing in on those megabucks?
Criminals are strongly motivated to attach themselves to the casino industry, and man-made devices to block them are rarely effective. "The Family" accomplishes this not only through peripheral ancillary services, loan-sharking and money-laundering schemes but also through hidden ownership and movement into top management posts and key gaming positions.
Skimming Methods in Casinos
True to it's watchdog instinct, the Internal Revenue Service
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conducted its own investigation into what it terms "Casino Unreported Income" and found five major categories where suspected skimming of profits takes place. These are (1) kickbacks to owners, (2) fictitious operating expenses actually pocketed by managers or owners, (3) fictitious gaming losses similarly misappropriated, (4) fictitious cash advances and (5) manipulation of accounts receivable. The IRS report states that "False billing, gaming losses and cash advances have long been used as skimming methods in Nevada casinos."
Former New Jersey Attorney General John Degnan testified before a committee of his state's legislature on March 3, 1980, and described vividly how he viewed the involvement of organized crime in Atlantic City. He declined to comment when he was pressed to reveal specific evidence of infiltration of casinos by known criminals, but proceeded to ask and answer the questions he felt should be of primary concern to committee members:
"But is organized crime present in Atlantic City? Yes. Is it there in greater force than it was before casinos were passed? Yes. Are they trying to buy liquor licenses? Yes. Are they trying to get ancillary industries? Yes. Is there an increase in prostitution? Yes."16
Degnan added that loan-sharking and bookmaking have increased sharply since the first casino opened in Atlantic City, and he blamed that on organized crime. Later, he told the Eastern States Attorneys General Conference in Newport, Rhode Island, that organized crime connections have been traced to real estate transactions in Atlantic City and also in the infiltration of casino-related unions.
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Organized Crime Can't Be Filtered Out
It is a naive assumption that regulatory procedures can filter out or prevent the involvement of organized crime. Those charged with implementing the precautionary codes do not always invoke the measures prescribed. Three Atlantic City casinos were licensed by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, despite opposition from the office of the state's Attorney General. The opposition was based on alleged business transactions by the applicants with reputed organized crime figures, but the commissioners were unconvinced that this was grounds for a denial of the license.
The Abrams Report terms "illuminating" the case of Bally's Park Place Casino, which received its license on December 29, 1980, along with a ruling that its founder and chief executive, William T. O'Donnell, was not qualified to hold a license. The commission based its objection on O'Donnell's history of association with reputed organized crime figures and on his alleged participation in a scheme to bribe Kentucky legislators in 1968.
O'Donnell testified before the commission that "some [of his] past associations have been dubious," but he characterized these as "mistakes in judgment" and requested the commission to reconsider. In this case, it declined.17
Substituting a "Front" for the Banished Corporation
The Attorney General argued that the company's association with criminals was so flagrant that the Bally
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organization — whoever might be its titular head — should not even be allowed to sell slot machines in New Jersey. A history of subterfuge was reviewed in support of the objection. In 1975, the Nevada Gaming Commission had ordered Bally to sever all ties with a vending machine distributor who had underworld connections. In compliance, according to the Abrams Report, Bally merely substituted another company which was allegedly a front for the same disreputable organization.
When the Nevada Commission ordered Bally on another occasion to disassociate itself from a Louisiana gaming machine distributor who had been convicted in federal court on racketeering charges, Bally is reported by Abrams to have transferred its business to another partnership made up of the convicted man's five children.
Infiltrating Casino Unions
At the time the Abrams Report was published, law enforcement agencies had grown fearful that mobsters would gain control of the gaming industry by infiltrating the casino unions. They were closely monitoring an effort by the Teamsters Union to organize dealers from the casinos' poker tables. They also reported a struggle among unions with underworld ties to organize the casinos' security personnel. Casino Police and Security Officers, Local 2, with headquarters on Long Island — allegedly affiliated with New York's notorious Gambino family — had gathered enough signatures to mandate elections at three casinos in Atlantic City.
The office of the Atlantic County Prosecutor is quoted in a New York Times story as saying, "Based on
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what we have seen, the most likely target for monopolistic control by organized crime of a significant segment of the casino economy would be through these unions."18
That fear may be well founded. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded in August 1984 that organized crime wields "substantial influence" over the 400,000-member Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU). After a three-year probe, the subcommittee reported that organized crime's control is particularly strong in the huge locals in America's gambling meccas. "Numerous officers and employees have documented ties to organized crime figures, and there is little doubt that Local 54 (Atlantic City) is now controlled, and Locals 226 (Las Vegas) and 30 (San Diego) have been influenced in the past by organized crime interests," the panel reported.19
Payroll Padding and Cronyism
Mismanagement of the enormous sums of money that accumulate in union benefit funds particularly intrigued the Senate's investigators. "The membership has been cheated by an international union payroll padded with associates, relatives and cronies of top HEREIU officers and persons associated with organized crime," the report reads.
