These businesses don’t advertise, their ownership is often murky and they tend to operate under the radar in low-income neighborhoods.
And they litter communities across Tampa Bay, with at least 70 game rooms operating in the region as of early May, and with an estimated 1,000 locations throughout Florida. That bluff has worked, even though these gambling machines are not ordinary games. These arcades, however, register their machines with state and local governments as ordinary coin-operated amusement games. Florida expressly forbids gambling devices outside of a few venues - the Seminole Tribe casinos, like the Hard Rock outside Tampa and a handful of racetracks in South Florida. With few exceptions, slot machines are illegal in Florida, as the Times’ report explains. The Tampa Bay Times’ Christopher Spata provided an eye-opener this week, both on these predatory businesses, which pockmark Tampa Bay, and on the very criminal justice system that turns a blind eye to these profitable, public nuisances. What will it take for law enforcement to enforce the law?
These parlors are all across Florida, and they’re all illegal. They operate all day in plain sight - bootleg casinos offering cash payouts at so-called “arcade” machines.
