The death of Eric Garner is disturbing. If you haven’t seen the video by now, you spend too much time counting in casinos! Here’s one of many links to Youtube clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jtXXf4tMM. What you may not have seen are the videos of card counter Justin Mills getting backroomed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBdk1yG2pmU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMexfd2e8s, and http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-card-counting-20141027-story.html. We’ll get back to those.
The first time I saw the Garner clip, the audio was off, and my read on Mr. Garner was that he struck me as a friendly dude. His body language exhibited frustration, but was not threatening. To me it just looked like a fat, regular, black dude getting harassed. He couldn’t be that bad a guy or the cops would have weapons drawn. Then we look at the cops. They’re positioned so that Garner is cornered. They’re in that typical cop pose that says, “I don’t really care about a word you’re saying.” As soon as backup arrives, the cop escalates the situation to violence. Violence, for a guy accused of selling untaxed loosies! Even if they had evidence of that crime (has any hard evidence come out against Garner?), how does this situation become violent? Regardless of the legality, the way the incident was handled showed a complete lack of skill on the part of the cops (and maybe paramedics). I’m sure the people of New York feel protected and served knowing that a dozen cops will take care of any fat, black guy who might be selling some cigarettes on the sly.
Anyone who thinks the Garner case is not racial is a naive white person. In college, I had a friend who was a muscular, black Jamaican. Since our dorm was a mile or so from the center of campus, he would ride his bicycle. On more than one occasion, he was stopped by campus cops and asked, “That’s a nice bike–where’d you get it?” In another incident, campus cops stopped and boarded a student shuttle bus to interrogate two black students who had just run onto the bus, despite the fact that the description of two suspected purse snatchers said “two white individuals.” This kind of daily harassment and discrimination is part of growing up black in the U.S., and many other countries are worse.
Now, if you disagree with that world view, or if you want to get a better understanding of the plight of minorities who face discrimination all the time, and gain some empathy, I can help. OK, we know that if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’re a white male. You may not like the racial profiling, but let’s face it: I nailed it. Based on the U.S. Census, I would be right only about 32% of the time if your demographic were random, but we know that predicting “white male” here will be right about 90% of the time. So, you’re a white male, meaning you have faced a minimum of negative discrimination in your life, and might even think that cops are your friends.
But wait! What is the one way a white male can experience police harassment (possibly violent), get illegally detained, arrested, illegally searched, and get his stuff illegally confiscated and sometimes stolen? Become an AP!
If you’re new to advantage play, I’ll tell you a secret: police work for the casinos. I’m not saying that they work with the casinos, or collaborate with them; I’m saying that the police are casino employees. Got it? Disagree? Let’s look at some facts:
1. Many casinos have cops (in most states, gaming agents are cops, too) on premises, and cops always come when the casino calls.
2. No cop has ever arrived on scene, decided that the casino has illegally detained the AP, and then arrested the shift boss.
3. No cop has ever arrived on scene, then ordered the immediate release of the AP without interrogation.
4. The cop will always compel you to produce ID, and will tell you that is illegal to be in the casino without ID (not true).
5. The cop may say that counting cards is illegal! The idiot cop says to Justin Mills: “We’re not here to talk about Vegas. I’ve never been to Vegas. I don’t know Vegas law, so I can’t advise you on that, OK, so stop asking about Vegas (we don’t tell, OK?). We can go based on what Maryland law states, because I’m a Maryland police officer, not a Vegas police officer.” Earlier in the video the same cop says: “[Counting cards] might be legal in your mind, but unfortunately it’s not here, because there’s an ordinance.” Even Vegas cops have said the same thing to APs in the backroom.
6. If you correctly cite law, the cop will become defensive and sarcastic: “… since you’re a lawyer and all that” says the cop to Justin Mills. When I told an Illinois gaming agent that I don’t have to give ID until my buy-in hits $10001, she said with an annoyed tone, “How do you know what the law is?” Um, because I can read?
7. The situation can become physical, even if the person exhibits no threatening behavior. Both Justin Mills and Eric Garner did a great job in not making any threatening gesture whatsoever, but both situations escalated to physicality.
