Micromanaging Pennsylvania’s gaming industry may not seem like the best thing to do, but it has been working. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) has been intimately involved with numerous aspects of the experience. During a vote on Wednesday, the commission voted to prohibit four individuals from accessing gambling venues due to poor parenting.
Pennsylvania’s Involuntary Exclusion List Works
The suspended individuals had left children in various casino parking lots while they gambled inside. The PGCB examined the cases of ten people and took a vote on whether they should be included on the board’s Involuntary Exclusion List.
The culprits were suspected of having breached various industry ethical and legal aspects, from cheating to endangering children. The list itself has proven an effective tool against offenders as it already contains hundreds of names of people who are not allowed to enter gambling venues in the Keystone State.
Speaking on the cases of the four individuals who endangered the well-being of children, the regulator said that it had no choice but to suspend those individuals’ access to Pennsylvania casinos. The four individuals had time to prepare a defense, but none of them appeared during the Wednesday hearing to defend their actions.
Meanwhile, the PGCB has issued penalties to operators for not ensuring that such incidents could not happen. The regulator fined greenwood Gaming and Entertainment $10,000 in October. As a result, the casino has upped the security and patrols in its parking lot.
Bad Parenting at Its Worst
There have been numerous reports about parents or adults leaving children unattended in casino parking lots, so much that casinos have been scurrying to introduce measures that would help them prevent such offenses. Valley Forge Casino for example introduced infrared cameras.
In the latest round of penalties, the PGCB named one Michael Glenn who left his children, aged 10 and 11, in a car parked outside of Rivers Casino Philadelphia. Security was able to locate the children 20 minutes after and found the man at a sports betting kiosk. Rivers decided to suspend Glenn permanently from the premises.
Another individual, Shanae Howard, left a five-year-old child unattended for 30 minutes, the PGCB explained. Zachary Bohinski, another individual whose case was examined by the PGCB, was placed on the list for leaving his three and 1-year-old children in a running car at Live! Casino Pittsburgh for half an hour.
What brings parents and adults to leave children unattended is inexplicable, but the bottom line is that casinos and regulators will end up acting severely against such acts.
The fourth case the PGCB issued a prohibition in relation to was that of Edwin Reyes who was playing at the Mount Airy Casino Resort and reported a five-year-old unattended in a hotel room.
He reported the child missing only to discover that it had been sleeping under the covers. His case was also brought to the PGCB, which issued the ban on Wednesday.