CasinoVille
I dunno know for sure.
Unless, of course, he (or she) was wearing a now water-logged running shoe.
But I do know the following, thanks to more fine work from Sean Holman of PublicEye:
The former commander of British Columbia's now-defunct integrated illegal gaming enforcement team is questioning the provincial government's commitment to "meaningful" illegal gaming investigations. Speaking exclusively with Public Eye, Fred Pinnock also described the RCMP's senior management in British Columbia as demonstrating "willful blindness" when it comes to the connection between illegal gaming and organized crime. And he said his provincially-funded RCMP team should have been expanded - not shutdown.....
{snippety-doo-dah}
......Mr. Pinnock acknowledged those at BC Lotteries and the enforcement branch are "very competent people."
But he questioned whether their "resources and mandate are sufficient to effectively target the criminal activity going on within these environments," noting they don't appear to have had much impact.
The reason: Mr. Pinnock said there hasn't been any big busts at casinos even though "it obvious that highly-pedigreed gangsters frequent these venues on a continuing basis. There's a ton of criminal activity being conducted in these places every day, including money laundering, loansharking and other enterprise crimes."
The RCMP is "playing ostrich" about the problems inside legal gaming facilities, he concluded, with senior management only giving "token attention" to the illegal gaming problems outside those establishments.
"I don't think the RCMP is sufficiently aware of the very significant role that un-enforced gambling has in social decay," he explained, adding that most illegal gamblers are "addicted gamblers, with all the associated life impacts."
Instead, the force has focused on criminal activities that "keep them positioned to ensure the renewal" of their provincial policing contract in 2012, such as gang violence.
Who, exactly, decided to shut down The Unit that is supposed to ferret out the bad guys hangin' round and hangin' in our Casinos?
And why?
Well.....
On the face of it at least, that story is turning out to be very twisted, indeed, as Mr. Holman, following up as only he can, has demonstrated in the last few days with a number of fine posts.
Oversight boards...with government members and without....a cabinet minister.....and all kinds of folks and officials saying things that appear to keep on contradicting what others, and even they themselves, have already said before them.
Meanwhile, the money just keeps on keepin' on.
Changing hands I mean.
________
The title of this post refers to the opening line of the song that Springsteen opened with when he visited Lotusland recently. Which, based on the Boss' history of making a statement with his set-lists, was likely no accident.
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