Interview with Derk Boss, Raving Partner and Director of Surveillance, Angel of the Winds Casino
Now that several casinos have re-opened, we caught up with Derk Boss, Director of Surveillance at Angel of the Winds Casino and longtime Raving Partner. He’s an expert in the field of gaming security and surveillance, litigation support and expert witness.
Derk has been guiding us with pre-opening advice and thoughts for the last several months. We chatted with him on our Raving On Air series and also asked him to do a more thorough follow Q&A below.
Prior to re-opening, there was a lot of speculation to what security and surveillance would look like. Now that many casinos are re-open, any surprises?
We expected that both departments would be more involved with team member and public health/safety. That did happen. We do our best to ensure people, including team members, are temperature checked and screened before they enter, that they wear their masks, and that team members continually sanitize as we prescribed in our protocols. We were surprised about the amount of time and personnel we needed to dedicate to this process. It was much longer than we expected.
We talk a lot about “guest service under the mask.” Is there a new and expanded role for security? Do they have a heightened presence and are they being called to the floor more often?
At this time and for the foreseeable future, security is primarily engaged in screening guests and team members before they enter the property. We have seen security also getting involved more often to request guests to put on or pull up their masks, and to maintain proper social distancing. This type of interaction has rapidly become a security job as they can escalate when people refuse to do as requested. I don’t see this changing for a while. It is the new normal!