8. Cops do not show up at a casino to de-escalate the situation; they arrive to escalate the situation, intimidate with threat of arrest, and ultimately hide behind their badges, making it difficult to sue.
9. Cops become fixated on what they want. A cop never wakes up in the middle of harassing you and says, “Gee, maybe I should stop or back off.” If they want your ID, they won’t stop till they get it. If they decide they need to see what’s in your pockets, they will illegally search you. In a cop’s mind, everything he does is justified; he never thinks that maybe it’s not cool to violate someone’s Constitutional rights. The limits imposed by Terry vs. Ohio are nothing more than a bogus technicality to a cop. When a guy starts saying, “I can’t breathe,” it doesn’t matter. The cop is already fixated on what he’s going to do.
10. Whatever info the cop gets will be shared with the casino.
11. Even though you are in the backroom for counting cards, the cop will treat you like a criminal. He won’t be impressed with your ingenuity or say, “I should learn to use my brain like this kid!” You will be referred to as a “suspect” or “perpetrator.” One Missouri gaming agent chased me into the parking lot, flashed his badge, compelled me to produce ID, then told me, “It’s entertainment; it’s not a living.” OK, thanks, buddy, now why don’t you go protect and serve somewhere else!
In the post-9/11 world, every cop is a hero, and you, Mr. AP, are scum. I would love to see the following dialog between a DA and a cop:
DA: “What was the suspect about to do when you detained him?”
Cop (Chief Wiggins): “Well, sir, he was about to make a bet.”
DA: “Thank goodness you caught him!”
The good news for you, my dear, white, male, AP reader, is that you can escape the harassment by avoiding casinos, but maybe it’s better to sue them. Good luck, Mr. Mills.
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I don’t think the Garner case was racially motivated. He was being questioned for breaking a city ordnance and tax evasion by selling loose smokes on the street. Technically Garner was in violation of the law but choking the guy to death over a small issue was excessive.
The example you give where you talk about your friend on the bike and the two kids who jumped on the bus only to get interrogated by cops, I would refer to that as racial profiling, not discrimination. I don’t believe that minorities are openly discriminated against in the U.S. The days of open segregation and Jim Crow laws are long gone in my book. A lot of people know that Chicago has a problem with shooting victims arriving to the ER, for a city that has abolished the 2nd Amendment, how American is it to have a persons rights stripped where only the criminals have weapons? The cops only need to look at the gun violence statistics for the City of Chicago to tell which ethnicities are constantly in violation and a person could probably understand why people are profiled. Although it’s not a good practice to profile people.
Your only 50% right in guessing my ethnicity but I would guess that most of your blogs readers are white. Caucasian people get racially profiled or profiled all the time. All it takes to get profiled in America… be in a rough part of town at an odd hour of the day or night and the color of a persons skin is not going to matter.
I do agree that the cops are going to serve the interests of the casino vs. the patron. That is what I call corporate fascism where the entity is always in the right, and the individual gets squashed and is in violation. The Justin Mills video was a great example of corporate fascism at work within the casino industry. Where state powers (the police) swoop in to protect the corporation (casino) from the evil Blackjack player (Mills) who is doing nothing wrong but playing a game. I think that casino should lose their gaming license but that could never be true in an environment where fascism exists.
As far as the Missouri gaming agent chasing you into the parking garage… If the agent thought “it’s only entertainment” then I have to wonder why the agent was chasing after you in the first place. It’s thinking like that on behalf of casino industry lifers that only serves to destroy their business model.
It’s really very simple for Eric Garner and all the others who come to the attention of Law Enforrcement. Don’t. Don’t sell marijuana, cocaine, possess an illegal gun, rape, murder, speed, cause accidents, beat the crap out of your wife or neighbors, etc. It doesn’t matter your skin color – the Police will respond to anyone committing crime. Cops come in all skin colors, all sexualities and have to go home at night too.
