The casino’s watchful eyes

CANYONVILLE — A sign by the door leading out of the surveillance room at the Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort lets those who leave know what can be revealed about the goings-on inside.

Nothing.

“What you see.

What you hear.

When you leave.

Leave it here,” the sign reads.

The surveillance room monitors thousands of guests and millions of dollars each day. Past the sign and behind the door is a hallway with two rooms.

One room has a wall of monitors broadcasting images of the resort property and casino floor. The other has rows of computer hard drives stacked 20 high.

The casino is required to have all surveillance recordings backed up for at least seven days. Those hard drives allow for “considerably more than that,” according to Alicia Barney, interim surveillance director with the Cow Creek Gaming & Regulatory Commission.

The commission, an entity of the tribe, is managed independent of the casino as specified by the annually audited gaming compact between the state and Oregon’s tribes.

It licenses and runs background checks on suppliers and casino employees, monitors gaming, establishes control standards and conducts audits.

The commission employs 34. It works in conjunction with the Oregon State Police Tribal Gaming Section and abides by internal control standards set by the National Indian Gaming Commission, as well as its own, often stricter, standards.

All eight Oregon tribal casinos have a tribal gaming commission in place to monitor their casino’s activities.

At least two people are always on duty in the surveillance control room at Seven Feathers, watching more than 50 screens that cover the entire resort and casino area — not including hotel rooms and bathrooms, of course.

Surveillance in the early days of casinos consisted of people walking along a catwalk above the gaming floor.

There are around 500 cameras at Seven Feathers. Some are powerful enough to zoom in on a car in a far corner of the parking lot or on a dollar bill resting on a blackjack table.

On the casino’s gaming floor, cameras are encased in black domes on the ceiling. They are not hidden.

That’s by design.

“Cameras are where you see them,” Barney said. “We want people to know they’re there.”

<b>INTEGRITY & SAFETY</b>

Cameras at the casino are not simply there to protect “the house” — a casino’s bottom line — against cheating.

Surveillance does do that, but it also protects the financial and physical safety of guests.

Joe Pospisil, risk manager for Seven Feathers, said there are at least 300 medical aid calls per year at the casino, many that are first caught by surveillance cameras.

Seven Feathers has 20 first responders on staff as part of the security department. Pospisil said they can be sent to situations ranging from high blood pressure to a heart attack.

In some instances, video surveillance has aided in how to treat someone requiring medical attention, by capturing the accident on tape.

“We’ve actually used that kind of information for worker’s comp claims, too,” Pospisil said.

Cameras can also protect players against dealer error. When money is involved, Barney said, accidents can happen.

That includes a winning player not getting a proper payout from a gaming table or machine.

When a patron raises that concern, it’s likely a camera recorded what happened.

“One of our favorite things is to be able to give a guest their money back,” Barney said.

Of course, some players will attempt to cheat to beat the house.

In the surveillance room, employees use the phrase “JDLR.” It means, “just doesn’t look right,” and is a signal that will get a person watched by the cameras above.

An example is a player “rubbernecking,” or constantly looking over his or her shoulder.

If players keeps their hands right on top of their bets at, say, the blackjack table, they will also likely be monitored.

“It may be innocent, it may be nothing, but that is what our staff is trained to look for,” Barney said.

Some cheaters will “cap” a winning bet. Capping happens when a player adds more chips to their bet stack following a winning hand, possibly creating a brief distraction first, so that the dealer thinks the player is owed more chips.

Patience is important in surveillance. Someone suspected of cheating isn’t immediately dragged off and given a back-room beating, like might be depicted in an old mobster movie.

Instead, suspicious players are followed until they show themselves to be innocent or guilty.

“It can reveal itself in a matter of minutes, sometimes days, sometimes months,” Barney said.

<b>STOPPING THE SCAMS</b>

To beat a cheater, surveillance personnel have to learn to become cheaters.

Barney said cheaters will buy slot machines and take them apart in their garages to learn how they work and when they pay out.

So, there is an operational slot machine in the surveillance room that employees learn from the inside out.

Card counting is a well-known technique for trying to beat the house at blackjack. Card counting is not illegal by law, but it is prohibited by most casinos.

