Feature Stories

By Mark Pooley June 1, 2018 was a day I’ll never forget. That was the day I received my cancer diagnosis for something called multiple myeloma, an uncommon kind of blood cancer in which a group of cancerous plasma cells eat away...

By a Biometrica Staffer Every now and then, on Tuesdays, we’ll delve into the rather arcane world of casino regulations and compliance, look at some of the more frequently asked questions that apparently come up with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN),...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, a total of 4,135 state prisoners died in publicly or privately operated prisons, and an additional 378 federal prisoners died in facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), according to a report published by...

By Charlotte Spencer It is estimated that more than 600,000 individuals go missing in the United States every year. While many of those missing are found relatively quickly, thousands disappear, for different reasons, whether by choice or not, for more than a year,...

A 2018 ACEP survey of 3,500 respondents, all ER physicians, found that one-third had been punched and spit upon. In 97% of these cases, a patient committed the physical assault, while 28% reported that a patient’s family member or friend was also...

By a Biometrica Staffer This past weekend was sandwiched between two pieces of contrasting gaming industry news from different sides of the Atlantic. Late on Friday came a bit of hope from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The all-powerful regulatory authority issued...

By a Biometrica staffer Four out of every five small and medium-sized (SME) companies in the world suffer from counterfeits and brand abuse on the internet, a study by the anti-piracy and brand protection company Smart Protection found. The trend among cybercriminals...

By Charlotte Spencer As of April, 2021, Congress is considering several different pieces of legislation which address hate crimes. Many of them focus on hate crimes directly. Others have a different focus, but also take on the subject of hate crimes. Here...

In 2020, just 5,030 of 18,514 law enforcement agencies active in the United States that year provided use-of-force data to the FBI between January and August (we do not have data details as yet for the period post August). In 2019, that number was marginally higher...

By a Biometrica Staffer According to the American Gaming Association’s (AGA) Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker, 2020, the year that life came to a virtual standstill on account of the coronavirus pandemic, marked the first market contraction for the U.S. gaming industry since 2014...

By Deepti Govind We are just about five months away from the 20th anniversary of the deadly 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Neither the United States, nor the rest of the world, is likely to forget...

By Charlotte Spencer Years into the opioid epidemic, Congress is still working to find solutions that help society address this issue. This year several laws have been proposed already. They include laws focused on warning labels, patient education, healthcare worker education, healthcare...

By Barbara Jean Wilson I was eight years old when my mother’s boyfriend, “Uncle Bob,” as he asked me to call him, touched me, and told me not to tell anyone. He said he was doing what he needed to make me...

By Anand Vasu Change is on the horizon in Japan, which the late Sheldon Adelson once reportedly called "the Holy Grail" for casino operators. Earlier this month, Japan’s Casino Regulatory Commission released a first version of its draft casino regulations, and opened...

By Deepti Govind If you thought child marriage was a problem that only developing countries faced, think again. It is an equally real, and worrisome, problem in the U.S. too. Read this: Nearly 300,000 minors, under age 18, were legally married in...

By Charlotte Spencer A Mississippi businessman was indicted January 12, 2021 for hoarding and price gouging PPE. Many who heard of such practices have found them distasteful, but did not realize they were actually illegal too. So does that mean there ought...

By Kathy Nicholl They meet in an unusual and rather unexpected setting — at a religious gathering. She takes her time and recounts to the judge in her child protection case what her father has done to her. The judge asks if...

By Nigel White Thirty years ago, in 1991, Louisiana became the fourth state to approve riverboat gaming, an event of particular significance to me, as I was hired as employee No. 2 in Baton Rouge, joining Casino Rouge as Vice President of...

By a Biometrica staffer A day after Easter, we take a look at data on arson- and explosive-related incidents across houses of worship in the U.S. in 2019. Although the report, published by the ATF, includes accidental and natural fires, we specifically...

By Charlotte Spencer Last week, on March 22, 67-year-old Gregory Paul Ulrich made a virtual 10-minute appearance in front of a Minnesota judge, who ordered what's called a "Rule 20 evaluation" to determine if Ulrich was mentally competent to stand trial. On...

Here is a staggering estimate: 75% of victims of child sexual abuse material are reportedly under the age of 12, 63% under the age of eight. Children are more likely to be abused by someone they have a relationship with, either virtual...

By Michael P. Johnson Prior to March 2020, when walking through the front doors of any casino resort hotel, whether it was on the Las Vegas Strip, in Atlantic City, or on the Mississippi Coast, you would typically spot a security officer,...

By a Biometrica staffer Image Source: Screengrab from the Sentencing Commission's FY2020 preliminary report showing federal offenders by type of crime Four types of offenses accounted for 86.4% of all reported cases to the United States Sentencing Commission (called "the Commission" hereon)...

By Anand Vasu The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 24 that states could restrict the open carry of guns. Justice Jay Bybee wrote in the majority opinion that: “There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor...

By Charlotte Spencer On Wednesday, March 24, 2021, there was a key ruling in the long legal battle between gun rights activists and gun control activists in the United States. It won’t be the last ruling on gun regulation by far, but...