Racial profiling is good police practice and should be practiced more, not less. If I had an expensive bicycle stolen at gunpoint by a black male I would hope they would stop every black male in my neighborhood riding expensive bicycles, not white Polish immigrants riding tricycles.
You, Sir, need counseling.
My black friend was stopped when there was NO expensive bike stolen by anyone. He was stopped because he was black and had a nice bike, so the cop invented a crime! And the black students boarding the bus were stopped when the clear description of the purse snatchers was “white.” My examples illustrate a point, while your example of black+bicycle vs. Polish+tricycle does not even have a properly constructed control group.
So if the simple solution for blacks is to not commit crimes, explain to me what crime I committed at Imperial Palace to get me in handcuffs, with on-duty police helping to illegally search me, and with security threatening to smack my head into the wall. I agree that profiling is a useful tool in the hands of reasonable people who are not idiots. My profile of you is that you are not a professional AP, and you are not black. Tell me how much I’ve won!
what I have learned from your blog entry:
racial profiling does work, and you proved it. but you don’t want cops to profile, whether it is in a casino, or on the street… so it works for you, but shouldn’t work for anyone else. right….
its sad that you think that way, and its sad that you bring up past experience and apply them to a situation that occurred recently in a different state, and a different situation.
in the video, you can see Garner ball his fists up, and yell that he is not going to take it anymore, he is speaking about being arrested for a petty offense. that’s where the entire thing became violent, had he surrendered to his arrest, or just agreed to stop selling cigarettes on the street, the situation wouldn’t have become violent. had he surrendered, he would’ve been released the same way he was the last 5 times he was arrested for the same thing. does it make it right that the cop applied a choke hold? No, but his death was not racial, neither was the crime, right?
being an AP is not illegal, and i’m glad you got a little something from the casino that illegally detained you. somehow, I don’t think you would have gotten anything had your offense been stealing candy bars from the gift shop, or marking cards. you knew what you were doing wasn’t illegal, just like everyone else who has been backroomed for AP, but people who commit actual crimes know they are illegal, and if they choose to continue to commit crimes, they will surely continue to be arrested… nothing new there, since the beginning of time.
anyways, your beliefs on race don’t affect how I think of your AP, continue the good work, and stay golden.
I agree that the Garner case is not the best example of my point, but it’s in the news and what people are talking about. I could easily introduce examples in my home state to make my point, which is simply that blacks (among other groups) face discrimination all the time, even from cops who presumably would act with higher standards than a random person. Furthermore, the way a white male can experience this phenomenon is to become an AP. A few commenters have basically said that the black person’s solution is to keep his nose clean. My last point is precisely that that won’t work, and my two college examples show that. Guys were detained when there was no crime committed at all, or when they specifically did NOT match a suspect’s description. I have been handcuffed in broad daylight on the Strip when there was no crime whatsoever (I was scouting, not playing). I was detained by the IP, again when I wasn’t even playing–not one hand! Here’s a little-known fact: the reason we were seen at the IP is that we had been under surveillance by cops/gaming agents all afternoon. Those agents had a stakeout going on a pro AP’s house. You know why? Because they believed (according to docs and depositions) that these APs were going around town getting the hole card. Yes we were! Oh, and did you know LVPD stole $2000 from me (four purple Mirage chips) while I was locked up? Did you know that a document from the GCB to Caesars said that they would use card-bending charge as a “pretense” (their word) to recover the money for Caesars. Trust me on this: if you are a pro AP for more than a few years, you won’t hold such a high opinion of cops.
Also, I never said that cops shouldn’t profile. The trick is to update the profile when you have better, more relevant information about the question at hand. It’s really an exercise in Bayesian statistics, and everyone has an empirical Bayes prior. So everyone applies their past experience to different situations and then adds any new data. One difference between my profiling vs. cop profiling: in my case, our profiling determines how we play our hands, and what bets to make. I’m not shooting, choking, or illegally detaining and searching people on the basis of my profiling. That creates a different loss function entirely.
