Let’s Hold Up Before Folding Up Seniors

For argument’s sake, let’s say the Westminster police have a solid case against two Vietnamese senior centers that they say are nothing more than glorified casinos where money changes hands and the house takes a cut.

What’s wrong with a little action? Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun than putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle? And if the senior citizens are willing players -- and, in fact, are continuing a gaming tradition from their homeland -- isn’t this a situation of no harm, no foul?

Couldn’t the police have cut them some slack? Could they have given verbal warnings but not citations for illegal gambling to 10 elderly players and three dealers?

A somewhat persuasive voice inside my head says yes. But another voice is trying to drown that out and telling me to wake up and smell the hot tea.

For openers, let me confess to a bias in favor of elderly Vietnamese grabbing all the entertainment they can. It doesn’t take much imagination to grasp what their lives may have been like after they left their native land for America, many of whom did so in the throes of a devastating war that cost them dearly. In other words, I’m hard-pressed to begrudge them, in their golden years, a little fun at the gaming table in a place they feel comfortable.

The Times story on the police raid said that the oldsters were playing tu sac, a popular Vietnamese card game. That’s not a game available at your basic casinos, suggesting that the players were engaging in a more traditional pastime -- exactly the picture painted by the center’s founder and operator, Kathy Diep. She told Times reporter Mai Tran that patrons weren’t gambling and that police misunderstood what was going on.

The police beg to differ, basically describing a mini-casino operation that generated several hundred dollars a day, of which the center took a percentage.

Not even that scenario would severely wound my sensibilities, but there’s another specter hanging over the center. That involves the quarter-million dollars the center has received, according to our story, in public funds. It’s entirely appropriate for police to investigate whether any of that money was connected to the alleged gambling.

If police can prove the center used public funds as part of a casino operation, let the chips fall where they may. And if there’s a connection, I won’t be siding with the center.

But we don’t know what the investigation will turn up.

Unfortunately, the possibility of misusing public funds alters the discussion. Too bad, because it’s an interesting little debate as to whether seniors playing traditional card games -- even for money and even with the house taking a cut -- merits a police raid.

Westminster Councilman Andy Quach understands the Vietnamese culture but, like me, can’t ignore the public funds issue. “As a public official, right now I’m concerned with the federal grants that the city has appropriated to the organization over the last couple years,” he says. “As this whole thing unravels, we’re going to find out if those funds were used improperly.”

I ask him to set that issue aside for a moment and weigh in on the propriety of gambling at the senior center. In so many words, I asked if he thought it was a big deal. “I don’t think any officer really intends to put an 80-year-old senior who’s playing cards in jail,” Quach says. “It’s not the crime of the century, but what I think is more important is to see if indeed an illegal operation is going on.”

But what if the investigation turns up nothing more than senior citizens gambling?

Quach sees where I’m going, and, with good humor in his voice, won’t go with me. “Unless they’re regulated by the state or are an Indian tribe,” he says, “I think that constitutes a non-permitted activity.”

He’s probably got the stronger hand with that argument and I know I’m beat, but as with all bad poker players, it’s still hard to fold my hand.