By Kacy Robinson There is nothing more important to a search and rescue handler than his or her canine. We have multiple tools at our disposal depending on the circumstances of the search, but without our canine partners, we are not searchers....

By Deepti Govind On Monday, March 22, 51-year-old Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, a man who waded into ditches to rescue ducklings, a loving father to seven children, and the first officer to respond to reports of an armed man being inside a...

By a Biometrica staffer The First Step Act (FSA) of 2018 requires the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to collect data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) through its National Prisoner Statistics program on a number of different topics and to...

By Charlotte Spencer Congress has had several new bills proposed so far this year to address the issue of prison reform. Together, they cover the topics of youthful offenders, nonviolent offenders, elderly offenders, Covid-19, solitary confinement, monitoring of electronic communications, re-entry into...

By a Biometrica Staffer Image Source: Screengrab from the FBI's latest quarterly Uniform Crime Report showing the percentage increase/decrease in all violent crimes reported, over four consecutive quarters. On March 15, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published its latest quarterly assessment...

By Michael P. Johnson March 11, 2021, marked the 1st anniversary of Covid-19 being labeled a "pandemic." A year ago, the casino industry was turned on its ear, having to shut down. Looking back on it now, as a casino professional with...

By a Biometrica staffer The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published a new report last month with annual insights from its examinations and risk monitoring programs. The report is aimed at helping inform compliance programs at member firms of areas of importance....

By Charlotte Spencer As of March this year, there are already several bills proposed in the area of crime, prison, and law enforcement. These bills cover a wide range of topics including hate crimes, the death penalty, solitary confinement, mental health, parenthood...

By Kevin Metcalf The community of people that works on child protection is a wonderfully disparate one. There are people in law enforcement, for instance, here in the United States and elsewhere, who have willingly dedicated themselves to seeing the worst of...

Being a casino operations manager isn’t for just anyone. You need a combination of management skills, an attention to detail, be part regulatory maven, part staffing expert and part magician. One of the hardest jobs on the books is to vet and...

By a Biometrica staffer Image Source: UNODC, based on the GLOTiP report One hundred and nineteen. That's the number of countries across the world that have never had a female leader. Women serve as heads of State or Government in just 21...

By Charlotte Spencer Most know that importing merchandise produced by forced labor is wrong, but did you know that it’s also illegal? What Does The Law Say? As a result of the Tariff Act of 1930, encoded at 19 U.S.C. 1307, it...

By a Biometrica staffer Jan. 6 2021: It's a day that's been forged into the memory of an entire nation. A day that ended up bearing witness to an act of domestic terrorism the likes of which stunned the entire world. Hundreds...

By Charlotte Spencer There is a form of abuse that is still not illegal in most of the United States, not because anyone decided it should be legal, but because of a lack of awareness. It often accompanies other forms of abuse,...

Google is putting businesses first, helping their revenue increase, by adding real money gambling applications to the Google Play Store. Android users rejoice. By Michael P. Johnson The Covid-19 pandemic struck the casino industry hard during the past year. As with other...

There are several drivers of global forest or tree — cover loss. Illegal activities aimed at capitalizing on growing human needs is a significant one. Illegal wild animal trade is often cited as one of the most lucrative black-market businesses in the...

On Feb. 24, the Department of Justice’s Fraud Section released its 2020 “Year In Review.” Sixty-two of the 167 individuals charged last year by the Health Care Fraud Unit were medical professionals, 13 of whom faced charges for illegal opioid prescriptions. Together,...

By Charlotte Spencer On Feb. 4, we published a story on proposed child protection laws in the United States available here. This week, we are reviewing proposed domestic violence laws other than those that focus specifically on child protection. As of Feb....

It’s been in the works for five years-going-on-35, but it’s all finally official. On Jan. 1, 2021, the National Incident-Based Reporting Program officially replaced the Summary Reporting System as the UCR’s data standard. We take a look at the history of the...

Cashless Systems, Cryptocurrency Patents For Gaming Transactions And The Rise Of Legal Sports Betting and iGaming Revenue Even In An Otherwise Traumatic Year. The U.S. Gaming Industry Is Bound For Change And It’s All Quite Exciting. By Michael P. Johnson Everyone knows...

By Deepti Govind Hate crime in the U.S. reached its highest level in more than a decade in 2019, an FBI report released in November 2020 showed. There were 7,314 hate crime incidents in 2019, up from 7,120 the year before — and...

By Anand Vasu An 84-year-old man from Thailand died from his injuries on Jan. 30 in San Francisco, after being attacked on his morning walk two days prior. Soon after, on Jan. 31, a 91-year-old was injured after being violently shoved to...

By Charlotte Spencer Contact Us As of February 2021, the 117th Congress already has seven bills introduced which, if passed, would change background checking requirements in our country. Five of these bills focus specifically on the subject of background checks involving gun...

By Deepti Govind When David Mamet wrote the screenplay for The Untouchables, he wrote in a dialogue for one of the lead characters that became very popular: "You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun....

By Kadambari Wade On Feb. 1, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) published the first of two issues of their Department of Justice Journal of Federal Law and Practice focused on missing or murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives. This was part of...