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Security Dealer & Integrator
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Casino Security
THERE ARE AN estimated 1,000 casinos in the United States alone, from spectacular resorts in Las Vegas to an Indian gaming facility in Iowa and a riverboat on the Mississippi near New Orleans.
Thousands of people may pass through each casino every day. Millions of dollars may be on site at any given time and the activity may continue 24 hours a day. Casinos present a real challenge to the security dealer or system integrator.
Most casinos divide the security function. Security officers monitor events in restaurants, parking lots, hallways, entries and possibly a surrounding or adjacent hotel. Surveillance personnel monitor the gaming tables, slot machines and money-counting rooms.
But both functions count on cameras—thousands of them in a major casino—to monitor events in real time and provide recorded data for investigative purposes. All security installations have benefited from the casinos’ need for new and better video technologies. For example, the need to read the denomination of bills on a gaming table helped push real-time video to 30 frames per second to provide a higher level of data.
On the security side, cameras can help in many areas, including liability issues. It is not unheard of for a patron to stage a slip-and-fall after losing heavily at the tables or slots. Video from the incident may allow security officers to prove the wet area on the floor was the result of the patron’s intentionally spilled drink. Parking lot video may show that casino valets had nothing to do with damage to a patron’s car, and the list goes on.
Facial recognition software has also been moved forward by the casinos’ need to recognize regular slip-and-fall practitioners and card counters who often work in teams in order to give themselves an advantage over the house while playing blackjack.
The software reads every face entering the casino and compares it to a database, which grows daily, of potential problem patrons. Casinos typically share such information and network with one another.