James, while what happened to Garner had a racial component to it, the main thing the state of New York sociopaths in government wanted to do is to have their enforcer thugs send the message that under no circumstances is there to be interference with the exorbitant taxation that keeps their ridiculous pensions intact. Selling loose cigarettes and avoiding the huge tax is therefore obviously a capital offense.
Watched both videos. Although the guy was in an uncomfortable spot he
knew what to do yet didn’t follow thru. He gave up his ID even after they
confirmed that his suspected “crime” was counting. He signed the trespass
paper. Guessing he knows not to do either but decided he just wanted out
of there. Probably should have stated that he was relinquishing his ID and
signing the document under duress. I know it’s easy to critique it all after
the fact. Been there and sometimes you make a decision based on what
makes practical sense at the moment. The guy didn’t want to be detained
any longer and chose to end the incident right there.
The guys responding on this topic are living under a rock. Profiling is an easy way to make an arrest. Why let the details of the situation get in the way. Bring’em in, write it up, (hopefully at the end of a shift to get some OT) and go on to your off-shift job.
Police are more interested in off-duty details. They do not want to do anything that would threaten that racket. They’ll always side with the casino since it leads to extra pay.
When I began playing in the late ’70s, it was always higher EV to get the police involved than to deal directly with the casino, especially security. Not sure that holds true today. One thing’s certain: If you want to get comments on a post, just infuse some politics.
Here is a simple way to think about this. Humans are biased to be more sympathetic to groups and people that are similar to themselves. Given that, why is it such a surprise that blacks get treated differently than whites by the justice system? When a cop or a jury member is looking at a person who is different from them, they are less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Does that mean that cops weren’t justified killing XYZ (whatever the case of the week is)? No. Does it mean that it is less likely he would be dead if white? Yes.
Those guys at MD Live I think have had some pretty bad training. I was back counting a table at that casino not to long ago. I see the phone rings on the other side of the pit and the pit boss answers it and is staring across the pit right at me. He hangs up the phone and quickly rushes over, Sir do you have a players card? I`m not even at the table which I have never seen anyone asked for a players card without being at the table. Right away before he said anything I knew what was up. I said no and start walking away. He walks down the pit in the same direction as me yelling Sir I need to see your ID! Sir! Come back here!. I get to the exit and they have another pit boss there waiting for me. He also demands my ID and tells security they need to see my ID. Fortunately I was playing unrated, and I left without showing my ID. Then when I left and was walking away from the casino here come the cops!. They start circling around driving past me several times pointing at me. I thought for sure they were going to get out of their car and harass me but then they just headed back to the casino. I got out of the casino without showing ID, without being backroomed, nobody touched me, and I had someone else cash my chips the following week. However I do consider their methods to be harassment. In the short year since I started counting, of the casinos where I have either been kicked out of or had my play restricted I have to say MD Live was the most aggressive and most harassing.
P.S. I am a white male 😉
Sounds like you had your plates run. Hope you were in a rental.
Ok folks, this is my sole “revolutionary” Grosjean-like contribution to AP, i.e., that substantially advances, unifies, etc. the subject-matter:
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops – ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
I am late to the Justin Mills party and was quite offended with what I saw the Maryland Live Casino agent/security punk do to Mr. Mills. I know of no probable cause for this treatment. It is too bad that Mr. Mills was not a skilled martial artist when he was attacked by the security punk. I do not advocate violence but I do advocate that Mr. Mills had the legal right to have defended this unprovoked attack by the security punk up to the point of breaking off the illegal attack. I am additionally offended by the apparent blatant lie of the police officer stating that card counting was illegal and his apparent extortion effort, give up your ID or we will take you downtown to be fingerprinted which will cost you 2-3 hours of your time. I hope Mr. Mills sued the Casino for battery, false imprisonment and what other charges were available. It should have been a substantial settlement or court verdict. Had Mr. Mills called the police officer’s bluff, he could have additionally sued the officer and his department for additional damages had the officer acted inappropriately by “detaining” Mr. Mills and taking him downtown. No matter how the officer phrased this alleged “detention”, it would have been an arrest which apparently was not substantiated by probable cause.
This article did not age well . . .