The Movable Buffet: Riding herd on Las Vegas’ party animals

Wandering the floor of the Palms, casino security shift manager Joseph Stopa is polite. He is earnest and has a demeanor very unlike a gruff security guy, though he has the broad, football-player shoulders and bouncer build.

His way of letting a loitering woman know he suspects she may be a prostitute soliciting is to card her, ostensibly making sure she is 21, the minimum age for being on a casino floor. He gently tells a woman sitting at a slot machine, an ignored baby in a basket at her feet, that she must leave the gambling area. He handles everything with elaborate courtesy. His Saturday night shift is 2 to 10 p.m.

He also frequently stops to tidy up empty beer bottles and other mess scattered about the resort. “Security began helping clean in the last couple of years,” he says. “In a recession, everyone who works here has to help out more as a team.”

Chris Rock was at the casino on this recent Saturday to have dinner and see Martin Lawrence perform. Stopa remained apprised of Rock’s location from the moment the star arrived on the property.

After eight years in the military as a combat medic, Stopa, 36, moved to Vegas and got a job at the Palms in security in 2006. Since then he has gone from patrolling an area in the resort to being in charge of about 20 people.

The gaming in Vegas is largely policed by a casinos’ surveillance team, which is a different department. Stopa’s team is responsible for the casino and hotel. On this night, Stopa takes frequent walks through the casino’s busy sports book to keep an eye out for loitering teenagers or other problems. When Rock emerges, wearing a casual sweater, on the casino floor, Palms security has three people assigned to him. And on either side of Rock are his own security, two large men. There is also a friend of Rock’s and a couple of executive-level Palms employees accompanying the comedian.

Without a word to Rock, Stopa and his two colleagues form an outer perimeter. They walk the group through the casino toward an unobtrusive service door. All of this elaborate choreography ends when, without warning, Rock stops in front of the Fantasy Tower entrance, a very public space. It takes just a moment for a tourist, beer in hand, to stop in his tracks to yell: “Hey, Chris Rock!”

The tourist asks a question. Rock replies. Before more people gather, a Palms employee who handles VIPs says something to one of Rock’s security guys, who says something to Rock, and the caravan lurches forward again.

As soon as Rock is seated inside the hotel’s Pearl Theater, Stopa heads at a brisk walk to the parking lot to help direct the gnarl of traffic in front of the valet. The almost-late arrivals for Martin Lawrence are in no mood for waiting. Stopa starts herding them through and after a bit he clears the valet entrance.

Stopa notes: “I didn’t get sworn at even once. That is pretty good.”

In other cities it is a given that security is obnoxious, particularly at celebrity habitats. But Vegas remains a town where tourists reign supreme.

“Eighty percent of my job is customer service,” Stopa says. “I am a calm person, and I don’t want anyone calling Monday to say someone from security was rude to them as they tried to park.”

There is, of course, a fist within the velvet glove of casino security. Shortly before Rock arrived at the casino, Stopa had sorted out another problem. A corporate party at the Hardwood Suite had been giving away basketballs. A guest tried to leave with a signed ball that was not meant to be given away; security told him he could not keep the ball. The security officer explained to Stopa that the man attacked him.

The alleged attacker sits slumped, glassy-eyed and handcuffed behind a door in a room that in a police station would be called a holding cell but here is labeled “Security Processing Room.” The man refuses to give his name or offer any ID. Stopa is indifferent. Since Palms security officers put him in handcuffs, the police have to be called.

Stopa has a 150-page rule book governing in detail the correct action for almost every conceivable interaction between security and guests. Since the incident took place in a hallway, everything was recorded by camera. Stopa says the footage will be cued up and ready for metro police to view when they arrive.

Asked if there is an important unwritten rule not covered in the manual, Stopa offers that security does not want to get in the way of vacation fun. As with most casinos, he says, Palms allows people to push the envelope of behavior in ways other towns might not tolerate.

But there are limits. “We aren’t here to ruin a vacation but to protect our customers and property. We get that people are here to blow off steam. You always warn people. But if someone repeatedly does not comply with a warning, that is when there is usually a problem.”

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