By Mansfield Frazier
There’s little doubt Internet cafés, as they were being operated in Ohio (and in other states), were a pestilence, a rip-off, and society is better off without them. However, the manner in which they were run out of Ohio on a rail should give pause to everyone who loves liberty, expects probity from government, and respects fair play for all … even those whom we presume to be scoundrels.
One TV commercial (which perhaps was paid for by the casino industry as part of their overkill efforts to shutter the noxious businesses) featured a little old lady bemoaning the fact that she lost her life savings playing in an Internet café. Are we to then suppose that had she lost her nest egg at the Horseshoe (as some have no doubt done) that would have OK? The fact that she’d been fleeced seemingly took a backseat to the question of which type of gaming business actually did the fleecing.
Last year, as prosecutors around the state began gearing up to shut these somewhat shady operations down, all sorts of wild accusations were being made: They supposedly were controlled by organized crime syndicates; they were dope dens; the operators were involved in human trafficking. You name it, and they — if not quite being outright accused of engaging in such nefarious behavior — certainly were being slyly tarred and feathered for behavior that was beyond the pale. I was waiting for the story to break in the media that the some of the operators were being suspected of making kiddie porn in the backroom on slow nights. Prosecutorial overkill is an understatement.
Albeit, it’s hard to screw up sympathy for the greedy folks who were plucking old ladies cleaner than city chickens, and then talking about all the jobs they were creating in the process. As a lot, they were as bad as the predatory payday loan bandits who made the same argument as they took advantage of people who happened to find themselves financially hard pressed. These bloodsuckers are downright ghoulish.
When the cafés first began opening up a few years ago a business associate of mine suggested we look into opening a string of them — using his money of course. I told him at the time that, for a variety of reasons, I really wasn’t interested … recalling from my days of street hustling the maxim that “all money ain’t good money.”
Nonetheless, I agreed to take a cursory look at the industry in order to provide him with some informed advice since he seemed determined to move ahead — with or without me.
I accompanied him to a meeting with a representative of the largest companies that were supplying the software to operators in Ohio at the time, and when I asked the gentleman if they’d ever given any consideration to finding a way to give some of the tons of cash they were raking in back to the public (similar to how casinos, by law, are required to do), he scoffed at the notion, saying that since they really were not gambling operations like casinos, why should they give anything back to the suckers … uh, I mean customers.
After we left the meeting I told my friend that while they might make some money in the short-term, in the long-term there was no way the cafés could remain viable. The state legislature, even in a state as backwards as Ohio, was not about to allow these slick operators to continue to do business within our boundaries. A week later, an ancient, well-connected Columbus lawyer verified my assessment. In his best deep southern drawl he simply said to me, “Son, that dog just ain’t gonna hunt. They’re already dead, they just don’t know it … but they will figure it out when they start to stinkin’.”
There was just no way the powerful casino interests were going to allow these small-time operators to get into the gaming business on the cheap, and then not kick something back into state coffers as they were doing as well.
The café operators were fools not to immediately approach state legislators and try to get the gaming laws changed so that small businesses could also legally do business in Ohio. But on second thought maybe they weren’t fools, since they probably already knew the chances of getting the laws changed were slim to none — and slim had already hightailed it out of Ohio.
In the end the cafés were put out of business the right way: By the enacting of laws that strangled them to death by limiting the amounts they could pay out … and I don’t have a problem with putting them out of business utilizing that method.
My concern is with the heavy-handed media methods Mike DeWine and prosecutors around the state employed to make the case that these businesses were being operated by bandits. They’d already made up their minds in regards to the guilt of the café operators, sans due process. As Sheriff Cobb said in the 1985 western Silverado, “We’re gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging.”
The problem with the case of Internet cafés is that overzealous enforcement agencies elected to totally ignore one of the first rules of America law: which is, that no one — not even those who are presumed to be as guilty as hell — should ever be framed. If their conduct in this case doesn’t scare you, then you must not have a firm grasp of the purpose and meaning of our Bill of Rights.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.