Casino Surveillance News

February 2010

CSN News:

CSN is now working out methods for corporate licensing of the materials so that casino companies having more than two or three casinos can purchase a corporate license for uniform training of Surveillance staff through the entire enterprise. Corporate Surveillance Directors (under whatever name) should inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

Currently I am working on finalizing the class presentations with audio narration included. Each presentation is to be accompanied by audio voice-over commentary and narrative, explanations of the video, pointers from twenty years of casino experience, clarifications, examples and “war stories.”  This is a longer project than I thought, having not really taken into account the number of classes available, but I will still have basics, table games and slots  class programs deliverable within approximately three weeks of a contractual agreement.

In addition, I have taken the Casino Security Training program–basic training in casino security–and posted it on a new site: http://www.casinosecuritytraining.com/  This program was very successfully delivered twice in 2008 and 2009, and I have configured it for training from computer. This too will be delivered exactly as it was in the two very successful seminars, with voice over commentary and narration and explanations of the videos involved. Additional materials have been added.

WE STILL SET THE STANDARDS FOR TRAINING OF CASINO SURVEILLANCE

and for

BASIC SECURITY TRAINING FOR CASINOS

Keynote Article: Though I have written many articles used in the training of Surveillance and Security, I have never written exclusively regarding the actual need for training of these personnel. I have alluded to it many times in other articles. Today I am going to talk about why we need to train our Surveillance and Security staff, and how this makes it possible to run these departments as an asset to the casino.

Effective Surveillance Training

by Jim Goding

I am not here to sell training through fear. I am here to state a few facts.

To begin, the regulations adopted by National Indian Gaming Commission, though many parts have been disputed in Congress and in other venues, including the courts, this is one part that has never really been disputed: United States Code, Title 25, Part 542—MINIMUM INTERNAL CONTROL STANDARDS, “Section 542.43:   What are the minimum internal control standards for surveillance for a Tier C gaming operation? (a) The surveillance system shall be maintained and operated from a staffed surveillance room and shall provide surveillance over gaming areas. . . . . (g) The surveillance department shall strive to ensure staff is trained in the use of the equipment, knowledge of the games, and house rules.”

Despite disputes regarding tribes and federal jurisdiction, this is one part of the NIGC MICS that has mainly been observed throughout Indian Gaming, sometimes better, sometimes worse, depending upon the trainers and what they had available to teach and upon the experience available within the Surveillance department itself. Some trainers teach very worthwhile material, others present a dog and pony show. When they leave, what is left behind is a very small part of the expertise required to operate an effective Surveillance department.

Unfortunately, many, many jurisdictions do not require such training by law, and it is to the detriment of the operation of Surveillance and Security both. If not required by law, many houses simply do not train their staffs effectively. Their training is on-the-job training in “the way we do things.”

This can be very effective in its own right over a period of years of experience, but is restricted to the experience of the people doing the training. It does not take into account the things never encountered by the supervisors doing the on-the-job training, and it does not take into account any lack in the facilities and materials available for that training.

On the job training seldom prepares an operator/agent for his first experience of gathering, securing and reporting evidence of criminal violations, nor for the requirements of civil courts, which can be even more expensive to the casino. It is only over a period of years of this type of training, together with experience acquired over those years, that a new investigator learns to think with what he has learned and see beyond the obvious. Some never do learn to see beyond the obvious. Some never learn to evaluate priorities and importance of what they see.

I do speak from experience here. In my very first Surveillance job, under my first director, I received effectively no training in anything other than how to use the equipment we had. My experience at that time, many years ago, was restricted to the gaming experience I acquired from having been a table games dealer. It did not encompass many of the things I have since learned and applied effectively in protecting casino operations. I have been, myself, a very lucky person, since the second person I had as top senior took over: Not only was I trained in the various other casino operation areas–slots, cage, security, sports, food and beverage–in what to expect and how to pick out the scams, I was encouraged very heavily in my own desire to know as much as I could about the entire casino operation, its laws, regulations, and even the procedures in other parts of the casino. I learned from my own second boss and from every one after that, and even was given the opportunity to acquire formal training in many, many areas.

As a result, I not only learned the scams in all of these various areas of the casino, I learned how to figure out the new ones and how to spot the older ones that keep coming around, decade after decade. I learned to spot the points where areas are vulnerable, to spot the people who were opening the casino to cheats and thieves, and to spot the actions which are used to mask cheating and theft in all of the various areas of the casino. I picked up experiences from every person I worked with and many people that I helped to train, and I bring not only my only experience to training, but that of every boss I worked for, every person I trained and many, many people in all areas of gaming from corporate and privately owned casinos to tribal operations to Asian and European casinos.

I learned how to teach this material to others, how to write it and how to show it. With several years of training experience, I even learned most of the answers to the questions people asked, and how to work these points into refined presentation classes.

Most Surveillance operators get some part of these learning opportunities only after a year or two on the job. They get a chance to attend a 3-4 day set of training classes. As I stated above, some of these are good and some are not. Few are completely worthless.

I had the opportunity a few years ago to work up classes for one of the major training operations that services Indian casinos, and I know exactly how bad they were before I wrote up a new set of classes. They were mainly sales presentations for commercial products, and what was not sales presentations had been stolen from other trainers and abbreviated past the point of being useful for effective training.

What if many years of acquired experience were available from day one, and each new operator/investigator/agent had the chance, from the beginning of his job, to learn to effectively protect the casino? To learn the games, the scams, the procedures that effectively protect the operation? To learn why and how people cheat and steal, and how to spot it when it begins so that major losses could be effectively prevented? What if supervisors and managers could effectively focus their limited manpower to protect the casino, rather than have investigator time wasted on doing the jobs of the managers of the areas concerned–or worse, having Surveillance effectively misdirected from actual areas of cheating, fraud and internal theft?

In other articles, I have spoken many times of the principles of Surveillance, and one of the most important of these is known to every experienced Security officer, Surveillance officer and law enforcement officer: the principle of JDLR “just don’t look right.” This is the ability of a person who is experienced in his area to pick out things that do not fit–differences from the normal routine actions and people that don’t fit the regular profile of activities within the environment being surveyed. This ability can be acquired through years of experience–but it can also be acquired through supervised training, in a few weeks, by effectively focusing the attention of the operator on what he needs to learn. What if, from the beginning of a Surveillance agent’s job, he was taught about how all the scams operate, the tells and indicators that something is wrong–without having to have years of experience to pick these out?

Even more important is the ability to effectively communicate what one sees, both in present time to prevent or handle a situation, or later in order to report it effectively, either for law enforcement purposes or otherwise to protect the casino from unnecessary losses to cheats, thieves, accidents, fraud or other circumstances.

This is effective Surveillance training.

Jim Goding

A custom Casino Surveillance Training Program can be designed for your casino in approximately three weeks,

and put into action immediately.

Contact jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com