The Fremont Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas is in hot water with state regulators for a November 2019 incident in which security held a woman in custody for something it turned out she didn’t do. The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) saw enough evidence of wrongdoing to file a four-count complaint against Fremont’s parent company, Boyd Gaming a week ago. The Nevada Gaming Commission will make a determination on any punishment on Thursday.
As the story goes, just after midnight on November 24, 2019, two women were playing on slot machines near each other when one of them cashed out, receiving a printed ticket from the machine. The woman who cashed out then accused the other woman of playing on her machine with $20 in credits she still had available.
We don’t know what exactly transpired between the accuser printing out the ticket and the accused supposedly playing on her machine. I suppose one could assume that the accuser left for a short time to cash in her ticket, but who knows.
The accuser got a security officer, who proceeded to locate the other woman and grab her from behind. She was put in handcuffs and taken to a holding room while the police were contacted.
She was detained for an hour and a half in the middle of the night, all the time still cuffed. Once security video was reviewed, it was determined that she did nothing wrong. The woman was apprehended, cuffed, and held before anyone actually tried to figure out what, if anything, happened.
“Based on the conversations between the patron, the security officer and the Metro officer, it is clear that Fremont personnel did not have a correct understanding of what the evidence purportedly showed,” the complaint reads.
The circumstances under which the woman was detained sound even worse than what was described above when you look at this part of the complaint:
Under the circumstances, there was no need to detain the patron or subject her to the treatment given to her and the threats to try and force a confession out of her. The matter could have been resolved without even speaking to her, let alone detaining her for 90 minutes.
Boyd Gaming self-reported the improper detainment, after which NGCB agents went to the Fremont to investigate. Fremont security officers seemed to know they messed up, as they were cagey with the agents and their stories did not match what was seen in the surveillance footage.
“The board’s investigation revealed that Fremont did not seem to realize the full scope of the mistakes made by its employees that resulted in the wrongful detention of the patron, the wrongful taking of funds from an innocent patron or the sharing of incorrect information to the investigating officer of Metro and the board,” the complaint says.
