By Greg Reeves
People get loose at casinos - looser than the slots. Women neglect their purses. Happy (winning) gamblers meander around with cups of cash and tokens. Pockets can be ripe for picking.
We didn't actually see any of that in our tour of a local casino today with members of the Missouri Highway Patrol's gaming division. But troopers say the games are magnets for pickpockets and all manner of scammers.
There are casino security personnel to keep watch, of course, and a different job falls to the 104 gaming division troopers - doing constant software upgrades and game-integrity checks on complex slot machines and other EGD's - electronic gaming devices.
And it takes a lot of time. A single upgrade project last year, for example, helped push trooper overtime hours to 17,000 - something gaming commission enforcement chief Steve Johnson said in the commission's annual report he wants to cut down next year.
That overtime bill falls to the casinos, and Johnson tells Crime Scene KC those businesses will be better served with the addition of eight EGD computer specialists - freeing troopers for other tasks at the casinos.
"We’re bringing on guys who have a much higher degree of expertise," Johnson said. "We think it'll be far more efficient."
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Tuesday, October 04, 2005
KCPD lags in women, minority officers
By Greg Reeves
Kansas City police chief Jim Corwin says he wants to up the percentage of women and minority officers in the department to 50 percent - from its current level of 145 such officers, or about 12 percent of the department's sworn personnel.
The department's current level looks to be even lower than national averages. Here's a Justice Department study of women and minority police officers in 2000, divided by population size of the community:
Chief Corwin Part II: We don't look enough like you
By Greg Reeves
About half the officers in the Kansas City Police Department should be women or minorities, Chief Jim Corwin told a community forum Monday night.
That's a long way from the 12 percent or so who fit that category now, Corwin said.
In general, officers should "look like" the people in the communities they're covering, he said. Two recent police academy classes come closer to fitting that bill, he said:
- Of 55 graduates in the year's first graduating class, 40 percent were women or minorities
- Of 50 in the second class, about a third were women or minorities
The last time anyone counted these figures nationally was 2000, when the Census Bureau surveyed 13,000 police departments for the Justice Department and came up with these numbers:
KCPD Chief Corwin: Police are useless without the community
By Greg Reeves
Police can't be "an occupying force" and need all parts of the community to succeed in fighting crime, Kansas City police chief Jim Corwin told about 25 persons at a community forum Monday evening at St. Aloysius Church, 2611 E. 11th.
Corwin, who is coming up on his one-year anniversary as chief on Oct. 26, said he has met with a lot of people and pressed a lot of flesh in an effort to forge tighter bonds - not tighter handcuffs - with Kansas Citians.
"We can't arrest our way out of that problem," he told one woman who said drug dealers and prostitutes basically swarm like gnats near her home around 11th-12th and Prospect. The offenders are released almost as soon as they are arrested, she told him.
That problem, Corwin told her, is "systemic."
Police and residents have to work together to solve basic social issues such as jobs, economic development and education, he said. Such a years-long effort has taken place and succeeded on the city's West Side, he said.
NFL person who is not a criminal player or drunken fan arrested anyway
By Greg Reeves
We thought we were so cool calling up Kansas City Chiefs spokesman Bob Moore yesterday to tally drunken fan arrests in the Chiefs-Eagles game Sunday.
Moore answered our question, but didn't mention - if he even knew - that Chiefs tight ends coach Jason Verduzco (left, in happier times) got into a hassle with Kansas City police before the game.
According to the Star sports-section story today, Kansas City police failed to understand Verduzco's insistent need to turn in a gate already swamped by arriving fans at which police were trying to divert traffic.
Officers tried to stop Verduzco, so he spoke out with naughty words and drove forward, almost into an officer's leg. Thus was he Maced, according to police, and given a summons that sounded kind of ominous, something about "intent to inflict bodily injury" on an officer.
KC homicide #95: While chatting with friends
By Greg Reeves
From KC police 9:35 p.m. Monday:
- "The victim of homicide #95, which occurred today near 71St. and Paseo Blvd, has been identified as Derrick J. Edwards, a 40yr old KCMO resident. Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 816.474.TIPS."
Edwards is pictured here. Star police reporter Christine Vendel's story is here.