Counting cards is mentally noting what cards have been dealt and assigning them a number based on their face value. Low cards, for example, could have a value of plus-one. High cards would be minus-one.

The dealer of blackjack has rules to follow in regards to hitting, or taking, another card. If the player is keeping track of the cards that have come out, he or she can better determine how to play a hand or how to bet on it.

Barney said one or two card counters come through a month. If caught, they are told they can play any other game besides blackjack. If they try to play blackjack again, they will be asked to leave the property.

But if card counters are just using their minds, and not any other device, how are they caught?

“You count right along with them,” Barney said. “To be able to detect one, you have to be one.”

Surveillance employees are taught to count cards. Not coincidentally, they are not allowed to gamble on the premises.

Barney and her surveillance supervisor, Donna Newton, even won first and second place, respectively, in the card counting competition of the World Games Protection Conference in Las Vegas earlier this year.

It was an international summit dedicated to casino game protection, with representatives from 11 countries and 22 states.

Three surveillance employees at Seven Feathers will be attending the conference this coming February.

The staff is cross-trained in nearly every job involved with casino operations. That often provides a built-in understanding of casino and resort operations, which is a vital trait for a surveillance operator.

Barney said it’s not enough to just watch a card dealer, for example. Surveillance operators need to be just as knowledgeable as the dealer, which they are, Barney said.

Many surveillance employees were hired from other jobs at the resort.

Doug Williams, a surveillance operator from Glendale, spent two years working in custodial services at Seven Feathers. He has been in surveillance the last seven years.

Spotting someone or something suspicious is “just experience from watching people,” he said. Experience also comes from mastering the games they watch.

Many surveillance operators earn licenses to deal casino games as part of their training, even though they cannot perform such a job while employed by the gaming and regulatory commission.

Williams is certified to deal four-card poker, for example. He’s also confident he could deal blackjack, because of his training.

It’s just part of the learning process, he said.

“You’re pretty much involved in everything,” he said.

Surveillance team’s quick response to heart attack victim saves his life

CANYONVILLE — James Lanier collapsed to the casino floor last summer. The White City man suffered a heart attack.

He had no pulse.

Lanier, 76, says that it’s because of the surveillance and security staff at the Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort that he is alive today.

Lanier was playing slot machines at Seven Feathers on July 9. At around 11:30 p.m., as he stood up from one machine and turned to another, he had a heart attack.

Lanier’s collapse was immediately spotted by surveillance operators who dispatched the resort’s medical personnel. They were treating Lanier within a minute of his heart attack.

“They used a defibrillator on me and snapped me back,” Lanier said from his home last week. “My doctors later told me that I was dead, that I had actually died, and they were the ones that saved my life.”

Bill Norton was part of the first responders team that came to Lanier’s aid. Norton administered CPR.

“When we got on scene, I noticed he was barely breathing,” Norton said. “I checked for a pulse and couldn’t find one.”

Joe Pospisil, Seven Feathers risk manager, said the security staff gets around 300 calls a year for medical assistance.

Pospisil said sometimes people get wrapped up in a game and forget about checking their blood sugar levels, for example. Often, medical personnel respond to people who just aren’t feeling well.

Surveillance is vital in spotting more severe situations, such as heart attack victims. Surveillance operators at Seven Feathers are just as adept at spotting medical emergencies as they are watching for card game cheats.

The casino has a staff of 20 first responders who are part of the security department. They are all well-trained, but rely on teamwork in situations like Lanier’s case.

“Working together and under high stress situations like this, you have to have a good team that works well with each other,” Norton said.

Lanier was in hospital rooms for 3 1/2 days before he “woke up” following his heart attack. He had no memory of any of it.

When he was told the story, he returned to Seven Feathers. He went to the security post and asked to talk to every member of the medical staff.

One by one they came out and Lanier hugged each person, “because I was so cotton-pickin’ happy to be there.”

“I feel absolutely like nothing ever happened,” he said. “My doctor said I can thank all those people who worked on me at the casino, because they literally saved my life.”

• You can reach reporter Paul Craig at 957-4211 or by e-mail at pcraig@newsreview.info.