FEATURE-Casino crimes highlight Vegas private security role

By Adam Tanner

LAS VEGAS, Aug 15 (Reuters) - In July, a possibly suicidal man stood above the casino floor at the 2,024-room New York, New York hotel in Las Vegas and fired 16 shots from a semiautomatic gun, wounding four people.

This month, a dispute over a woman at a nightclub in the famed Caesar's Palace hotel ended with two men shot. In May, an explosive device in the parking lot of another Strip hotel, the Luxor, left a Mexican fast-food employee dead.

During each of these incidents, private hotel security heavily supplemented a local police force struggling to keep up with a rapidly growing population in one of the world's most prominent tourist destinations.

"They are definitely an asset to us," said Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, who oversees the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "In our resort corridor we could not police to the level that we do without the assistance and cooperation of hotel security."

"They are the first responders."

Back in the days when organized crime ran much of Las Vegas, hotel security meted out its own version of justice, sometimes beating casino cheaters and undesirables. Times have changed in the city's corporate era, Gillespie said.

"I've been in the department now 27 years in November, and I can tell you their level of professionalism and commitment to keeping the resort corridor safe has increased immensely over the years," Gillespie said.

Private security guards, who do everything from patrol vast casino floors to monitor surveillance videos, dwarf the numbers of city police. Las Vegas employs 2,400 police officers, compared with some 6,500 private security guards, Gillespie said.

DIFFERENT RULES

The rules differ for security guards because they are privately employed and therefore not subject to many requirements that police follow such as notifying arrested people they have the right to remain silent.

"They don't have search-and-seizure issues," said police officer Scott Phillips. "They can grab the bag and look at it."

Some guests have accused private security of going too far. A honeymooning couple staying at Treasure Island sued in 2005, saying four security guards entered their room as they were consummating the marriage.

They eventually won $10,000 in arbitration, said their lawyer, Melanie Porter, now a deputy attorney general in Carson City, Nevada.

"This is such a one-industry town that there are incidents in which lines are crossed," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Las Vegas. "The cozy relationship between the private security and the police can cause problems."

Major Strip hotel owners, including MGM Mirage (MGM.N), Caesar's Palace (part of Harrah's HET.N), the Venetian (part of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS.N)) and Station Casinos (STN.N) declined requests to interview their heads of security.