"I think I speak for the board when I say I find these instances incredibly troubling," Chairman Gregory Fajt said. "Under the wrong circumstances, it could truly be a matter of life and death."
At the board's request, Thomas Bonner, Greenwood's general counsel, detailed the stupidity spree: Five parents left 10 children - one just 15 months old - inside running cars for 30 minutes to six hours while Mom or Dad played.
"We don't want these people at our property," Bonner insisted. "We don't want their money."
To prove his point, Bonner said Parx wiped all the offenders from its mailing list and canceled their player cards - the casino equivalent of shunning.
Busted and banned
Painfully aware that most of the victims had been spotted by other patrons, not casino staff, Bonner said Parx had since beefed up security and begun 24/7 pavement patrols.
"We have 6,000 spaces," he lamented, "acres and acres of parking."
And, Bonner said at the Aug. 19 hearing, all security officers have been retrained with a singular focus on the freakish worst-case scenario: "The most important priority when they're doing vehicle patrols is to look for people in cars."
Yet six days later, a 34-year-old Bensalem father drank a couple of beers, then drove to Parx to play blackjack. Inside a running SUV, he left his 7- and 12-year-old children and a pit bull puppy.
It was 10:15 on a Wednesday night. Once again, fellow gamblers spied the children before Parx security did. So much for that training.
As I watched, I waited for the gaming board to show real muscle, any evidence of control. Instead, they dubbed car abandonments "a horrific societal problem" and agreed they were lucky no one died.
One commissioner actually suggested wrapping Parx security cars with anti-child-abuse messages. Another blamed Bensalem police for not assigning an officer to the lot.