Union president Edward T. Hanley and six other union officials "seriously obstructed" the work of the subcommittee by refusing to answer questions while invoking their constitutional rights against self-incrimination, the panel charged.
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In a written response to the allegations, HEREIU officials denied any connection with organized crime and charged that the panel's probe "was not a fair and impartial inquiry into the union's operation." It would have been surprising, indeed, had the HEREIU leaders owned up to the charges and calmly accepted the consequences.20
The union branded the work of the Senate investigators "a premeditated effort on the part of the subcommittee to destroy the reputation and credibility of the union and its officers." HEREIU said that for the subcommittee to criticize its officials for invoking the Fifth Amendment "is to criticize the Constitution itself." It claims investigators "relied upon unauthorized [Justice Department] leaks . . . innuendo . . . convicted felons, admitted perjurers, psychopathic liars and thoroughly discredited witnesses."
As some astute observer of human nature once put it, "A strong offense is the best defense!"
The State's Limited Power to Regulate
New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement has attempted to disqualify at least one union because of suspected associations with organized crime figures. Local law enforcement people have been reluctant to pursue this strategy vigorously, however, because they fear they may find they have only limited powers to interfere in the affairs of labor unions. Because the unions are regulated by the United States Labor Department, there is room for doubt that they can be made subject to sanctions by the state's regulatory agencies. Thus the observation of a Trenton times editorial that,
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"The mob has targeted the unions as the easiest point of entry into the Atlantic City casino industry."21
Lt. Col. Justin J. Dintino was Chairman of a New Jersey ad hoc committee assigned to seek possible organized crime links through casino credit applications and complimentary services records. He has testified that casinos welcome big-time criminals as gaming customers because they are good for business in two important ways: the mobsters often are high rollers themselves, and more than that they have good connections that lure other desirable customers to the tables.
Dintino has identified four potentially dangerous practices of the casinos that make them vulnerable to known criminals:
1. Each of the city's nine casinos has routinely extended credit and provided complimentary services — such as free rooms, meals or other more intimate services — to known organized crime figures and their associates.
2. By obtaining easy credit at the casinos, mobsters have been able to turn that credit into immediate cash, which they can then use to finance loan-sharking, narcotics trafficking and other criminal activities.
3. Reputed crime boss Nicodemus "Little Nicky" Scarfo and other organized crime figures allegedly have received VIP "comps" from several casinos without going near the gaming tables.
4. Joseph Pedula, a Bruno crime family associate indicted in New York for the gang-style execution of Salvatore Testa and described by
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Dintino's investigators as a "paid contract killer," was allowed to deposit more than half a million dollars in cash in a private account with Resorts International Hotel and Casino — an account that enabled him to deposit or withdraw cash in large sums at the gaming tables as a privileged client.22
As Dintino points out, the establishing of private accounts makes it possible for criminals to launder illicitly obtained money. "If you rob a bank and feel like the money is hot," he writes, "what better way to launder it than put it up as front money at a casino. When you come back several days later to get it, you won't get back the same money you came in with."23
The Exclusion List Is No Deterrent
The State of New Jersey does publish an exclusion list, which identifies known crime figures and presumably prohibits them from entering casinos. Few officials consider the list an effective deterrent, however. According to Dintino, the list does not, in reality, prevent mobsters from showing up regularly on the casinos' floors. His committee identified numerous known organized crime figures who routinely patronize casinos in Atlantic City as well as in Nevada. After a random sampling of more than a half-million casino credit and "comps" records, the committee identified 37 known racketeers and their associates who were allowed credit by the casinos, and who received complimentary services because of their value as "high rollers."
In the spring of 1980, revelations of influence peddling
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and official corruption in New Jersey rudely awakened the public to the extraordinary power of the casino industry to contaminate the political process and to influence government at all levels. In one Abscam incident, the vice chairman of New Jersey's prime regulating and licensing body, the Casino Control Commission, resigned after disclosure by federal authorities that he had not reported a $100,000 bribe offer. Allegedly, he was promised that sum in cash if he helped a fake Arab organization purchase land to build and operate a casino.
