Okay, some of you are not going to agree with everything I say here, and some of you won't think I should be saying it at all. That's fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion. And while it is not my intent to give anyone a step by step tutorial on how to get away with an armed robbery in a Vegas casino, or anywhere else for that matter, there may be some people out there who might use this information to do so, or at least attempt it. so be it. I have my reasons for saying the things I'm about to say, and those things should become clear by the time I finish with this post.
First of all, I'm having trouble attaching photos to my posts using the Blogger app. They hang up while uploading, and I end up having to delete the post and start over. So I'm not going to show you the picture that was released of the white male who committed an armed robbery at the Excalibur Casino last Wednesday, the 13th.
What I am going to tell you is that it is a very poor photo (resolution wise) of an average built white guy, wearing a baseball cap tucked down very close to his eyes and staring down at the floor as he walks away from the cage to an exit. As a result of all this there is no way to ever make an ID off of the photo. And this, apparently, is the best photo they have of him. I find that to be very telling, and here's why.
First of all a little history. The Excalibur was built in the late 80s and was the first of the really large mega hotel/casinos on the strip. At the time it was built it had a world record 4000 hotel rooms and over a hundred thousand square feet of gaming space. They even had a live jousting match during a dinner buffet.
It also had an American Dynamics surveillance system that was state-of-the-art when installed, but would be quickly passed up by other offerings in the marketplace, particularly one from a company named Pelco, just a few years later. The system itself had digital controls for the camera matrix switch and the PTZ (pan tilt and zoom) control system, but all recordings would have been analog of course. The fixed cameras would have used a CCD Imaging chip with a maximum resolution of 360 lines. The VHS VCR that they used would have been only one step above consumer-grade. Not even all the cameras would have been color, as back in the old days you actually got better resolution and a sharper picture from black and white units.
Back in the 80s there weren't even any Gaming Control Board mandated rules on how big, or small of a system you had to have. About the only thing that was mandated by the state was that the count rooms, where money and coins were counted, had to have good coverage that was maintained for at least 14 days, and audio recording had to be made of every other ants made in the saw count room.
So what does all this mean? It means the operators of these casinos and the ownership groups, did things as cheaply as possible. Surveillance as a department, is not a profit center. It generates absolutely no income for the casino, and most owners saw it as a black hole that money goes in and never comes out of. And that type of attitude continues to this day.
Things have changed considerably of course, especially in the last 10 years. The system's now are all digital with most cameras and all monitors being high definition, or ultra high-def. Video tapes are a thing of the past, as everything is stored on computers, servers and RAID 5, or better, storage arrays. Not only can you print out good photos of perpetrators or an incident, you can also email them, so that within minutes of a crime being committed every police officer and other casino in the city can have an BOLO (be on the lookout) alert in their hands. Video of an incident can be turned on a DVD and distributed quickly as well.
Forward-looking Casino managers know today that a professional, well-staffed and well-equipped surveillance epartment can help run every other department in the casino more efficiently and profitably. Their surveillance technicians install high quality, hi-def cameras at all cashier's cage windows, and all the entrance and exit doors, so that all faces come up clearly, and easy to identify, should the need arise later
I can tell you without a doubt, that based on the crappy low-quality image that the Excalibur released of the suspect, that they are not that kind of operation. If they were, they would have had a better picture and they would have released that, instead of the literally useless photo they did release. (This guy his own mother wouldn't recognize him from that photo). This is a direct result of running the surveillance department as cheaply as possible.
I'd be willing to bet you a dollar that the perpetrator of this armed robbery knew that. And targeted the Excaliber specifically for that reason. I hope management at all the big casinos thanks about this the next time it comes time to renew the surveillance department's budget for the next fiscal year.
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