Two weeks ago I completed a six-day stint as a juror on a serious criminal case in Salem Superior Court. The defendant was charged with participating in a brutal beating - assault with a dangerous weapon - and found guilty.
Our 12-person jury found the case to be complicated, disturbing and exceedingly sad. The accused - call him Smith - had gambling and drinking problems which certainly compounded and possibly triggered the violence in this assault.
Smith fed both of his habits with regular trips to the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut. As Massachusetts weighs whether to construct its own gambling "resorts," it's worth looking at the role "gaming" played in shattering of the lives of two families.
About a year ago, Smith and his 21-year-old son, Junior, completed a small, $550 bathroom-tiling job for another subcontractor, a Mr. Baker. Just a few days after completing the work, Smith requested payment from Baker, who responded that they each had to await payment from the general contractor.
So Smith and Junior, that same day, with no other work lined up whatsoever, and only $300 in total savings, drove their 16-year-old car to Foxwoods and spent the afternoon there.
At the blackjack tables, they consumed many drinks - which are plentiful and free for those gambling - and proceeded to lose every dollar they had.
The casino is well designed, glitzy and upbeat, and makes the gamblers feel capable and important. The mood lighting is sophisticated, the background music is hot, smoking is permitted and the alcohol is distributed by pretty young women in very short black skirts and black nylons.
As Smith was losing to the house, he dialed Baker repeatedly to again request payment. Presumably, Smith was becoming anxious and frustrated.
That evening, the Smiths returned home, had a few more drinks and waited to see Baker, who was coming to visit Smith's neighbor. When Baker arrived and got out of his van, Junior hit him in the head with a steel pipe, breaking an eye socket, splitting his jaw, gashing his head and felling him. Baker got up and staggered around a bit, then Junior struck him again, this time across the midsection.
In addition to the pipe, the Smiths each had a handgun. Baker had no weapon.
Smith Sr. was sentenced five to seven years in prison. His son had been found guilty earlier this year and given five years.
Although the Smiths - and nobody else - are responsible for their actions, and are indeed being held properly accountable, Foxwoods substantially increased the emotional turmoil that they were already experiencing the day they assaulted Baker.
By plying the Smiths with free drinks, seductively inflating their egos and taking their money, it is easy to see how casinos like Foxwoods prey on the weak and uneducated.
Smith Sr. had dropped out of school after the seventh grade, and Junior never went beyond the eighth. They obviously lacked good judgment. Living from paycheck to paycheck, neither had savings or a bank account. After Baker's job, they were out of work. After Foxwoods, they were out of money.
Foxwoods is so determined to wring every possible dollar from patrons that the entire complex is sprinkled with ATM and cash-card machines to tempt losing players to tap yet more of their savings. And despite the glamour portrayed in Foxwoods ads, a large percentage of the patrons are blue-collar regulars who can ill afford their losses.
Foxwoods opened 15 years ago and has enlarged its business every year. Today, it averages an unbelievable 40,000 visitors a day and is constructing its seventh casino building on the site.
Foxwoods' management does not fear a potential loss of business if Massachusetts builds casinos. It believes that the market would readily expand to fill the new resorts. Both Foxwoods and our state would advertise heavily to create new gamblers.
While Massachusetts could put this new revenue to good use, to me it seems wrong to raise money at the expense of the tens of thousands of families that are damaged by problem gambling.
Disproportionately, it is the working poor - like the Smiths - who would be victimized by the addictions, crime and social dysfunctions accompanying casinos. Have we decided that some percentage of this group is expendable?
Building casinos for the express purpose of funding government is a wrong-headed approach. Better to use debate, democracy and consensus to establish whatever level of taxation we are willing to support. Perhaps we need less demonizing of government and more acknowledgement of the breadth and value of the functions it performs.
If we are unwilling or unable to sustain government with taxes, then perhaps it is our thinking, priorities, government or tax structures that need adjustment.
People sometimes rant about government waste. There certainly is some of that. But real waste is a father and his young son - freshly ratcheted into handcuffs and ankle shackles - being led out of a courtroom to serve five years, each for a stupid crime of emotion, that almost certainly would not have occurred but for the manipulation and exploitation that is the stock in trade of the modern casino.
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Brian T. Watson of Swampscott is a regular Viewpoint columnist. Contact him at watson@nii.net
