The signs read “For Amusement Only,” but the tired- looking woman with the cigarette wasn’t smiling. Nor was anyone else in the dimly lit back room. …
Fun is something you won’t find in this “fun arcade,” or in others across town where players come looking only to win. And if there’s any amusement, it’s probably limited to that of local arcade operators, who last year collected what law enforcement officials estimate was $40 million worth of nickels, dimes and quarters.
Police believe there are well over 1,000 video gambling machines at about 50 locations in Honolulu.
“We have housewives going in and dropping $40 in a couple of hours,” said police Capt. Frank Sua. “You don’t put that much money into a machine for fun.”
The electronic devices … are the same kind used in Las Vegas except that the coin hoppers have been removed.
Without the hoppers, which are trays designed to catch a coin payoff, the games are considered a legal source of amusement. Police say the machines are refitted so the winning cache falls instead into a plastic bucket inside the video game. Parlor operators make their rounds, opening the machines and emptying the laden buckets into coin-sorters. …
The illegal gambling aspect comes in when a player logs up credits on the video screen and is then given money … for those credits.
By law, police must witness the game-playing and the payoff in order to make an arrest. Therefore, they must go undercover in a tedious and time-consuming task.
Honolulu vice officers recently confiscated 119 video machines and arrested eight people at five amusement arcades — the latest in a series of raids that have netted 631 video games and scores of arrests since …less than two years ago.
But police say they are fighting a losing battle with parlor operators, who replace the lucrative machines almost as soon as they are carted away. … Those arrested — usually arcade employees — face misdemeanor … charges and are usually bailed out of jail. … Police say they could lick the problem if the machines were classified as gambling devices. … That way, they could be stopped before shipment to Hawaii or other states across the country.
