Working security at a casino can be a tough job – watching for unruly guests, monitoring those who may have consumed too much alcohol, and being on the lookout for potential cheats who might take advantage of the casino or other gamblers. But guards at one casino may have taken things too far, according to the Nevada Gaming Commission.
The state Attorney General’s Office alleges that four security personnel members of the RIverside Casino in Laughlin, about 90 minutes south of Las Vegas, inappropriately detained one customer and one employee on two different occasions from 2022.
In one incident, a casino employee “was detained and held without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing in the first incident. A Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department investigation determined four guards should be arrested on charges of coercion with physical force and false imprisonment. The charges were reduced to battery and false imprisonment, and eventually dismissed when officers stayed out of trouble and completed impulse control counseling,” according to KLAS.
Record Fine Handed Out
The second incident saw a guard exercise excessive force in removing a customer from the property. The board issued a record fine of $500,000 after hearing about the two cases. Attorney Greg Giordano and Riverside COO Matt Laughlin represented the company before the board and admitted that the guards were in the wrong.
The casino has since worked to rectify some shortcomings, they noted. That included terminating four of the guards involved and reassigning a fifth. The property also now has a review committee in place and potential security personnel are now screened more closely.
“The allegations of the complaint are serious,” Michela said. “However, Riverside has put into place significant measures to hopefully ensure something like this does not happen again.”
Despite the admissions, some board members expressed concern that the incidents were brought to the attention of state gaming regulators. The incidents were too out of the ordinary, and too violent, to not notify the state, they argued.
“I believe the business judgment of the company should have been to report when an employee is falsely accused and knocked out for 18 minutes,” Commissioner Ogonna Brown said. “That to me seems pretty egregious and something that should voluntarily be disclosed.
“Having a patron that’s supposed to be moved out of a certain area and then hospitalized because he was shoved down to the ground on his face, that’s something that should have been disclosed I think out of your own volition. Because it’s not something that we expect and when I read it I was a little bit disturbed by it.”