The Abrams Report documents several similar incidents which illustrate convincingly the lamentable truth that the megabucks of the gaming industry too often can control the very regulatory process designed to keep it in line.
When Everyone Has His Price
The cynical observation that "everyone has his price" may not always be true in terms of cold cash, but organized crime knows other means of persuasion. Where bribes fail, the hoodlums know alternative ways to make their illicit schemes prosper. A public official who cannot be purchased for $100,000 — or even for a million — might consent to almost anything in the face of a hint that his wife might be disfigured by acid or that his children might not make it home safely from school.
"There's no telling any more who is really regulating whom," complains an editorial in the New York Times. "The casinos simply have too much money to make and spend (for us) to avoid the legal corruption of government."24
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The Abrams Report points out that "more than 50 local officials and government employees in Atlantic City own stock in casino gambling companies, or have been involved in the purchase or sale of property for casino use, or have other financial links to the casino gambling industry. These include the police chief, a city commissioner who once was deputy police chief and the City Commissioner for Public Safety.
Five of the nine members of the Atlantic City's Planning Board have been identified by the Abrams Report as having either invested in or had property or financial dealings with the casino industry. Members of the two boards responsible for key zoning decisions allegedly have routinely been involved in land deals with the casinos and have personally benefitted from casino-related transactions approved by their own boards. With this kind of data on record, the confidence of the public in the regulatory boards established to protect its rights sinks to a discouragingly low ebb.
Everyone Gets Part of the Action
Dozens of Atlantic City employees, including police officers, housing commissioners, budget personnel and deputy mayors, have flocked to the employ of the casinos. The Director of the Casino Hotel Association, according to the Abrams Report, once was the Director of Atlantic City's Housing and Urban Renewal Authority. In that position of public trust, he helped negotiate the sale of two urban renewal tracts to casinos. The Director of the city's Planning Board suggested to a casino development corporation how it could bypass requirements of the city's master plan prohibiting use of a particular
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site for casino development — then went to work for the company. Several former state legislators with connections and influence at the highest levels of government have been hired by the casino industry for a variety of responsible and well-paying positions.
"The casino industry's seductive nature and efforts to buy influence are further demonstrated," insists the Abrams Report, "by the fact that influential state and local officials throughout New Jersey have been offered special privileges and courtesies by the casinos in Atlantic City. This led former Attorney General Degnan to label the industry as 'inherently dangerous because of its propensity to curry official favor.' The Chairman of New Jersey's Joint Legislative Committee on Ethical Standards has commented: 'Is this whole industry going to continue wheeling and dealing in politics? . . . it is a disturbing pattern, and not what the public agreed to when it voted to try casino gambling.' "25
What Do People Expect from Casinos?
What, in fact does the public agree to when it votes to "try casino gambling"? Deborah L. Choban of Miami Beach, Florida, eloquently stated the rationale of those determined to "save" her financially troubled community when she authored this statement for the "Readers' Forum" page of the Miami Herald.
"To restore Miami Beach to what it once was," the determined lady wrote, "we should legalize casino gambling. This would spark tourism and provide more employment. Contrary to popular opinion, casino gambling does not breed crime or disrupt our normal way of life. Instead, the casinos would help to control crime in
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the streets to protect their image. The taxes collected from legalized gambling would pay for education, fighting crime, transportation, social services and health care."26
What more could anyone ask? Our needs for education, law enforcement, public transportation, social services and health care will be provided through an industry we may rest assured — against all the evidence to the contrary — neither breeds crime nor disrupts the local citizen's normal way of life. In fact, we are reassured that these benefactors can even be counted on to help control crime in the streets — so great is their desire to protect their image from tarnish. We can enter with confidence into a new age of urban recovery and individual prosperity — or so we are told. All these benefits are handed us without cost or obligation by benevolent forces getting all that money from sources which need be no concern of ours!
Casinos Through Rose-Colored Glasses
Bennett Lifter, who is prominently identified with the move to legalize casino gambling on Miami Beach, offers this summarization of the advantages casinos would provide, as he sees it, for local citizens — but most of all for the 500-room Marco Polo Hotel which he owns:
"All Floridians are concerned about jobs and a better economy, so that it behooves them to have gambling, which makes hotel operations more profitable, leading to creating more jobs, more construction, and more usage of services and supplies, which benefits the entire area. Also, more jobs, of course, get the people, including a large number of blacks, off the streets and reduce
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the rate of crime," he writes. The proof he gives us?
"This is proven," Lifter adds, "by Atlantic City, which has become the No. 1 vacation destination of the world, with a great deal less serious crime than has been publicized by the media."27
If you believe that, I have a nice, only slightly damaged, building in Beirut I'd like to sell you! Like others who stand to profit most from the casino trade, Lifter sees what he wants to see when he peers into his crystal ball.
The hotel owner sees casinos, in fact, as a solution to the crime problem, not as a contributing factor. "The crime in Florida primarily consists of drug traffic," he writes." More jobs and a better economy would lesson the need for illegal businesses. A healthier economy would lead to less tolerance on the part of the community toward drugs and other questionable type businesses that are accepted to some degree by the community as a need of economic necessity."28
It must be assumed, of course, that hotel owner Lifter has been exposed, as we are, to the Abrams Report and other studies in conflict with his point of view. Given his personal interest, however, he prefers the more palatable message he gets from his own balance sheet. What is in the best interest of our nation, it would appear — like beauty — is indeed in the eyes of the beholder. And not many are beholding in deference to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Points to Ponder
1. Casinos have been described as "rivers of cash, with many strange animals coming to the water to drink." Do you see any correlation between this uncharted flow of megabucks and what Robert Abrams refers to as the inevitability of corruption of some local officials?
2. Opponents of casinos see the Abrams Report as a sort of Magna Charta in the citizens' campaign to brand these "leeches licensed to prey on the false hopes of the foolish" as what they really are: legitimized rackets that know in advance just what percentage their "take" will be. What have you seen in this overview of the Report that gives you food for additional thought in establishing your own point of view where casinos are concerned?
3. Everyone is said to "have his price." Is there a sense in which that might apply to even the most faithful Christian? Suppose someone with neither scruples nor conscience — and fully capable of fulfilling his threat — told you he'd see to it that your spouse or children would meet with some tragic fate unless you responded to his unlawful demand? Would that demand become, in fact, your "price"?
4. The casinos in Atlantic City lure thousands of people each day to their gaming rooms, bringing them from surrounding cities in huge busloads. Each person pays $20 for the bus ride and, in return, gets a $3 lunch ticket and $15 to gamble with. How can casinos make money on a deal like that? Is it possible
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they know in advance just how much of his own money the average bused-in customer is going to gamble away once he gets there?
5. A wealthy personal friend of the author who once owned a famous casino denied the category of "gambler" for himself, saying, "Casino owners don't gamble; they know they're going to get their percentage, whatever happens." Is there any sense in which the casino customer similarly can know he is going to emerge a winner?
6. Honestly, do you think you would experience a certain amount of embarrassment if Jesus Christ returned to earth and found you placing your chips on the squares of a roulette table? If He asked you for an explanation, what do you feel might satisfy Him?
Notes
1. State of New York, Office of Attorney General, Report in Opposition to Legalized Casino Gambling in New York State, 20 May, 1981, prepared by Attorney General Robert Abrams, p. 1. This document is subsequently documented as the Abrams Report.
2. Ibid., p. 1.
3. Ibid., p. 2.
4. Ibid., p. 2.
5. U.S. News & World Report, March 9, 1981, p. 66.
6. Atlantic City Press, December 22, 1980.
7. State of Florida, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Investigative Analysis Bureau, Casino Gambling Update, May 1986, p. 1.
8. Atlantic City Press, December 22, 1980.
9. Atlantic City Press, November 12, 1980.
10. Quoted in the Abrams Report, p. 5.
11. Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), November 23, 1981.
12. "Impact," Asbury Park Press, January 1, 1984, p. 5.
13. The Abrams Report, p. 7.
14. Ibid., p. 8.
15. G. Michael Brown, speech delivered at the Maryland Public Gaming Research Institute, Baltimore, MD, March 17, 1981.
16. New York Times, March 223, 1980
17. The Abrams Report p. 13.
18. New York Times, December 1, 1980.
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19. U.S. Congress, Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, Report of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, 16 August, 1984, p. 3.
20. Miami News, August 27, 1984, p. 1.
21. Trenton Times, February 4, 1984.
22. Trenton Times, March 6, 1983.
23. Ibid.
24. New York Times, editorial, June 19, 1980.
25. New York Times, November 30, 1980.
26. Miami Herald, letter to the editor, August 28, 1985, p. 12.
27. Response to questionnaire from author, written reply, January 18, 1985.
28. Ibid.
Chapter Nine || Table of Contents